Keeping it on Oct 26th 2013

Enjoying the days as they go by as always. President told Elder Shiu and I we need to be having fun or we won't stay ZL's for long. Better be obedient! DODGEBALL IN THE APARTMENT! = sprained finger.

We had many miracle happen this week.  

 We had a fun week where Elder Shiu went on exchanges and Elder Donohue and I went out and were able to get to know the area much better. We hit up a lot of the potentials lists and Elder Donohue learned a thing or two about appointments falling through that he has never known before. Haha he has had a pretty easy first part of his mission.

I'm often times feeling like a third wheel in the companionship because my companions have been together for so much longer but I'm just sucking it up and dealing with it as I should. Force my way into things and they understand. Not a problem even worth worrying about.

I got some awesome new shades to wear in the car when I drive everywhere. AHHHHhhhhh ya. Well out of time. Peace!

Oh and Happy HALLOWEEN!

This letter is dedicated to Granny Smith who I never find time to reply to but love dearly. :p

Into the Mixer

Well this throws me into the mixer. I have been called to be a Zone Leader in the Rancho Santa Margarita Stake. It is a pretty neat area. We work in the Santa Margarita Ward which includes the neighborhood Coto de Caza. It is the most up scale, pricey, gated community that I know of in Southern California.  A famous NBA player lived here until he got too many complaints about his helicopter being too much noise for the rest of the neighborhood. The bad part about it is we are not allowed to talk to ANYONE or we get kicked out. Its also basically covering 2 sides of the Las Flores area. I can see the Webber's house from here! We can only go to homes of members and those who we have appointments with. Despite the difficulties though we had 2 baptisms this last Saturday that were just marvelous and we will be having 3 more before the end of November if everything goes according to plan. It is super exciting!

I am happy to say that I also love my companions.  My Co-Zone Leader  is from Hong Kong. His first language is of course Cantonese but he also knows Mandarin and now English.  He is SUPER smart. Probably one of the smartest persons I've ever talked to. We have very different styles of leading people but I think we will be great together and I love him. Together we are training an Elder from Lehi Utah. He is a good ol' Utah boy. He is basically like Sam Callister for those of you who know him in personality and mannerisms. He is doing great as a new missionary. The bad thing is we expect  way too much of him sometimes. We dish a lot on him and he takes it and grows.

Well being a ZL is different. I've spent maybe 6 hours this week actually out doing missionary work. Otherwise it is running to the mission office for forms, going to District meetings of different District Leaders. Holding our own zone meetings. Going to meetings with the stake leaders. I mean for goodness sakes I put 500+ miles on our car this week! I am going to go buy myself some sun glasses now. :P At least I am 1 of 7 companionships that  has a full-time car. Elder Kempton my DL way back when is in my Zone as well as other missionary friends I have meet in the past but I am really looking forward to getting to know them all a lot better. I can tell I'm going to have to mentally exert myself and be ready for the spirit more than ever before. President Orgill needs our help in getting the Carlsbad/Anaheim culture to go away and an Irvine culture to form.

Well I would like to share one more experience. Saturday we had a baptism in our area.  At 7 in the morning a pipe that had burst was found in the room of the baptismal font at the Stk Cntr. Our investigators were still sick and it was just getting crazy how much opposition there was trying to get the baptism to loose its power.  A plumber fixed the leak and the investigators got well enough to come after much prayer and then  we got there to set up. Everyone came in and thing seemed to be going well. We planned to set up a DVD to show during the changing period after the ordinance. Elder D gave an intro to the video and bore his testimony on the restoration. When he was done I clicked the play button and the TV flickered and went out. We tried for about 3-4 minutes to figure out what was wrong in front of the 70-80 people but nothing was working. It worked 5 minutes ago darn it! I finally just dropped it all and went up on the pulpit and looked blankly at the audience. "well.... I guess I'll describe what the video says." I then recited for 12-15 minutes the Joseph Smith story in detail from the start. I went through as delicately as I could. I gave the first vision and set it up and it ended up being a GREAT thing to bring the spirit. We had investigators there who said they were very touched. It was also a great introduction to the ward. I am really happy here and will see much success. Until then though, got to go!  Love ya. 

