Missionary Work

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that everyone is having a great time doing whatever they are doing, working, playing, vacationing - it all just depends on the attitude.

We have been trying to deal with the new changes that have happened in our area, especially trying to contact the investigators that the Zone Leaders left us in the Eagle Mountain North stake. We should be seeing all of them this week. I am excited to be District Leader, to learn more about missionary work and to try to be an inspiration to other missionaries.

We have a great family that we are teaching now, Familia Aragon. They are really looking to come closer to Christ and to raise their children in the right way and told us that their marriage said "until death do you part," but that they want to be together for eternity. They even invited us over for dinner after the first appointment with them.

Sebastian is getting baptized next week and it has been great seeing the amazing change in his family as they have strived to follow Christ and change their lives. Brother Goodfellow will be receiving the priesthood this Sunday, so he can baptize Sebastian and Josalynn.

The Gospel is true, but it is so much more than just true! It is the Gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We have the Church of Jesus Christ, the exact same church that he established when he was here, on the earth today. The Book of Mormon is The Word of God. We have a Prophet of God on the earth today who is guided by Jesus Christ to guide the church. I know this with out any doubt.

Love,

Elder Getts

Crazy Transfer Time!

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that everyone is doing great! This email is going to have a lot of pictures and not as much writing. This transfer some crazy stuff happened. We are down a few missionaries in the mission, so President is sending Elder Campos to Orem and switching him to an English missionary. I am staying with Elder Whitsitt for a transfer and he will be heading out to Argentina on the next transfer. I am going to be district leader, so I will definitely learn a lot this transfer. They also switched us from doing English work in the Saratoga South stake and gave us a stake in English in Eagle Mountain, because they are switching the Zone Leaders to Alpine and dividing their stakes with us and with the Eagle Mountain English Elders. So it is definitely a crazy transfer with a bunch of changes.

Everything is going good - we are saying a lot of goodbyes for Elder Campos today and tomorrow. We played the Spanish ward at the high school on Saturday in basketball (they won the stake tournament) and we beat them pretty bad. It was really fun, though, especially being on a high school court again.

Well, I hope that everyone will have a great week and look for ways that you can make other people's lives better!

Love,

Elder Getts

Andrea with "El tata" which is just a term of endearment for "Uncle". He baptized her.

 The Trio on the ice of Utah Lake - left to right: Me, Elder Campos, Elder Whitsitt

The Trio with Mt. Timpanogos and Utah Lake in the background

Our District - it was a really fun and united district this transfer.

Left to right: Elder Whitsitt, Ivan, Hermano Arteaga (ward mission leader), Elder Campos, me

A new companion - we're a trio

February 6, 2012

Hey Everybody!

Everything is going great for me here in Saratoga Springs/ Eagle Mountain. First order of business is that Elder Campos and I have a new companion, Elder Whitsitt. We are a trio for now, and I am assigned as the trainer for Elder Whitsitt. He is from Michigan but has lived in Pleasant Grove for 3 years and is waiting for his visa to go to the Buenos Aires North Mission. He is pretty funny and we have been having fun together. He already is pretty good at Spanish because his mom is from Mexico and his step dad is from Puerto Rico, but he still has some things to learn about the language and about teaching (like any new missionary).

Next is that we had the baptism of Andrea. It was the best baptism I have ever been to, mostly because of the amazing change that I have seen in her life. She is always so much more happy now. She even bore her testimony in her baptism. I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost and Elder Campos confirmed her on Sunday.

On Monday we had a fun Zone Activity where we played basketball, which was pretty fun - I was really grateful for the exercise. Today we are doing it again but this time playing dodgeball because there are some Elders that aren't too fond of basketball, so we want to do something to involve everybody.

It is so awesome to be doing missionary work! Feeling the Spirit is the most fulfilling thing in the world and there are so many ways that we can do good things that bring the Spirit into our lives. I encourage every one of you to look for those small things that you can do to get closer to Jesus Christ and feel the Spirit.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Getts

Photos!

January 30, 2012

Dear Mom, and everyone else,

Everything is going good here. We had another baptism this Saturday. He is a 31-year-old guy from Uruguay named Ruben. He got divorced not long ago (in November) and that made him really want to change his life. He is really humble and was ready for his baptism.

Other than that we had Zone Conference this week on Tuesday, which was edifying. The theme scripture was 2 Nephi 2:26 and we talked about agency and how the investigators need to act and exercise their agency through doing things and keeping commitments like reading the Book of Mormon, coming to church, and praying.

On Monday and Tuesday we slept over at the Zone Leader's house because the pump in our landlord's well blew out and we didn't have a drop of running water, so we needed somewhere to shower, brush our teeth and use the bathroom. We even had to get buckets from a neighbor and take them over to the house so that the family could flush their toilets! But we got water back on Wednesday night, and were able to do our laundry and everything. On Saturday we went to the stake center to play basketball as a district, but they were doing a stake basketball game and didn't have enough people so they let us play with them and it was pretty fun.

