Almost Christmas!

Hola!

This week was a decent week. We started the week off with divisions! I stayed in the area and Elder Leocadio from Guerrero Mexico came to work with me for a day. He has two weeks in the field and he has an amazing conversion story. I just wanted to take a moment to talk about it. He got baptized at the age of 12 but his parents prohibited him from going to church.  They were fairly abusive so he left home at the age of 15. He went looking for a job and found work in a cake store and he worked there making about 50 pesos a day for a couple of years, living in the warehouse. Everyday he was up at 4 to work until 7 then he went to school, he got back at 3 and kept working until 10, when he started his homework. However, he had to work on Sundays, so one day he decided to take an enormous leap of faith and he quit so he could go to church. He said that that decision flipped his life around because in the church the members helped him out and with their help he started a business and from that business came another! From those two businesses he made a ton of money, enough to pay for the mission and he pays for his siblings schooling.   He left his brother in charge of his businesses while he's here for these two years. I thought that it was just the coolest thing to see this Elder's faith and courage in God.

With Elder Leocadio

We found Christmas lights in the apartment!

This week we also were able to find a cool family where two kids are not members, one is 12 and the other is 9 years old. They stopped going to church when the grandma died but we talked to them about God's plan and they're started to come back to church, the two kids have baptismal dates for January 5th.

Christmas time!!

The other people we are teaching are coming along really well! We have two 16 year old boys that have baptismal dates for the 29th of December. Ricardo is still searching for an answer from God and the other kid, David, just needs his parents permission so keep them in your prayers! As for Tranquilino he had to go back to his ranch to fix some legal things or something like that so we shall see when he gets back home! Anyways, hope you all have a great week! Enjoy the cold!
Elder Gurney

Finding...

These past two weeks have been full of miracles! The focus of the mission this month is finding more people to teach. My companion and I decided to start working more with the list of members, looking for part member families, and referrals from the members.  We have a list of like 800 members but only about 170 consistently go to church. With the list we've been able to find quite a few new people to teach that can progress quickly.

Ricardo: He's a 16 year old young man that his mom goes every week to church, we started visiting him and he says the only reason he hasn't gotten baptized is because he hasn't received an answer.  So we have been working with him so that he can receive that answer.

Tranquilino: First off, Tranquilino is a ridiculous name but he's a funny guy hahaha. He is the grandpa of a super active member and he's like 91 but he is still strong and active.  He just moved into the house of his daughter and has already gone twice to church. He likes the church, his only problem is alcohol... but he told his grandson that he was going to stop drinking!! However, when we asked him if it was true he said, yeah! I just don't know where they sell it here! hahaha. But it's something!

This week we also did divisions. I went with Elder Hurren from South Carolina and we basically spent the whole day knocking doors.... but it was a good time.   Elder Hurren just finished his training but I felt like I was with an experienced missionary so we had fun. Besides that it was a pretty normal week! The funniest part was that a few cows got loose and were walking around town and the people didn't even pay attention to them like it was a normal occurrence. HAPPY DECEMBER AND ENJOY THE COLD!!!!!!

Elder Gurney
(I don't have any photos this week because I forgot the chord to connect my camera...)

First week of December...

An email Elder Gurney sent his sister:

I'm highkey jealous that it is snowing in Utah... out here we are still in the 90's and I'm dying to feel cold again! We got to watch the Christmas devotional and it was super cool to see the snow in the trees.  But yeah to answer your questions, it was a pretty decent week.   We had the consejo de lideres which means we got waffles and pìzza!  :)   

Besides that we also found quite a few new investigators to teach which was nice, we have two investigators that we are hoping that they'll get baptized this month.  They're both 16 year old boys, one is the kid of a less active member but he says he doesn't want to get baptized because he doesn't like the water... so were trying to help him out but it'd be good if you could pray that he can overcome his fear.... his name is Angel. The other kid has attended church twice, we are teaching his family but his parents work a lot so they haven't progressed very well.  He has a good friend who is a member though so he likes going to church. His name is David and our only worry is if his parents will let him get baptized alone. We are going to talk with them about that tomorrow so it would be lovely if you could pray for him as well. The rest of the investigators we are working with for January. 

Being a Zone Leader is not as different as I thought it would be, we report our numbers, we work in our area, ... the only difference is that it's more stress and more responsibility. We're responsible for the work of the whole zone not just our own work. The good thing is that our zone is full of super good missionaries who are future leaders so we're happy about that.
Love, Elder Gurney