Monday, February 22, 2016
2/22/16 letter
Hola,
It's getting hotter and hotter here. It hit the 90s this
week. This week was so good! We had a busy week full of lessons. Hermana
Lambert and I had 18 member present lessons, which is 3 times what I was
teaching in Casa Grande or Maricopa! The members here in Yuma are so awesome
and are so willing to help us out and come to lessons.
Also, all 4 of our investigators with a baptismal date
came to church which also never happens, so that was amazing! Irma is getting
baptized on March 5th at 1:00 and is super excited. I don't know if I've
written about her story before, but she lived right by the church building in
the Foothills and just walked to church one day. She attended the English ward
there for 2 months, even though she only speaks Spanish. We've been teaching
her and finding her rides to the Spanish branch and she loves it. This week,
she moved into Yuma, so it's a lot easier for her and us because there's not a
20 minute drive to have lessons/go to church.
Heidy is the 26 year old daughter of Hermano Mireles (who
I wrote about last week). She had a dream this week about how she needs to get
baptized and now she is so motivated and to do what's right. She is reading the
scriptures and praying and she came to church for the first time this week. She
wants to get baptized March 19 and she invited her twin brother, Stevie, to get
baptized too and he said yes!
(He was at church too) So I'm super excited for them!
They're awesome.
Also, our investigator, Javier came to church for the
first time since I've been in Yuma. He's a little stubborn, but the spirit is
working on him little by little and he wants to get baptized.
This morning for pday, we went to the sand dunes again
out in California.
From the top of the sand dunes, you can see Mexico,
Arizona, and California at the same time. I'll send some pictures.
This week, our zone training was about focusing on
teaching repentance to our investigators so that they can have the influence of
the spirit in their lives more. We've been doing that and it's been great.
Before my mission, I just thought repentance was for big things, but I know now
that it's for all the little things as well. We need to RECOGNIZE that what
we've done is wrong, STOP doing it, PRAY for forgiveness, MAKE RESTITUTION with
the people we've wronged, KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS, and ACCEPT THE SAVIOR because
it's only through him that forgiveness is possible.
Have a great week!
Love,
Hermana Gubler
2/15/16 letter
Hola,
So this week was transfers and for the first time in 3 transfers, I
stayed in the same place! I'll be sticking around Yuma for at least
another 6 weeks, if not longer, so I'm pretty happy about that.
Hermana Kiel went home, so our new housemate is Hermana Cloward, my
last companion form Maricopa. She and Hermana Lambert were MTC
companions and now she's companions with Hermana Allred, so she's been
companions with everyone in our apartment, so the adjustment was
pretty smooth. We all miss Hermana Kiel a lot though.
I thought I told you more about Hermana Lambert a few weeks ago, but
dad asked again so here it is: she's from Lehi, Utah and has been out
for one transfer less than me (so 6 months). Her first area was in
Phoenix and there's a lot of Spanish work there, so her Spanish is
really good. Her and I have a lot in common, so we have a lot of fun
together and we teach really well together.
A cool experience I had this week. We were having cleaning checks on
Tuesday and the housing coordinators in Yuma make cleaning checks a
competition with the prize being pizza, so obviously I had to win. So
on Monday, we spent all morning cleaning and making our apartment
literally spotless. That afternoon, the 4 of us were out grocery
shopping and we were all on edge and pretty grumpy. We couldn't figure
out why we were feeling that way, and then I realized that it was
because we hadn't read our scriptures that morning because we had been
cleaning. We read some scriptures in the car and listened to a
conference talk and then we all felt a lot better. It made me realize
the importance of daily scripture study. Even just reading a couple of
verses in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. I'm
grateful for the amount of time (1 hour) I have on my mission to study
the scriptures every morning.
Another cool experience, on Tuesday, all the sisters went out to lunch
at Chipotle after district meeting. When we walked in I saw an older
man and his wife looking at us and still watching when we said a
prayer over our food. While I was eating, the husband came up to me
and said "since the moment you walked into this room, I could feel
that you were a Christian" then went and sat back down. Missionary
opportunities don't get any easier than that, so I went over to the
table where he and his wife were sitting and explained that I was a
missionary and shared our message. They thought that it was awesome!
They are on a cross country road trip in their RV and are going to be
in Yuma until it gets warm in the rest of the United States. They said
they've attended church every week during their 2 year long excursion,
so I gave them the church address and meeting time for an English ward
so they could have somewhere to attend during their time in Yuma.
