I Made It To California!

January 5, 2015

My Trainer: Elder Padilla
from El Paso, TX

Hola Family & Friends,

Well I made it to California and it is awesome here! So much has happened this week so it is going to be kind of hard to say everything.

My new companion is Elder Padilla. He is from El Paso, Texas. He has been out for 17 months and he was fluent in Spanish before the mission so he helps me out a lot. He's a cool guy. We get along really good. These next three months are going to be fun and we are going to get a lot done.

I am in the Lodi 4th branch. Yesterday I got to go to church and meet everyone in the ward. They are all so nice. Everyone is so helpful and willing to do like anything for the missionaries. It definitely helps us out! I love the town we are in. It is really nice! There are like no cops patrolling around here because nothing really bad ever happens here I guess. Everybody says it is just a really nice area.

We live in a member’s home. So it is just me, Elder Padilla, Elder Snow and

Elder Behan. We get a whole house to ourselves!! It is great! It was really dirty when I got there but this morning we all deep cleaned it so it is nice and clean now. My bed is so soft and comfortable! I sleep so good every night but the nights are so short here. It is like as soon as we hit the bed and fall asleep we are waking back up to get ready! Its crazy how fast time flies here.

So basically the day here goes like this:

Wake up

Play basketball

Eat breakfast

Shower and get ready

Personal study, companion study, 12-week program, and language study

Lunch

Service

Go out and Do visits and find people

Dinner

Go out again

Be back by 9

Daily planning

Go to bed

Ha that's it. Oh ya the other day we did some service at a horse ranch and we shoveled a whole bunch of horse poop hah. It was pretty funny because

Elder Behan was freaking out. He hated the smell. It was fun though. We also chopped a bunch of wood and hauled it to a part member family's house.

Well I have learned so much this week. My testimony of the power of prayer really strengthened this week. Being new and trying to learn a language is a lot of stress and pressure. So I have had to rely on prayer and talking to Heavenly Father to help me out. I have felt the peace and love from Him every day.

Thanks for all the love and support!!

Elder Gammell

At the Mission Office visiting with the AP's