We Had Some Great Success This Week In Finding More Investigators!

Zone picture at District meeting

December 14, 2015

Dear Family & Friends,

We had some great success this week! The Lord provided more investigators for us to visit this week after losing a few last week.

On Tuesday we went into the new part of our area to go visit some potentials. The person we were trying to go visit wasn't home so we just started knocking doors. It didn't take too long until we knocked on a door and met Arileni and her daughter. They were super nice and said they hadn't talked to the missionaries before but would like us to come back. She was busy during the last appointment we set, so we are heading back this Tuesday to teach the whole family. After we met them we knocked the door next to them and met a little family from Afghanistan. None of them could speak like any English except for the dad. We talked to him for a while and taught about the Book of Mormon. He showed a lot of interest so we asked if we could bring one by for his family and he said yes. So we went and got a Persian Book of Mormon from the mission office and took it to them. Second time I've given away a Persian BOM. They were very grateful for it. We challenged them to read and to pray if it was true. Hopefully they do it. We can't really teach them because of the language barrier. Plus we are Spanish missionaries but we gave them our number and told them to call if they want the English Elders to come back and visit.

Thursday was a great day! Plus it was Elder Brock's birthday. We went out and did some contacting in the park for a little while. We ended up finding a lady named Gabby and her 5 kids. She had been to church about 10 years ago in our ward. She remembered how much she liked it and said that she hasn't gone to church since she got so busy with all of her kids. She lives in North Sac but we gave her the address to the church over there. She said

Fruit cups from our new investigator Lorenzo

she would go so maybe one day when I go back and visit the Rio Tierra Ward she will be there. That would be sweet. After that we ended up running into a guy named Lorenzo that sells fruit on the corner of the street. We bought some fruit cups from him and shared the Christmas video. He liked it a lot. We added him as an investigator and he gave us a discount on the fruit so that's a bonus. :) 

Ice Cream at Leatherby's

Playing some Monopoly Deal

Later that night we went and celebrated Elder Brock's birthday at Leatherby's. It was so good! Plus our waitress was a member and she bought our ice cream. After ice cream we went home and planned out our next day. Then we finished off the night playing some Monopoly Deal. If you haven't played it, you should. It's a lot of fun. It gets pretty heated sometimes so be careful haha.

Last night we were able to go to the Live Nativity at the Sacramento Temple! It was really cool. We took Juana and Isidro and their 3 little girls. We stood out in the cold and rain for over an hour but it was worth it. They said there was around 3,000 people there last night. So it was a good turn out. The spirit was very strong there. It's so cool that so many people were able to go and remember to true meaning of Christmas. During the show they played a part of a talk by Thomas S. Monson that was really good. I can't remember it very well but

Nativity at the Temple with Juana, Isidro, Jaqeline, Juanita, and Chalita.

kind of what I got out of it was how we need to put away the things of the world and really focus on our families during this time of year. It's a time of gratitude and giving. Also a time of reflection of how we can grow closer to our Heavenly Father and receive strength through Christ's example and atonement. He also said that we should be doing these things more then just in the month of December. The spirit of Christ can and should be with us all year. And it's something we need to share. I really loved that and I know that it's true. And it's something all of us can strive to do better.

We have a temple Christmas conference this Thursday with President and Sister Jardine. It will be my first one so I am pretty excited. I've heard it is always really good. It's going to be a great week. I won't be emailing next Monday because we don't have Pday until Christmas.

Love you all!

~Elder Gammell