Aimee Was Baptized This Week!!

Aimee's Baptism September 24, 2016

September 27, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

Amiee was baptized this week!! It couldn't have went any better. She was really excited for it and we made sure to keep close contact all week with her to make sure she was ready. It's always scary the last week before a baptism because it seems like something always gets put in their way to try to stop them from making it. Amiee was able to stay on track and Saturday was a great day for her. She even stood up and bore her testimony to everyone. There was great support from the ward and the few young women we do have. They are definitely excited to add one more to their numbers. Sydnea also was able to come with her mom to watch Amiee get baptized. That made her even more excited for her baptism which should be coming up soon. Hopefully the week after conference but if not it will be at the end of October. So we are excited for that! Amiee also stood up in sacrament meeting and bore her testimony again after her confirmation. It's been cool to see her learn and grow. The cool thing is that there is more to come.

We finished up transfers this week so that was good. It ended up all coming together nicely and everyone got into their new areas with transportation and housing so that's all that matters haha. We also were able to send the departing missionaries out and pick up the new ones again. I love going to pick up the new missionaries! It's so cool to be able to see them right when they come down the escalator and take their first steps into Sacramento. They have no idea how lucky they are to be where they are at and they have some amazing things ahead of them. I definitely didn't know what was ahead of me when I first got here but it's cool to look back and remember all that has happened.

I'm super excited for this upcoming transfer. There are a lot of good things going on in the mission. It will be busy as usual but I feel like there will be some incredible miracles that will happen over these next 6 weeks. There's a lot of work left to do here.

Love you all!

~Elder Gammell

This Week Was Insane!

September Zone Conference 2016-Carmichael Zone

September 19, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

This week was insane! Haha we did 4 exchanges in a row and it was awesome! I don't think I have even gotten close to as tired as I was on Saturday night when Elder Schenk and I finally met back up. We saw some great things and had a lot of cool experiences. I think one of my favorite parts of going on exchanges with the other elders is the opportunity to get to know them a little bit more. Whenever I leave an exchange I always feel a ton closer to that person and it's cool to be able to hold each other accountable to goals we set throughout our time together.

Elder Kristensen and I had a great opportunity to help a member of our ward that was going through a really tough time. He texted us and asked if we could meet him ASAP. We met at the church and eight as we sat down he started to break down and told us about how his life had just made a huge change of direction for the worst. He went from having a wife, car, and house but over the last 6 years he has lost it all. He told us how he felt like he didn't have faith in anything anymore and it scared him. We sat and listened and then we were able to help him by turning into the Book of Mormon. We read some scriptures with him and were able to help him see that he really hadn't lost his faith in God. He had lost faith in the people that used to be in his life and those that were currently around him. He wasn't willing to humble himself enough to ask for help from others so we talked a lot about that with him. We set some goals with him to make the changes he needed to move forward and we all were able to leave the church feeling so much better then it all started. He thanked us and he had a big smile. It was so cool to see just how much the spirit really does make the difference in lessons. Sometimes we have no idea what others need but our Heavenly Father does and as we listen to the promptings that come to us we are able to say exactly what God would have them know. And that's when the change happens. It was cool to see it happen with this brother.

While I was on exchanges with Elder Bingham in Rancho Cordova, we were able to teach a girl that I Contacted like 5 months ago when I was serving in the YSA Ward in Elk Grove. Her name was Rebecca and she remembered me. We passed her off to some other missionaries and we never heard what happened. Turns out she was able to meet with them once or twice but she had a ton of stuff going on in her life. She moved up to Rancho and the elders passed her off again. We sat down with her and talked about the restoration and it all clicked with her. We invited her to be baptized in October and she said yes! We were super pumped for her and hopefully she can stay on track.

Amiee is getting baptized this Saturday!!! We are stoked for her! She has been working really hard and is trying her best to be ready. All of the young women in the ward are excited to have another one added to the group. She has already been a part of them for a little while now but she will be official here pretty soon.

Sydnea will be getting baptized here in couple weeks as well. She is so prepared so we talked with her about possibly moving her date forward a couple weeks. She is praying about it so we will see what her answer is this week. We love meeting with her family. They are awesome. We have been able to teach a couple of Skype lessons to them so that has been really cool. It can't replace actually being there but it's nice when schedules aren't lining up to get a quick 20 minute lesson in.