Speaking of weather, the heat is already making its way to Arizona now
that it's February. It's been high of 85 every day this week and is
just going to keep getting hotter from here. It's been absolutely
gorgeous and I wish it would just stay like this year round.
On Friday, was Hermano Mireles's birthday, so he invited us over for
dinner to have some carne asada. It was great! Hermano Mireles got
baptized a year ago and he and his wife (baptized 2 years ago) are
preparing to be sealed in the temple. We are teaching their 26 year
old daughter Heidy, who has seen the change in her parents and wants
to get baptized too. I'll attach a picture of us with Hermano Mireles.
Hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Hermana Gubler
So this week was transfers and for the first time in 3 transfers, I
stayed in the same place! I'll be sticking around Yuma for at least
another 6 weeks, if not longer, so I'm pretty happy about that.
Hermana Kiel went home, so our new housemate is Hermana Cloward, my
last companion form Maricopa. She and Hermana Lambert were MTC
companions and now she's companions with Hermana Allred, so she's been
companions with everyone in our apartment, so the adjustment was
pretty smooth. We all miss Hermana Kiel a lot though.
I thought I told you more about Hermana Lambert a few weeks ago, but
dad asked again so here it is: she's from Lehi, Utah and has been out
for one transfer less than me (so 6 months). Her first area was in
Phoenix and there's a lot of Spanish work there, so her Spanish is
really good. Her and I have a lot in common, so we have a lot of fun
together and we teach really well together.
A cool experience I had this week. We were having cleaning checks on
Tuesday and the housing coordinators in Yuma make cleaning checks a
competition with the prize being pizza, so obviously I had to win. So
on Monday, we spent all morning cleaning and making our apartment
literally spotless. That afternoon, the 4 of us were out grocery
shopping and we were all on edge and pretty grumpy. We couldn't figure
out why we were feeling that way, and then I realized that it was
because we hadn't read our scriptures that morning because we had been
cleaning. We read some scriptures in the car and listened to a
conference talk and then we all felt a lot better. It made me realize
the importance of daily scripture study. Even just reading a couple of
verses in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. I'm
grateful for the amount of time (1 hour) I have on my mission to study
the scriptures every morning.
Another cool experience, on Tuesday, all the sisters went out to lunch
at Chipotle after district meeting. When we walked in I saw an older
man and his wife looking at us and still watching when we said a
prayer over our food. While I was eating, the husband came up to me
and said "since the moment you walked into this room, I could feel
that you were a Christian" then went and sat back down. Missionary
opportunities don't get any easier than that, so I went over to the
table where he and his wife were sitting and explained that I was a
missionary and shared our message. They thought that it was awesome!
They are on a cross country road trip in their RV and are going to be
in Yuma until it gets warm in the rest of the United States. They said
they've attended church every week during their 2 year long excursion,
so I gave them the church address and meeting time for an English ward
so they could have somewhere to attend during their time in Yuma.
Speaking of weather, the heat is already making its way to Arizona now
that it's February. It's been high of 85 every day this week and is
just going to keep getting hotter from here. It's been absolutely
gorgeous and I wish it would just stay like this year round.
On Friday, was Hermano Mireles's birthday, so he invited us over for
dinner to have some carne asada. It was great! Hermano Mireles got
baptized a year ago and he and his wife (baptized 2 years ago) are
preparing to be sealed in the temple. We are teaching their 26 year
old daughter Heidy, who has seen the change in her parents and wants
to get baptized too. I'll attach a picture of us with Hermano Mireles.
Hope you all have a great week!
Love,
Hermana Gubler
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
2/8/16 Letter
Hello from Yuma,
Another great week! So there is a lot of agriculture here
in Yuma and surrounding areas and it's currently harvest season for all the
lettuce and cauliflower fields that cover every square inch of free dirt. All
of the members send us home with big bags of lettuce every time we have dinner
with them, so our fridge is jam packed full of lettuce. The members here are so
funny. Even though we assure them that we're not, they think that we're always
starving, so they give us whatever food they can think of to take home (like
lettuce). Let's just say we've been eating lots of salad.
On Thursday, I went on exchanges with Hermana Kiel, who's
the sister training leader, into her area. She's going home on Friday, so we're
all really sad about that. I'll send a picture of us with some ice cream we
bought from an ice cream truck. Also, I got to drive an mini-van for the day,
so that was interesting. We make fun of Hermana Kiel and Allred all the time
because the car for their area is a van.
