Elder Gardner

Elder Gardner will enter the MTC on Wednesday, June 23rd. We will keep this blog up-dated every week with his letters and pictures. If you would like to write to Elder Gardner, please click on the "write a letter" link on the right hand side for directions and his address. If you don't know much about Mormon Missions read the "about missions" page to learn more; it may help you understand some confusing terms in the letters.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Craziness (offices week 14)

Well, this week was CRAZY! Let me tell a few stories:

First off, we have two more offices elders now. Elder Daniel, who is going to replacing Elder Nielsen as secretary, and Elder Chase, who is going to replace me as housing coordinator. We add them two to Elder Nielsen, Me, and Elder Hill and we get five elders working in the offices, plus the three APs and the Schoenys and the CastaƱedas makes it a lot of people in the offices during the day.

So, Monday was transfers. And always during transfers we have people stay with us; people who are going south, who are going home, who are waiting for companions, etc. So when we left to go teach we dropped off three missionaries who where finishing their mission at a recent converts house to teach her friends and I went walking with Elder Chase. We had a sweet miracle: we were walking and some guy said, ¨Hola elderes.¨ We stopped and were like, ¨do you know us?¨ He said he is a member that lives in New York but is visiting his family for a few weeks. So we asked if we could meet the family. He let us in and we walked into a room with about 8 people in it; all of them from Peru. After talking a little we learned that half of them are members, they got baptized in Peru 15 years ago but since they moved here shortly afterwards they haven´t gone to church. So we invited them all to church, gave them some Book of Mormons and set an appointment for a few days later.

Monday night we had ten people sleeping in our apartment. There wasn´t enough room so Elder Chase and I went to go sleep in another apartment. A girl´s apartment. Don´t freak out! The girls had already left. We lost two sister missionaries and didn´t receive any, so the apartment was empty and we went to go sleep there. It was kind of weird. There was pink paper on the walls, hair in the shower, it smelled girly, etc. We didn´t think very far ahead so we didn´t have towels or anything; fortunately we found a light blue towel that looked really girly. It smelled clean so we used it. I love being in the offices. We do what ever we have to do to keep the mission running.

Tuesday Elder Nielsen and Elder Daniel went to the mission home to help with the new missionaries that came in. I stayed in the offices and started teaching Elder Chase the ropes. He is going to do a great job. The APs started getting sick so Elder Hill stayed with one of them in their apartment while the others went to the airport to pick up the newbys. Tuesday night I went with Elder Daniel and met the aunt of a recent convert that lives in a villa. The aunt was nice and there were about ten little kids running around ranging from 15 to 5 years old. A bunch of people live there and all the little kids got really excited when we talked about primary and they all want to go now. So we found another family that should go to church tomorrow.

Wednesday all of the APs were throwing up, so Elder Nielsen and Elder Daniel went to the airport to pick up new missionaries (I was pretty disappointed I didn´t get to go, but o well). I forgot to mention that on Monday night we got an email telling us that three missionaries we weren´t expecting to come got their visas and would be coming on Wednesday. That would have been nice to know BEFORE transfers... So these three kids flew in. Elder Chase and I went to the mission home so I could give them their credit cards. We showed up just in time to eat tacos! I miss mexican food....

Thursday we had district meeting: our district leader, his comp, two comps of sister missionaries, five office elders, and three APs. 14 missionaries. That´s a big district! Friday we had an awesome mission conference for easter. It was really spiritual and really good. The only problem was I was in charge of making sure the skype worked so I didn´t get to listen as much as I would have liked. Then in the evening I stayed in the offices with Elder Hill because he was throwing up. Hopefully I don´t get the bug everyone is passing around!

Honestly, it´s been a crazy week. But a good one too. I´ve never had so many people just randomly talk to me as I´m walking on the street. Seriously, everyday someone said, ¨Hi elders¨ to us and when we stopped to talk they were inactive members we didn´t know or something. It was pretty crazy. Wednesday night it was raining really hard and we were standing on the corner waiting for a bus. Some guy stops and is like, ¨Elders get in. I´ll take you back.¨ He had big stud earrings in and tatooes so we were a little hesistant, but he told us he was a member so we got in. He ended up beig the brother of our ward mission leader who is a tatooe artist. Needless to say, he is inactive. It was really nice of him though.

So, that´s probably enough stories for today. I hope everyone is doing great. We are going to keep working hard this week and praying for miracles. I hope everyone loved conference; it was awesome. If you didn´t see it, go to lds.org and watch it right now!

Love you all,
cuidensen,
Elder Gardner

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