--Elder Gemperline

Bounce

Well this week was a game changer. I got the call on Saturday night that I'm getting transferred again. I've only been here 6 weeks with Elder Swejkoski and Elder Bartell. Now Elder Bartell and I are leaving again. There is definitely a good reason. We just don't know what that reason is. Haha in fact 5 of the 8 Elders in my district are getting transferred. 4 of them have only been here 6 weeks. It’s going to be a crazy transfer meeting tonight. 

I had a good last week here though. We had Elder Falabella of the 70 come and visit our mission. It was awesome to be able to rub shoulders again with a GA. He taught us all about a strew of things. I can't really point out the overarching theme but I guess if I had to it would be doing missionary work through Family History invitations. It was a very revelatory meeting and I got lots of answers to questions and pages and pages of notes to look through when I can find the time. 

We had a fantastic experience Friday night . I turned a corner and saw a young man washing his car and decided to go talk to him about it. It’s a fun little car and one I actually know some things about thanks to Elder Bunker and after getting to know the kid and his plans to have the car for a few months he said he would have to give it up after that. I asked what then and he explained that he was going to join the Marine Corps. He talked about all he had left to do to join is "swear in" and graduate High School. Well I took the opportunity to talk to him about how he feels a relationship with God could help him in the battlefield. It was a perfectly smooth transition and after talking about his relationship with God helping him we shared a few scriptures in the B of M that showed him the protection and comfort that could come from having the gospel while away from home. We talked about how the fore-front of that relationship with God would be making a promise with him which is baptism. He agreed with an invitation from us to be baptized in November. It was very exciting! It was just as our leaders and Elder Falabella have instructed. The greatest expression of love we can give as missionaries to our investigators is the invitation to be baptized. 

Saying good-bye to the Kubats was pretty hard. They are an awesome family, as many families I have met have been. Bro Kubat is just so in tune with what the Lord wants done with the work here in LH3. I have seen him countless times, again and again, gain an impression on our investigators and carry it out with diligence to see such great blessings reaped from it. I will be leaving this ward with the potential to baptize 5-6 people before the end of the year. 

Praying Mantis Wars are scary and gross and cool. Boys will always be boys. We made a giant tent of blankets (again) and had a "campout" in the living room 2 nights ago which was fun. It rained HARDCORE this Wednesday. We were in the rain for a total of about.... 8 seconds and we were drenched from head to toe! There was a river in the street shin high and we spent a lot of the night picking up people's trashcans that had been washed away. It was pretty awesome! 

Well I'll talk to you in my next area! More pictures but I already packed the camera cord so later. Thx! ttfn

--Elder Gemperline

  

General Conference is always a treat. I really soaked it up and just ate every word given. I felt like I really walked out of the meetings with just such a determination to be better and like I just hadn't given my all quite yet. I also walked out with a full belly because of our awesome zone lunch but that is another story. 

I went to the first official Irvine Mission Choir meeting last Wednesday as an official member. It was fun but I feel like I'm getting lost at the moment. Suddenly choir classes would have come in handy. Haha good thing most of the choir is lost with me. :P

Last Tuesday night we found a Praying Mantis in our bathroom. We captured it and named it "She-Bear" after the story of the she-bears eating the kids after they laughed at Elisha's bald head. We keep it on our front porch and feed it crickets and Daddy long legs. It's really disgusting to be honest but it really entertains my companions  :P. 

We had a rough lesson this week. . He has taken discussions with missionaries for almost 15 yrs now and still doesn't know if he believes in God. Of course no missionaries prior to us had actually discovered this. We really well described what faith is and how he can act in faith but when it came to inviting him to really search the scriptures daily and pray to find out. He said he just isn't ready. It is going to take a lot of time to soften his heart to that point. 

We also had a lesson with a family where the  daughterhas not yet been baptized but really wants to be a member of the church. We went over for dinner, had a short lesson on baptism and the holy ghost and invited her to be baptized. We extended the invitation and she said yes. We tried to set a date to do it on and the Mom said "we will talk about that later." In other words she doesn't plan on it happening anytime soon.  . 

So a sad week but fine because at least we are making steps of progression in the area of sifting through who isn't yet ready! We are trying hard to find one of the Lord's Elect to teach. The goal is 3 baptisms before the end of the year. I'm fully committed. We're going to do it. We already have 1 planned for November. Her name is Nat. She is at BYU as a non-member and is being taught up there but she is getting baptized down here so we will technically be counting it.

Well we are really crunched on time because it was a temple day. I love you all. Love the weather cooling down finally. It was a high of 73 today. Isn't that just awful? :P Spoken like a true Californian.