This week, Hermana Lambert and I hit the standard of
excellence (numerical goals set by the mission president that are supposed to
raise our vision of missionary work and help us work hard) in almost all the
categories. The standard is 4 people with baptismal dates, 4 people at church,
16 member present lessons, receive 5 member referrals and contact them all, and
6 new investigators. Hermana Lambert and I have wanted to hit 16 member
presents our entire time together and have averaged about 11. But this week, we
finally did it!
We have 4 people on date, 3 people at church, 16 member
presents, contacted 5 member referrals, and got 3 new investigators. We haven't
been focused on the numbers at all, just on the people and miracles happened.
Irma should be getting baptized a week from Saturday.
She's come to church 3 weeks in a row and loves it every time. She was sick on
Saturday and didn't think she was going to be able to come. She got a
priesthood blessing from one of the members and called us on Sunday morning and
said she felt a million times better because of the blessing and that she would
be able to come to church. So that was cool. At church this week, she raised
her hand and made comments on the lesson in both Sunday School and Relief
Society. She's awesome!
Also the branch here is awesome. For fast and testimony
meeting, it always goes over time because all the members line up on the stand
to get a chance to bear their testimonies. There's no awkward pauses while
waiting for people to go up.
Transfers are this Thursday, but I should be sticking
around Yuma. I hope I stay here for a while.
Not really a lot to report on this week. We just had a
lot of lessons and worked really hard.
Love,
Hermana Gubler
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
2/1/16 letter
Hola,
This week was awesome! On Saturday, I got to skype into
Suzi's baptism. I taught her in Casa Grande and wrote about her a lot in my
emails while I was there. She was all set to get baptized in early December,
but she ran into some problems after I got transferred.
Hermana Sedgwick, who is serving in Mesa zone right now,
got to go back for the baptism, but since I'm so far away in Yuma, I only got
to skype. But it was still awesome to see Suzi and everyone from the branch
there and to talk to Hermana Sedgwick. Suzi looked super happy and was so
excited.
For more info on my area: There are 18 missionaries in
our zone and our zone is split up into 3 districts. Our district is the 4
Hermanas plus the San Luis elders. It's cool that we're an all Spanish district,
so our district meetings are in Spanish. The Yuma zone covers pretty much half
of the mission area-wise. (Most of it is just open desert) I'll send a picture
of the mission map, but the green line in the middle is our zone/stake
boundaries. Pretty much the entire mission is in the metropolitan areas of
Tempe, Phoenix, Mesa, and Chandler, with 2 small zones in Casa Grande and
Maricopa. Most missionaries serve their whole missions in "the
valley" (metropolitan area), so it's pretty odd that I've served in the
only 3 areas that aren't in the valley.
On Saturday, our branch did a temple trip to the new
Tijuana temple, so we didn't have a dinner for that night. So Hermanas Lambert,
Kiel, Allred and I decided to try out one of the many delicious taco stands here.
For dessert, we found this awesome stand that makes stuffed churros (churros
rellenos) like the ones from the Lindsey farmers market. They fill them with
caramel, sweetened condensed milk, cream cheese frosting, or strawberry
filling. Let's just say I was in heaven.
On Thursday, we went to the family history center with a
recent convert who's first time at the temple was on Saturday. We helped her
find 4 family names and her and her husband were able to do baptisms for them
in the Tijuana temple which is awesome!
Last night we had an awesome lesson with Irma and she
wants to get baptized 2 weeks sooner now. (February 20) She is so excited to
keep learning, keep feeling the spirit, and go to the temple.
We also found 6 new investigators this week (we've found
25 total since arriving in Yuma 1 month ago). One of them was a referral named
Teresa from one of our members. We had a lesson with her and she loved it! She
wants to get baptized and she accepted a date in the first lesson which never
happens (February 27). She didn't come to church yesterday because she was in
Mexico, but we have another lesson with her tonight.
We also found this awesome guy named Daniel who is
married and has 2 kids and he wants an eternal family. He's a truck driver and
at the end of our lesson with him, he downloaded the Book of Mormon app so he
can listen to it while he drives his semi.
There is so much good missionary work going on here in
Yuma. I love it here and I hope I can stay here for a long time. It's amazing
to see how the Lord is preparing people to accept His gospel and to follow the
example of Jesus Christ in their lives.
Have a good week.
Love,
Hermana Gubler
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