I Was A Really Good Week!

July 25, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

Well, it's pday again. Haha crazy how fast they keep coming. It was a really good week. We were on exchanges for most of it so that made time go by even faster. It pretty cool getting to bounce around and serve in places that I haven't yet. This next week we will finish off the exchanges so that'll be good. Then we start all over here in a few weeks.

Katherine is doing great! We went on the tour of the temple on Tuesday night and they absolutely loved it!! Jordan and Briana were so excited and it was pretty cool because they thought they couldn't go in but we were able to take them into the waiting room for a little while. It was such a cool feeling to be able to hold the doors of the temple open to this little family that we have already grown to love so much. They were in awe as we took them in and they recognized the spirit and peace that comes right away. We talked very quietly to them and taught a little bit about what we do in temples. After that we finished walking around outside and ended the tour. We talked to them after and Katherine had a definite confirmation that she needs to be baptized on August 6th and Derek needed just a little bit more time to pray about it. So they had a great time there and actually ended up going back later that night just to sit and be there for a while.

Throughout the week Katherine has been reading the Book of Mormon and read from Jacob to Alma! She is loving the Book of Mormon and hopefully will finish it all the way before her baptism next Saturday!! They all showed up to church on Sunday and loved it. Elder Greenwood and I have both noticed a huge change in them not only spiritually but physically too. They just looked bright and almost like they were glowing at church it was the craziest thing. We are so excited for them and we will be meeting a lot over the next two weeks in preparation for her baptism.

God is blessing us so much in our area! As busy as we are, we still have a ton going on and have more than enough time to get the things done that we need to. We have some leads in our ward with a few part member families that seem really promising and we actually had a lady named Nysie just show up to church on Sunday with her son and she wants to meet with us.

Hope everyone has a good week!!

Love,

Elder Gammell

Exchanges up in Falsom

Berta and Jose Luis Salazar in North Sac

Great Week Again!

Hanging out in the President’s Office

July 18, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

Great week again! We were on exchanges this week with East Sacramento and North Sacramento. We also did team ups with the new missionaries. I haven't spent as much time on a bike as I did this week in a long time!! It felt so nice. Besides the sunburns on my arms and ears haha.

Update on Katherine. She is doing awesome! While I was in North Sacramento on exchanges, Elder Greenwood and Elder Ross went over to teach her. She invited her friend Derek to come sit in on the lesson. They had an amazing experience and Katherine actually ended up testifying to Derek that she knew that the things we shared were true and she could not deny it! They extended a baptismal date for August 6th and she is praying about it. She wanted to come to church first before she committed to it. Yesterday she came to church with Derek and her kids and they loved it! The kids made some new friends in primary which they were really excited about. After church they drove up to the temple without telling us and they want to do a tour sometime so this Tuesday we are going up with Elder Terry to do a tour around the temple grounds and then teach them their next lesson. We are going to recommit her and Derek to be baptized on the 6th of August while we are there so we are anxiously waiting for tomorrow!

We have some amazing things going on in our ward right now. I have never felt as much trust and love from a ward then I do in this one. We have been really focusing on strengthening and uplifting the members as much as we can. It's been a great testimony builder to me that if we take care of our own, the Lord will bless us with new people to teach because they will have a safe home to be brought into.

It's going to be another really busy week. Back to back to back exchanges all over the place so I'm making the most of this Pday because I'm going to need it haha.

Love,

Elder Gammell

Amazing ExperiencesThis Week!

Brownie Sundaes in President's Office

July 11, 2016

Hey Family & Friends,

Well I have had some amazing experiences during the week and I don't even know how I can begin to describe them in this email but I will try. We had quite a bit of opposition coming to us and the people we have been teaching. Found out that Adama has to move this week so we are scrambling with the members of the ward to try to help find her a place to stay close by so she can stay in the La Sierra Ward. The members have found her a couple of options so we are praying for one of them to be the right one. Plus her daughters Fredica and Zainab are coming back home soon and we have been waiting patiently to be able to teach them. As long as they end up somewhere where they can keep progressing in the gospel as a family that's all that matters. But we sure would like to keep them haha.

We were able to do some exchanges this past week. I had Elder Schenk up here in Carmichael with me. We hopped on the bikes and talked with absolutely every person we saw. We struck out over and over with just about everyone haha. It was a little frustrating but through all of it we found a couple people that we feel like we were able to leave a good impression on and hopefully prepare them to receive the gospel later on down the road. It was funny, after the exchange I told Elder Schenk jokingly that we would probably get a media referral sent to us later that night. We did. We got a referral for a guy named Tony. We called the number and it was disconnected. Stopped by the house and Tony doesn't live there. But we ended up talking with a guy named D'wane and he invited us right in. We shared a little bit about what we do as missionaries and a few points of the restoration and he wants us to come back and teach him and his 4 foster kids! So we are going back this coming Wednesday and hope it goes well with them.