We had a great FHE in Monday night with a family that we are teaching in the home of the bishop, who gave a great lesson on priesthood authority.

I wish everyone the best this week and hope that each of you can work on making your relationship with Christ even closer.

Love,

Elder Getts

                         Ruben

            Ariana and her family at her baptism 

A wonderful time in Saratoga Springs

January 23, 2012

Dear family and friends,

I hope that all of you are doing great and living good and happy lives.

I am still having a wonderful time here in Saratoga Springs, teaching, studying, working and even getting to play a bit of basketball with the district. We had a baptism of a nine-year-old girl, Ariana, on Saturday. I baptized her and then the bishop confirmed her in sacrament meeting on Sunday. It was a simple but spiritual baptism. Ariana was pretty excited about the whole thing, which was good to see. Hopefully she can also help her parents be stronger in the Gospel. We have another baptism planned for a guy named Ruben from Uruguay. He is 31 years old and got divorced a few months ago and when we found him he said he wanted to change. It has been awesome to teach him.

Elder Campos has his health back and we had another great week of teaching and work. We also played basketball twice which was pretty fun even though it would be nice if everyone in the district knew how to play basketball...

I keep learning more every day about my Savior and the principles of His Gospel, and that helps me to find peace and direction in my life as I put those principles into practice in my life. I know that anyone who will strive to obtain a testimony of Jesus Christ, especially through the Book of Mormon, will receive that testimony from God throught the Holy Ghost. And that testimony will serve as an anchor and a foundation that will lead to happiness and peace in this life and in the next.

Written with love,

Elder Getts

The gospel always leads to happiness.

January 16, 2012

Queridos familia y amigos,

I am doing great here. We had a great week with 25 lessons despite the fact that Elder Campos was sick the whole week and had to take a couple hours each day to sleep. He is a great companion and we really work well together. Hopefully this week we should have a baptism of a 9-year-old girl named Arianna. Her parents were just really busy and didn't put her baptism as a priority when she was 8, so when she turned 9 she was under the jurisdiction of the mission and missionaries. So we contacted her family and have been teaching her. She wants me to baptize her and Elder Campos to confirm her. I am happy to baptize her but it is sad at the same time because her dad isn't very active and won't be able to baptize or confirm her, which is such an important step in her life. I am definitely grateful that my dad has always been able to do those ordinances for me: baptism, confirmation, and receiving the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods.

Our ward mission leader and his wife lost their baby this week at three months of pregnancy, so he called us over and we gave him and his wife blessings. They are doing better and are strong, especially with the strength that the Lord gives, so I know they will be all right.

The Plan of Salvation is such an amazing gift that the Lord has given us, so that we have a purpose in life and can work hard to achieve that purpose. It also amazes me that the Gospel always leads to happiness, which is really the ultimate goal.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Getts

Happy New Year!

January 9, 2012

Dear family and friends,

 

I hope that everybody is having a great new year and doing well on their New Year's resolutions! We are doing well here in Saratoga Springs. We had an interesting and a fun week. Here are some of the things that happened:

 

We were surprised this week when we went over to visit Marco and Jennifer at Jennifer's parent's house (M and they weren't there. The parent's told us that they just suddenly left for Idaho when they heard that Marco could get a job up there. The thing is that they are young (she is 18 and he is 21) and they are pretty rebelious. The parents had talked to them a lot about helping around the house and being grateful for the help that their parents are giving them by letting them live in their house and being responsible for their baby, but they just wouldn't listen, and so they finally just left without telling anybody, even sending us a text or something. I feel sorry for them because they are going to have to learn a lot of life lessons the hard way.

 

On a surprising and happy note, Maria, a 15 year-old foreign exchange student from Mexico went through a huge turn around this week. We were going and teaching her about once a week (she lives with an American family of members) and she wasn't being very receptive. We even watched the Joseph Smith movie and at the end she laughed, which offended me. But we kept going and telling her that she had to read and pray. She kept doing that and suddenly this week she told us that she felt like she believed in everything and had already talked to her parents about getting baptized. We told her that she had received her answer and that she needs to honor her parents, but that she needs to be true to her testimony, even if she has to wait until she is 18, because her parents are Catholic and don't approve. She even bore her testimony on sacrament meeting and said that she knows that the Book of Mormon is true and that the Church is true. It was pretty amazing to see that change in her. 

 

Those were the big events. We also helped Sean, a New Zealander who married a Mexican girl from Utah move on Friday. It was fun. Elder Campos and I did quite a bit while they were running to get the truck - they were delayed because they saw a car crash on the way and were the only witnesses so they had to spend a few minutes giving details to the police.

 

We also found a guy from Spain named Ivan who is the grandson of an American soldier who stayed in Spain after WWII. He doesn't know much English, but he decided to come to America because something was missing from his life in Spain and he wanted to start all over and find happiness and peace in his life. We took him to church the day after we met him and he liked it. He says that America is a lot more friendly than Spain.  

 

Jesus Christ lives and is our Savior! I hope each one of you can come at least one small step closer to Him this week!

 

Love,

Elder Getts