This Week Was Pretty Sweet!

February 29, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

This week was pretty sweet. We had some awesome experiences! I'll share a couple of them.  So on Wednesday we went out tracting in the afternoon for about an hour and we had no luck at all. We were on our way to another spot in our area and we stopped at a pet store for Elder Michie to use to bathroom. We walked in and he rushed into the back and I stayed by the front desk and started talking to the guy at the cash register. His name was Dave. Found out his wife is a member but hasn't been to church in a while and his step son just got back from a mission in Jacksonville. He had a ton of questions about missionary work. Elder Michie came back and we both testified of how the gospel has changed our lives and how it can bless his family. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon to see if it is true. He told us he would so that was sweet. Then he asked us if he could take us out to dinner at Chipotle the next day with his wife and daughter. Haha needless to say we had a great dinner with them the next day. ;) It was awesome!! They were a really cool family. Hopefully that experience will help them get to church again and the husband will decide to get baptized. They live up North in Roseville so we can't really teach them but it's all good. Hoping to stop by the pet store again sometime to say hi. It's so neat to see how the Lord puts people in our paths in the least expected places.

Sunday after church we went to this street where we had found a few Fijians earlier last transfer and started to walk around. Right as we got out of the car we looked across the street and saw a bunch of people walking out of a house. It was so funny when we walked up and yelled Bula to them! They started laughing and they gladly invited us into their house to eat some fruit. We talked to a lady named Liti the entire time. We talked about Fiji and the new temple that was rededicated last week. We taught her a little bit about why we have temples and how our families need to be sealed together in the temple so that we can live with them for eternity. Then we shared the Book of Mormon with her and she took it. We are going back next week to follow up with her.

Dinner with the Mule Family

We were able to set our zone vision this week. We decided together that we wanted our focus to be on the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is such a powerful book and truly is the evidence of all that we do in the Church. As we strengthen our testimonies of the Book of Mormon, we will have more power in our missionary efforts. There is a special spirit that enters our lives as we feast upon the words of Christ and strive to live by His teachings. It's an amazing blessing that we have been given. As a zone we accepted the challenge together that we all will read the Book of Mormon before the end of the transfer. I know we will be blessed because of it.  We are also going to be coming up with different challenges over the next 6 weeks to help us use the Book of Mormon more as we work.

We were able to have stake conference this weekend here in the Sacramento stake. It was my first one out here in the mission because I always got transferred right before or after stake conference in my other areas. It was so good! Elder Auna of the seventy came from Hawaii to preside over the conference. During one of his talks he pointed out something really cool to each of us. He used the scripture in D&C 87:8 that tells us to "Stand ye in Holy Places". He taught about how we can make any place we go a Holy Place. We don't need to be in a church or at the temple to feel the Spirit. We can be riding in the car, going on a hike, or talking to a friend on the street. Anywhere we go can be a holy place as we seek the Spirit through our prayers and also through our actions. I'll re-extend Elder Auna's commitment to stand in Holy Places to each of you. I promise it will bless each of our lives as we strive to do so.

That's it for last week. Looking forward to another one. Going to be a busy one with MLC and zone training again. Hope you each have a great week!

Love,

Elder Gammell

Transfers We Stay Together But Split Zone From 28 to 16!

Part of the Sacramento Zone.  Missing one of our districts.

February 23, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

We had transfers this weekend. Elder Michie and I will be staying together for another transfer so I am really happy about that. We have learned a lot together and I know there is still more learning to do. So we will see what these next 7 weeks bring. The craziest part about transfers was that they split our zone. Before the split we had 28 missionaries and now we have 16. We loved having a big zone and we were really close to all the missionaries so it was weird to say bye to half of them. It's going to be a great change though.

Service project at the Sweet Potato Festival.

We haven't had very much luck over the past week. We are finding a lot of people who are semi interested, but it's been really tough finding people who will actually act on the commitments we leave. I think that has been one of the hardest parts of my mission. We get to know all of these people and they tell us they want to grow closer to their Heavenly Father and they recognize that the gospel will help, but they just won't give up a little bit of their time to read, pray, or come to church. It gets really frustrating sometimes. And it's not just the people who aren't members of the church. It's something that everyone struggles with. That's the trial of our faith. But I know that if we stay strong and trust in God, we receive a spiritual witness of His love for us and our testimonies are strengthened. We come out stronger than we even thought was possible.

Fijian home for sure, haha.

This week I made a goal for myself to really be seeking guidance from the spirit in all times. I am trying to become better at recognizing and acting on promptings as they come. I know that this next week will be a great one. Even though the work is tough sometimes there is still no other place I would want to be. I really do love being a missionary! Every day is a test but it's brought countless blessings to me.  

I love all of you!

Hope you each have a great week!

-Elder Gammell

Great Week! Had More Time To Work In Our Area.

February 15, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

Making some chicken parmesan.

