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