Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Honduran Temple

Bowling, a favorite for the Elders

Patriarchal Blessings

Hey Fam,
Ok well it was a really good week. I have no complaints. On tuesday as Zone Leaders in the mission, I had my first ZL Counsel with the President of the the mission, Pte Hernandez. It was really good actually. Im gonna be looking forward to those, they always give us breakfast and lunch and its all in the mission home...really nice house. I talked more with Elder Wedemeyer on monday night cuz he is a ZL in the south and so they stayed in our house over night, it was really good experience working monday night with him as we did divisions in our area. He had no idea his mom was at our house though, he may know now but he didnt. He ispires me, he is the happiest person in the world, and well known for it. I learned a lot from him in just those couple hours we worked together, we actually found a new family in that little bit of time, were not sure if they are gonna progress yet but it was good.
This weekend was a little bit harder, thursday because of the ZL Counsel that we had, we had to prepare a capacitation for the 18 other elders in our zone on thursday. It was mostly focussed on the Doctrine of Christ, and how much we need to follow what our patriachal blessings teach us, and to apply it in our mission. I took the part on the Patriarchal Blessings cuz when the Presidents wife, it hit me hard cuz I dont read it as much as I should... but i do now... I repented. It went really good, and from what weve seen its been a huge help for the missionaries in the zone as far as animating themselves more. Especially for me and my companionship.
The joy of being a Zone Leader is doing Divisions with all the Elderes in our zone. Theres always good things that come from Divisions, i just had to keep telling that to the missionaries that I got with cuz its true and its prooved itself to be true. Friday on Divisions we didnt have much planned and so I figured it was gonna be a lot of contacting and knocking doors. When the night came it was about 7:30 and didnt have anything to do, so we just starting knocking. About that time everyone is in there house and we started to notice that but the first about 5 houses didnt even open their doors and just nothing happened. Ive learned that its always at the last moment, and right when we get disanimated... that that person finally opens. Sure enough, we knocked on a door and a lady just barely just opened the window to talk to us and as quick as possible we just said we wanted to get in and teach her something about Jesus Christ. We had a really really good lesson, and they accepted baptism. The mission has been teaching us that we need to be challenging to baptism on the first lesson, and as we do it, weve seen a lot of success. Our mission reached the highest goal ever reached by a central america mission... 222.
Its been a huge learning experience for me the past little bit after receiving this new calling. I know this is the work of the lord, im sure of it, I see the miracles being performed left and right.
I love you all very very much. I appreciate all the updates and I love hearing from you all!!
Until next week!!
Love your missionary,
Elder Gardner