Great week! We had a lot more time to work in our area and that was really nice. We were able to find some new investigators for both of our wards which is something we have been struggling with. The Fijian unit only covers the Sacramento stake because it is still in the process of becoming a branch. So we can't go outside of stake boundaries to teach people. And every time we ask the Fijian members if they know someone we can visit, they always live outside the boundaries :/ it's all good though because that kind of forces our members to do their own missionary work haha. Which is the way it should be. Anyways it was really cool how we found the Fijian investigators. We were planning on Wednesday night and we decided to pull our map out and pick a place to tract. We just randomly dropped a pin on our area and we went to that street. The next day we got to the street and we only had 15 minutes to knock doors before we had to go to another appointment, so we had to hurry. The first door we knocked was Hmong. We ended up sending him off to the Hmong missionaries so that was sweet. Then as we were leaving that house we looked across the street and a lady was walking out of her house. The second we saw her we knew she was from Fiji. We walked up to her and said, "Bula!" Which means hello in Fijian. It kind of threw her off seeing two white boys speaking Fijian to her. That's pretty much all the Fijian we know though haha. So we started to talk to her and found out that she just moved her not to long ago and unfortunately is going back to Fiji at the end of March. She has heard a little bit about the church and knows quite a few members. We were able to teach her about the Book of Mormon and we gave her a copy in Fijian. She really liked it. She thanked us and said we could come back again. Then we asked her if she knew any other Fijians and she directed us to her next door neighbors. The wife there is Tongan and she is already a member. But the father and the son in law are Fijian and they aren't members! We stopped by the next day and had a good talk with them. They want us to come over to eat curry with them sometime and share a lesson. Haha pretty cool how much work can get done in 15 minutes when we are in the right place at the right time. The Lord definitely knows what He is doing.

I was able to do a couple baptismal interviews this week! I love doing baptismal interviews. The Spanish Ward has this little family they have been teaching for a couple months. The kids decided that they wanted to be baptized next week. I did the interviews for Memo and Yadira. They are 11 and 9. It's funny because they were both really nervous walking in but they relaxed as we talked. Their testimonies were so strong! They answered each question firmly and they were even able to testify how they knew. They are so ready to be baptized. No wonder we are asked to become like little children. They don't question or doubt. They just follow the spirit and believe. It was a great experience for me. I can't wait to go to their baptism this week.

Broken Bed

I'm having so much fun here in the Sacramento zone! The missionaries here are awesome. We live with Elder Talley and Elder Fudge. They serve in the Tongan and Marshallese wards. We joke around with them so much. We played the funniest prank on Elder Fudge this week. So Elder Fudge is in love with his bike. It is his baby haha. So anyway, we took his bike out of our storage room and hid it in our bathroom. Then we left the apartment to go to an appointment. As we were driving we called him and asked if he could check the front room because we forgot to lock it before we left. So we just listened as they checked the room and he found that it wasn't there. He was yelling and running all over looking for it. We let that go on for a couple minutes and then we told them to go look in the bathroom and they found it. He was so relieved haha. The funniest part is that we hid Elder Michie's go-pro camera and caught the whole thing on video. Haha it's always good to have some fun to break up the long days. Speaking of breaking, I may or may not have broken my bed this week. Haha we just got new bunk beds and I must've had a bad piece of wood because I laid down on my bed the other day and it snapped right in half. We were able to fix it with a couple 2x4's hah. They are working on getting me a new one.  

Elder Fudge challenged me to a
wrestling match the other night.
Haha!

We had an awesome Regional Conference on Sunday! It was broadcast from Salt Lake to a bunch of different stakes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada. We heard from a few members of the seventy, the young women's general president, and Elder Renland. I really liked the talk by Elder Hamula of the Seventy. He focused on staying calm through the storms of life. He shared several scriptural examples of the Lord comforting and giving peace in times of trouble. He used on of my favorite scriptures in D&C 101:16 that says, "...be still and know that I am God." I love that verse. It teaches us that no matter what is going on, we can have a perfect knowledge that our Father in Heaven loves us and He will not leave us alone. He gives us trials and hard times for a wise purpose. He does it to mold us and chisel away our imperfections. Then we are blessed as we become more and more like Him.

Have a great week!

Love,

-Elder Gammell

So Many Cool Things Happened This Week!

February 8, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

So many cool things happened this week! We saw a ton of progress with our investigators. We should be having a few baptisms at the end of this month or the beginning of March. Praying that everything keeps going in the right direction.

Tuesday we had an awesome MLC where we learned about the importance of the spirit in missionary work and how we can use the Spirit more as we teach. We also set our mission baptismal goal for this upcoming month. 32 was the number we came up with because we hit our goal last month of 28. We are excited to see how it will push us a little further and we will keep building on it for the rest of the year.

