Sunday, February 22, 2015

EMAILLLL. Ta-Da. Letter from Dec. 22, 2014

We're really not sure what we're going to be doing on Christmas day... I'm honestly not looking forward to it. It's going to be like Thanksgiving all over again... we're going to have to wander from house to house finding somewhere to go. And no one is going to really want us at their house, so we'll just awkwardly sit there for a few minutes and then leave. hahaha

Okay, I shouldn't complain too much. We've been invited over by a few families (granted, they're families that are super OLD and that we haven't even met before!)... The Bishop of one of the wards invited us to have breakfast with his family. And there's another family that invited us over for the entire day (they have a son on a mission). That's probably the house that we will skype at. I'm assuming that we will probably skype later in the afternoon... Not sure what time. Be looking for a call/text from me (to Mom's phone- I can't remember dad's number haha) on Christmas Eve to confirm a time. But we'll probably skype around 1 or 2ish (my time). 

This week was super productive, although it didn't show in our numbers AT ALL. We got a total of 9 lessons this week (my mind is pulling me back to my Kuna, ID days). BUT! I think I talked about this last week, but our area book was filled with all of these names, numbers, and addresses... but no other teaching information. So we did a lot of contacting over the phone. I felt super weird about it... Mostly just because I wasn't outside of the house. I even joked with my companion about how I'd probably just feel better if we even called people from the front step of the apartment. haha! 

But, point is, we were able to narrow down our list of names and figure out who was really prepared to hear the gospel! We set a couple of lessons for next week. It's been pretty tricky with Christmas coming up, mostly everyone wants to wait until after Christmas to meet with us. So our schedule is pretty empty for the next week. Hopefully it'll pick back up after the holidays.

Another problem (man, I seriously can't remember what I wrote about last week) is that there are so many people that the other missionaries were seeing, but none of them were really progressing. And no one that they were seeing has attended church in about 6 months! So we're going to really focus on church attendance for the next couple of transfers. 

We did a lot of work in Elgin this week. We met a lady named Voda- she was actually a referral from our zone leaders. Her son, Dustin, wanted the missionaries to contact her. So when we went to her door, we were assuming that Dustin was a member of the church and that Voda was just his mom.... As we were talking to her, she seemed AMAZED that we "know" Dustin and she just had a look of disbelief on her face. Turns out, Dustin is in prison (gets out in February) and he has found the gospel since being there! Voda immediately accepted our invitation to learn about the gospel! We have an appointment with her on Christmas Eve. :)

We also met Billy and Jody- two brothers that live in Elgin. They had been taught by the missionaries before, but we're thinking that they had missed an appointment with them and then had gotten lost in a transfer. (That unfortunately happens when people shotgun an area.) We invited both of them to church, and Billy came! He said it's been about 3-4 years since he last attended a church service. After church, we had a lesson with Billy and Jody- focusing on the godhead. The boys have absolutely no knowledge of the gospel, so we're having to start from the very beginning. And they also have learning disabilities, so teaching them (even though they are 22 and 14) is more like teaching two 8 year olds about the gospel.

The ward in Elgin is soooo small. We counted 80 people at church! TINY. 
We attended 2 Christmas parties this week and our Mission Christmas Conference. We had to wake up at 3 am so that we could drive up to Caldwell, ID on Wednesday morning. Yeahhh. That was no fun. I didn't enjoy that part. But the conference was great. We watched some Christmas movies (Mr. Kreugar's Christmas), had lunch, a white elephant gift exchange (I brought a Despicable Me light up watch and mustache stickers), and a lot of time for pictures. It was a good day. I love Christmas time!

This starts week 3 of the transfer (it's almost halfway over! CRAZY) and I still feel like we don't really have a set routine yet for this area. Hopefully we find it soon. It's pretty stressful to shotgun an area. Luckily though, the ward members and ward councils have been extremely supportive! That makes a HUGE difference! We couldn't ask for better wards to be serving in.

I can't think of much else to say... This week went by really quickly and it was really just us trying to wrap our heads around how we're going to work in this area!! We need prayers. haha. It'll all come together eventually.

Sister Gubler

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