It's going to busy week again. Crazy we are already doing transfers again. It seems like it happens like every other week! So that's about what this week will consist of. Hope you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder Gammell

We Had Zone Conferences This Last Week.

September 12, 2016

Hey Everyone!

We had our Zone Conferences this last week and they went really well. The focus of the conference was "The Worth of a Soul". It was cool to see the change in everyone as we went throughout the conference. If we really do understand the love that God has for each of His children it changes everything we do in this life. Every person's soul has the same value. It doesn't matter what they have done or where they are at in life at this point. Everybody has the equal opportunity and privilege to access Christ's Atonement and become the person they were sent here to be. Unfortunately not many people understand this so it is so key that we do. We can play a key role in the lives of the people that God has placed in our paths if we do all we can to uplift and inspire them by teaching them the Gospel. Whether that be in our words or by the example we set for them. It was a great conference and I definitely learned a lot.

The work is going great in our ward right now. We have been super busy so we are trying to make the most of the time we do get in our area. We are still working with Amiee and Sydnea. They both are working diligently towards their baptismal dates. We are going to be working hard to help them stay on track until we reach those dates. We will be on exchanges this whole week so it's going to be pretty crazy. Elder Schenk and I won't be together until Saturday night haha. It will be good though. I was on an exchange in Folsom this week and we were able to go to the Varsity football game up at Oakridge High School to help in the snack shack haha. It was pretty sweet. I guess a couple years ago they weren't too game to have the missionaries help out there but once they tried it out everything has changed for them. Now they absolutely love us there and we were able to see so many people. We didn't really get to talk but it was still pretty cool just to know that they saw us doing some service there. I did get to see a couple plays of the game so that was pretty sweet too hah.

Sorry this is kind of a short one this week. I will probably have a couple stories to share with you next week. Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Elder Gammell

It Was A Great Week!

September 5, 2016

Dear Family & Friends,

It was a great week. I did have a cold this whole week so that wasn't fun. Feeling a lot better so I'm really grateful for that. We had quite a few meetings this week so we were pretty busy preparing and setting up/taking down all of those. This next week we are going to have zone conference so that basically is our entire week. Zone conferences are always fun though. It's cool to get to see all the missionaries and bring everyone in for some training. So we are pretty pumped for that.

This last week we were able to meet with Sydney over Skype and we also got to stop in on Saturday night to talk for a bit. The Skype lesson was pretty sick. It was our first one and it went really well. It's so cool to see how we can still feel the spirit together even though we were clear on the other side of town. She is loving church and young women's. They are reading and praying every morning at 6:15 which is awesome! She is working towards baptism on October 29th. She has a cousin that is getting baptized on that day in Arizona so she is going to get baptized at the same time. It's going to be a little while and it's out of our mission just a ways but we are so happy for her. We hopefully will get to Skype in to see her get baptized. She is doing awesome!

Amiee is doing well too. She is working really hard to be baptized. It's been pretty tough to get our schedules to line up but we are hoping this next week to be able to see her a couple times.

We were able to go and throw the football around earlier today so that was sweet. It felt good to go out and run around for a couple hours. It's crazy when we pass all the high schools on Fridays and we see them playing. Glad I got my fill for the week haha.

It's been so cool to get to see the changes that the gospel has been able to make in so many lives of the people we meet out here. Especially my own. It was a pretty unique experience last week to be able to go back and clean up my account. It's amazing just how much I have I learned in the time I have been out here. I know I still have a lot more to go but it was cool to look back and see who I was before my mission and see how much more I understand about God's plan and his love for each of His children. Couldn't imagine where I would be and what I would be doing without this gospel. I know with all my heart that I wouldn't be as happy as I am now. There's a scripture that I have grown to love over the past few months in Mosiah 2:41. It tells us how if we keep the commandments that God has given us, He will bless us in our temporal and spiritual needs. Also through that obedience and Christ's atonement we are able to have eternal happiness and experience a fullness of joy. I'm not really sure I can comprehend what a fullness of joy is but it sounds pretty good to me.

Love you all!

Elder Gammell