Elder Zachary Gehring: Week of Cambios

My family.

This week was insane as are all the weeks of cambios. Monday started out crazy. There were 4 missionaries who got here from the Provo MTC so our work started then. Elder Butts from our stake was in that group. I think he was pretty surprised to see me there. They stayed in our house Monday night and then Tuesday the fun began. I got so little sleep between the days of Tuesday and Friday. This transfer we got 25 new missionaries, and only 2 went home. We opened 12 new areas, and zones changed, areas changed, and 80 percent of the missionaries here in in the mission had some sort of change. I was one of the few that didn't! I was just in charge of making sure the rest of the changes happened without problems. Talk about stress.

We picked up the 21 new ones from the Airport on Tuesday and I met Elder Wadell who was one the same flight. He is one of the 70 that is over this area of south america. He's like 6 and a half feet tall and speaks spanish with an accent from Spain but hes an amazing guy. We had to order 3 buses to hold all the new ones and their luggage. Its insane how much luggage the north americans have. We got to spend almost the whole day with them in the offices eating pizza, getting their interviews done, and taking all their passport fotos. Then we sent them to dinner and Elder Knight and I had to stay in the offices to get the rest of the mission cambios done. We were working until 1100 or so that night. I didn't sleep very much because the next morning I was getting fone calls at 5am from the people who were coming in in Flota or Trufi and needed a place to stay. There were blockades for some of the missionaries on buses and we had to fix that, there were flights delayed, flights cancelled, people missing their flights and its just a big huge mess during cambios week. My job is most stressful during this week.

My new companions name is Elder Garcia. He's the new health secretary and hes from Utah. Hes got a little more time in the mission than I do but we get along really really well. I couldn't be more grateful. All my comps so far in my mission I've only had for one transfer but I'm pretty sure I'll be with him for about 3 or so. We haven't been able to teach together very much yet but I'm looking forward to working with him. I'm having to help him figure out his job as a secretary but he's pícking it all up fast.

This Sunday was one of the wierdest days. We woke up, went to church and sacrament meeting was normal. We had 2 investigadores (actually the both are from Brasil) attend church and they really liked it. Then after sacrament, this Chinese man who was sitting in front of me stood up, turned around, and told me he was from California. The wierd thing was that he told it to me in English. We talked for a while and it turns out he only speaks madarin and english. For the next 2 hours I translated for this chinese man from California who was visiting Bolivia for work. He used to be a bishop and had a looooot of comments during all the classes. The hardest thing was, he never stopped talking to let me translate what he had said. He just talked super fast. I had never translated like that before so i realized how much I really do know in spanish. But I think I realized even more, what I don't know in spanish. I've got a long way to go. I understand everything and can say anything I want, just I'm not fluent.

This week we hardly even had time to sit down and rest. We ran around and ran around and ran around some more. We went to the airport a ton of times to find some lost luggage, to pick up Elder Knights parents, to take some sick Elders home, to pick up ones being transfered, and more. But yesterday I felt calm at last. It was about 8:45pm, we were walking home for the night and we saw a secruity guard sitting down. We decided to talk to him. We explained who we were, and began to teach him about the Book of mormon. Turns out he lives next to one of our chapels. he told us ''I have always seen your church but Ive never had the opportunity to go and see how it is. Thanks to you kids, and this book, I can finally go and search'' I realized that some people want to go to church, they see us, want what we have but we don't give them the oppurtunity. I was so happy to see him happy. He teared up as we promised him blessing of peace in his life. He felt the truthfulness of our message and I have no doubt in my mind that he will now search and investigate until he finds the fullness of happiness inside the true church of Jesus Christ.

This is what happiness is. The Gospel is what makes people happy. Christ brings us joy. His sacrifice brings us relief. Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me.

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Elder Gehring