Here is the coolest miracle of the week. So here's some background. Over a year ago I was serving in the Carmichael Ward with Elder Parker. We were on exchanges with Elder Sutch and we had some amazing things happen to us because we prayed specifically and told Heavenly Father that we would be at a certain apartment complex at a specific time. We talked to so many people that morning and ended up adding a couple of awesome new investigators. One of the people we met that morning was named Katherine. She walked up to us while I was talking to this lady in Spanish and waited patiently until we were done. Once we started talking to her we found out that she had some background with the missionaries and she went on to tell us about some of the struggles her and her family were having and she wanted us to come leave a blessing on their house. We wrote her number down and actually never ended up being able to get in contact with her and all we knew was that she lived "a little ways away, across the street from a church, in a house with a white picket fence." Fast forward over a year. Elder Greenwood and I are driving down the road next to this church in our area and I see a little house with a white picket fence and I remembered Katherine right away. We flipped around and went up to knock on the door to see if she was there. She was. She looked at me and said she remembered me. I told her that we met over a year ago and she could barely believe it. They actually ended up moving away for about 6 months and then moved back. We talked with her for a little while and it turned out that she had went to church and had a terrible experience and was so closed off to coming back to church with us. And that stunk to hear. So we bore our testimonies to her and gave her our number and told her to call us if she ever wanted changed her mind. Right after we left we got a text from her and it just said, "Hey, this is Katherine. Here's my number." And that hardly ever happens unless they are interested. :) The next day we received a text from her that absolutely blew us away! She told us that she picked up the Book of Mormon that night and couldn't stop reading it. She said it was all making a lot more sense this time and she felt more open to it. We called her and she had a couple questions and it turns out she read past 1 Nephi 8 because she was talking about Lehi's dream. We were so excited!!! Haha we are going to go back by hopefully tonight or tomorrow and see what else has changed. I know God has led us back to her for a reason so hopefully we get to see her completely accept the gospel and let it change her life forever.

One more quick miracle. This morning we were driving to the grocery store. We stopped at a red light and looked over and waved to the guy in the car next to us. Then the light turned green and we started driving away. We went for a little while and then that same guy pulled up next to us and signaled for us to pull over so we did. He was smiling while he did it so we trusted him haha. We got out of the car and so did he. He introduced himself to us. His name was Dennis. He has family that lives in Heber, Utah. He went to college there in Utah and moved out here not to long ago. He has learned about the church before and he wants to sit down with missionaries again and make the decision for real if he is going to be baptized or not. Oh, and he has 4 kids and a wife!! We got pulled over by an entire family that is hopefully prepared to receive the gospel. I guess that just verifies the promise that the Lord will lead us to those that are prepared, or he will lead them to us.

This work truly is His. And I know that we cannot do it with Him. God is in the tiniest little details of every single person's life. I know that as we seek the spirit and simply just seek for missionary opportunities, they will come.

Love each of you! Hope you all have an amazing week!

-Elder Gammell

We Have Been Going Non-Stop For The Past Week!

Selfie on President's Jardine's phone

July 6, 2016

Hey Everyone,

Well transfers are finished. We have been going non-stop for the past week. It's crazy just how much work and thinking has to go into getting all the missionaries into the right areas with cars and houses. I'm glad it's all over. At least for 5 more weeks haha.

Since we were doing transfers this week we weren't able to make it out to our area as much as we would've liked to this week. We did have an awesome lesson on Sunday night with a young family that we just found a couple weeks ago. So we were walking through an apartment complex the other day doing some ward visits with Brother Schmidtlein and we started talking to this guy working on his motorcycle. His name was Nick. We asked him about his bike and got to hear a couple of good stories about some of the wrecks he has been in. Then his daughter Shiane came out and started to listen. Eventually we turned the conversation to his beliefs in God and found out he is at a point in his life where he is searching and really doesn't have a church he is going to. He believed in God and Christ but that was about it. We asked him if we could come over and teach him and his family and he said yes. We set up an appointment for the next Saturday. So fast forward we missed our appointment on Saturday because we got stuck in the office so we went by on Sunday evening. He had us come right in and we taught the restoration to him. It was just a solid lesson. The spirit was really strong and he was tuned in to everything we had to say. He understood it all and told us that he was completely willing to try it out and if he feels it's true he would change everything to be a part of it. He wants us to come back this next week and teach him with his wife and kids so we are anxiously waiting to go over.

Dropping off Elder Jensen at the airport

We picked up the new missionaries from the airport yesterday. That's always a cool experience. Then we took them back to the office and paired them up with their trainers. We are excited to see how they all do. This next week we will be going on exchanges with all of the Elders am I am pumped for that! I still remember the first exchange I went on in my mission so hopefully they will too.

Hope each of you have a great week! Thanks for your prayers and support.

Love you all!

-Elder Gammell