Then on Friday morning we were able to take the things we learned at MLC and teach them to the zone. It went really well. We were able to council on the things we could do

better as missionaries and how we can change so the Lord will continue to bless us. We focused on the strengthening powers of the Atonement for a big portion of it. We did a really cool activity to give some perspective on the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us. We had a missionary in the zone volunteer to come stand in the middle of the room. We explained to the missionaries that we would be walking around and offering a cookie to each of them. If they wanted to eat the cookie then the person standing in the middle of the room had to do 5 push-ups. So we started at one side of the circle and went all the way around. As we went around to each person, the push-ups got harder and harder to do for Elder Knotts. He got to the point where he couldn't even do a single push-up but still had to fight through to get to 5 so each person could get a cookie. Even if the person said that they didn't want one he still had to do 5 push-ups for them to deny it. By the time we made it all the way around he was exhausted, sweaty, and could barely move his arms. Then we related it to how Jesus Christ has already suffered and died for each of us. It is completely up to us to use that Atonement or we can let him suffer for nothing. There are enumerable amounts of blessing for us if we just trust in Him to help and heal us. We all felt the spirit so strong. It was such a cool activity and I know we all left with a stronger understanding and testimony of the Atonement.

We were able to have some really powerful lessons this week with the part member family we have been working with. They are such an awesome family! They all have such strong testimonies. We saw some huge change in all of them this week. So on Tuesday we were able to go by and we took the young men's president with us to invite them to the upcoming events. They seemed really interested so I think as soon as we help them to make some friends in the Ward that will help them want to come to church and the activities. We also found out that the youngest son Keiran hasn't been baptized yet so we invited him to be baptized and he said yes!! So we are really excited for him. We are starting the discussions with him this week to help him prepare for it. I feel like him preparing for baptism will help boost the entire family. It is going to be awesome to see what happens. We also were able to talk with the Laura and LJ (Mom and Boyfriend) on Saturday night. That was one lesson I

won't forget. It's kind of funny because I had the worst stomach ache from dinner and felt like I needed to puke. We ate some sort of mystery meat and it just wasn't sitting well hah. AND I had to pee so bad right before we walked in so I wasn't exactly excited to go sit in their house for an hour lesson. But I just kind of ignored it and we went into the lesson. The lesson went so well!!! We really relied on the spirit to guide our questions and we were able to uncover a ton of concerns and address them. We taught about eternal families and we could tell it was just what they needed. We let them know that the whole purpose in our visits is to help them gain an eternal family. And we just kind of laid out the steps for them. LJ is very interested in learning more. He told us he would like to join in for the discussions with Keiran. So we are hoping that we get to see the both of them baptized here soon. We walked out of that lesson and we were just blown away. It was such a great feeling. Then I realized that I didn't have to pee anymore and my stomach ache went away!! As soon as we walked in they both left me I guess haha. Pretty cool how the spirit works.

I was able to go on some exchanges this week in the Spanish Ward so that was really fun! Elder Easthope and I added 9 investigators in our 24 hours together. Which is like unheard of here haha. It seemed like every corner we turned there was someone to talk to. It was neat to be able to use my Spanish again. I love speaking it. Trying my best to keep up on it so I don't lose it.

I typed this letter really fast this morning and didn't have any time to look back over it so there are probably going to be a ton of typos. If there is sorry. Hah

Love,

Elder Gammell

Can't Believe It's February Already!

February 2, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

Can't believe it's February already! This past month has by far been the fastest of my mission. We have been working so hard and that makes it sped up as well. I turned 20 this week! I had a great birthday. Haha not really any different from any other day of the week but it was still really good. Mostly because I got a ton of beef jerky in my birthday package ;) haha. I was also able to look back on the past year of my life and think about all the amazing things that have happened to me. I know I have grown so much through all the experiences I have had. I have felt such a huge change in my heart that I know only comes through truly living and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know the Lord has placed certain people in my path to change my life forever. It's crazy to think about all that I would of missed had I chosen not to go on a mission. I know that I made the right decision and I'm so grateful for the time I have been given here in Sacramento. Glad I still have a lot of time left. :)

We were able to have some really amazing lessons this week. We met with that part member family again. We followed up on their reading and praying and it turns out the only one that read was the youngest boy. We were so proud of him haha. He still hasn't been baptized and he's 9 so we are really hoping he keeps it up! We then taught a lesson about the atonement and repentance. The spirit was so strong! We read about Alma the younger in the Book of Mormon and they all really liked it. The boyfriend really enjoyed it as well. We committed them to pray to know what they could change in their lives and also to read and pray again. We are going back this Tuesday to follow up again.

Well, I was admitted into the mental hospital several times this week... Just to go visit. :) We had several people call us requesting visits from there. It was actually a really cool experience. We were able to give away 3 copies of the Book of Mormon. We met this lady named Shawna and also a guy named Zack. Elder Michie talked more to Shawna and I talked to Zack. He had been through so much. A lot of bad decisions had led him down the path he was on. He was baptized in a YSA Ward several years ago but fell away right after. I bore my testimony to him and taught about the power of the atonement. We talked about how we can change and receive forgiveness if we truly change our hearts. It was cool to see the hope coming back to him. We read out of 2 Nephi 4. He started crying and told us how good it felt to feel the spirit again. It was an awesome feeling being able to help them. I am actually pretty excited to go if we get called back again.

This next week is going to be awesome! We have MLC in Rancho Cordova and Zone Training this Friday. So it's going to be really busy planning for those. We hope to see our investigators take big steps forward this week too. Anyway I'm doing great! Hope you all have an amazing week!

Con Mucho Amor!

Elder Gammell