Dear Family,
HappyThanksgiving!!!
For Thanksgiving, we got permission to play in a turkey
bowl. We played flag football for a couple of hours with some other
missionaries and some members from their wards. It was really fun and the members
we played with were really nice. President Toone didn't want us proselyting on
Thanksgiving day, so it was a pretty chill day.
We played the turkey bowl, went home and showered and
relaxed for a couple of hours, had Thanksgiving dinner, went back home and
relaxed, went to a members house, came back home, planned for the next day,
then I went to bed at 8:30 which was awesome! A lady in our branch invited us
for Thanksgiving dinner at the church building. She put on a nice dinner for
people who didn't have family to eat dinner with.
There were about 16 people there including the 5 Maricopa
sister missionaries, and lots of empty nesters. Pretty traditional food and
cute decorations. After the turkey bowl, we were talking with a couple of the
members we played with who were all related. We found out that one of them was
visiting from California and was the husband of Sister Voyles from the District
2 [movie about missionaries]. I had a minor freak out because she's pretty much
a celebrity in the missionary world. They invited us to come for Thanksgiving
dinner and to meet her, but we told them we already had a dinner planned, so
they invited us to come over that evening. We went and had an awesome 1 1/2
hour visit with them and their family. Sister Voyles was super nice and she
taught us a lot about missionary work and learning the language and stuff.
Saturday, Mirna got baptized and I got permission to go
to Casa Grande to watch the baptism. We got a ride from our branch mission
leader, and Noemi (someone we're teaching in Maricopa preparing to be baptized
on December 8th) and her husband and kids came to watch as well. She wanted to
see what a baptism was like before she gets baptized and there aren't any
planned in Maricopa before her baptism, so she came to Casa Grande. (About a 30
minute drive) The baptismal service was really nice. I gave the talk on baptism
and Hermana Sedgwick gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. One of the Elders from
Casa Grande baptized Mirna. She bore her testimony at the end about how happy
she was and how much her life has changed from meeting with the missionaries.
It was awesome! Mirna talked with Noemi afterward and now Noemi is super
excited to be baptized. It was really nice to see all the people from Casa
Grande again and Hermana Sedgwick and I were soooooooo excited to see each
other.
Saturday night, we went to a house of a lady who was
baptized when she was 8, but never really went to church after that. She wants
us to teach her 2 kids about God, but she's not super interested in learning
more. We went over, but she wasn't home, so we taught her kids, then her
father-in-law, Hugo, who has been living with her for about 2 months. We taught
Hugo the Restoration and he liked it a lot. He nodded his head in agreement to
everything and understood everything we taught about the Priesthood. We asked
him if he would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized and he said
"cómo no?" (Sure, why not?) I asked him if he would prepare to
baptized on January 9 and he said (in Spanish) "yeah, I'll start
preparing." I guess he met with missionaries when he used to live in
California and really liked it, but the missionaries stopped coming by
(probably due to some miscommunication after transfers).
Being in a trio is super nice because there aren't any
restrictions on who we get rides from and what houses we go into. With regular
companionships, they can't go in a car or house without another person of the
same gender. Trios are also super productive because one person can make a
phone call, while the other one records a lesson in area book, and the other
one drives. Our area is the entire Maricopa stake, so we have a car and lots of
allotted miles which is really nice. I wish we could walk more, but our
investigators live too far apart.
My companions have designated me as the fitness coach, so
I come out with the workout every morning. We run a little over a mile (I'm
building them up so they can run farther) then do lots of abs and push-ups.
(Gotta work off the Thanksgiving feast)
I hope you had fun Black Friday shopping and putting up
Christmas decorations. Sounds like you had a pretty good Thanksgiving too.
Love,
Hermana Gubler
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