Hi,
This week involved a lot of driving. Two trips to Tempe,
two trips to Coolidge, and a trip to Maricopa.
On Friday afternoon after weekly planning, Hermana
Sedgwick and I took the 50 minute drive to Tempe for the 6 and 12 week training
meeting.
President and Sister Toone talked to the missionaries
about how their [missionary] training has gone and what we've learned and if we
have any suggestions for improvement of the training program. I'll go to the
same type of thing in another 6 weeks, once I'm all done with my training.
On Sunday, we went to the Mission President's Devotional
(MPD) in Tempe. It's every third Sunday at the institute building on ASU
campus. It got cancelled last month, so I was excited to get to go to my first
one. People who have recently been baptized speak about their experience and
the difference they have seen in their lives. It was really cool. We invite our
investigators and recent converts to come and it's a super good opportunity for
them to feel the spirit. We had weather similar to what Visalia has been having
during the car ride to and from Tempe. It was pouring rain and there was lots
of crazy lightning. I'm glad to hear that Visalia is finally getting some rain.
Coolidge is a city about 25 minutes away is part of our
area. There are 2 English wards in Coolidge, but since our Spanish branch
covers the whole stake, we cover Coolidge as well. We usually go to Coolidge
once a week, but this week, we went twice because we had a lot of people to
teach. It was really cool, we finally found a family that we've been looking
for forever. On my first day in Casa Grande, we found the husband, Hermán, who
was living at one of our investigator's houses and working for a couple of
months before his family crossed the border from Mexico. We taught him for a
couple weeks until his family arrived in the US, and he and his family moved to
a house in Coolidge. He didn't know what his new address would be, but he gave
us his phone number. Every week, the night before we go to Coolidge, we call
him and ask him for his address. He'd say "I'm not home right now, so I
can't look on the side of my house to know my address. When I get home, I'll
text it to you." (in Spanish) ...and then he would forget to text us. This
happened for about 4 weeks straight. We went to Coolidge on Tuesday and we
called his phone before we went. Hermán forgot his phone at home that day, and
his wife answered. She gave us the address and we were able to go by. When we
got there, their whole family (Hermán, his wife, Rosaria, and 2 kids) were
home! We taught them about how their family could be together forever. Every
time we said that families are eternal, Rosaria got a big smile on her face.
It was awesome!
Today was our trip to Maricopa (about 40 minute drive).
We found out last night that we would be going. President Toone spoke to our
zone and the Maricopa zone about some online proselyting information and some
other announcements. That's why my email is so late today.
On Friday night, we got a text from a member of our
branch presidency that Hermana Sedgwick and I would be speaking in church on
Sunday and we got the text with what our topic would be on Saturday morning.
His wife is in the hospital and he has a large family at home to take care of,
so he was a little preoccupied and didn't have time to find a speaker more in
advance. With the lack of notice and the lack of time to prepare, (mind you we
still had a full day of proselyting on Saturday, so we pretty much only had an
hour on Sunday to prepare and a little time before bed on Saturday) I decided
that the Spanish of the guy who translates general conference talks is a lot
better than mine. So for my talk, I pretty much just read the highlights of
President Uchtdorf's talk from the general women's session "un Verano con
la tía abuela Rosa". I spoke about hope and how we need to follow the
example of great aunt rose in our life in order to find happiness. Pretty
simple talk. It wasn't too fancy. [See
link at end of e-mail for his really interesting talk on hope and happiness
called "A Summer with Great Aunt Rose".] Our mission did an emphasis
on doing an hour of knocking doors everyday about a month ago, but it's not
really a thing anymore. Since Hermana Sedgwick and I have 2 more hours of
studies than most missionaries (1 hour of Spanish, 1 hour of training) it was
hard to find time for tracting any way. Every Wednesday, we do service at the
valley humane society, playing with dogs, we have a lot of set lessons, and if
there's not any set lessons, we have lots of investigators who we stop by. If
we have like 15 minutes between lessons, we'll knock doors or walk down the
street looking for people outside we can talk to. We have dinner with a church
member every night, but we're on our own for lunch and breakfast. I eat lots of
sandwiches, eggs, and fruit. Also, there's a place here that sells thrifty ice
cream. We went last week and it brought back fun memories of going all the time
growing up.
Another great week here in Arizona!
Love,
Hermana Gubler
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