Working hard and baptisms

Hello everybody who reads this little update on my mission!

 September 24, 2012

Things have been going well this week. The past couple of weeks we have been getting more than 20 lessons, which is great because more people are coming unto Christ. Elder Guzman and I are working well together. We have fun and work hard. He is probably the companion most willing to work that I have had. We have two baptisms coming up this week: the first is Nilcer Figueroa from Honduras. She came to Provo about a month ago to learn English at Nomen Global, a small English school here, and said she noticed a huge difference from Honduras and really felt something special here. She has progressed amazingly the past month and will be baptized on the 29th! Second is Daniela. She got married two weeks ago to her boyfriend, who is a less-active member coming back to church. They both seem ready to change their lives, so it will be great for both of them. She is also getting baptized on Saturday. The Temple Dedication was great. We went to the Edgemont South Stake center because it is closest to our house, and when I saw the doors to the baptismal font I remembered that I had been baptized there! I am excited for this week because we will have Elder Koelliker from the First Quorum of the Seventy in the mission doing zone conferences with us. It will be especially cool because the zone leaders will have a zone leader council with him that will be more personal. I am sure that I will learn a lot. Other than that, not much is going on. I hope that everyone is doing great wherever they are and with whatever they are doing!

Proverbs 3:27

October 1, 2012

This week has been good. We have been teaching a lot more lessons, but still need more work. I especially love to teach Genaro Inoa, a 72-year-old Dominican man who is so excited about the gospel and for his baptism even though he can't remember things very well because of a stroke he had 3 years ago. I know that he is excited because of what he feels in his heart, which is where we can come to know for ourselves that something is true. We learned from Elder Koelliker about D&C chapter 4. It talkes about serving with all of your heart might, mind and strength. We start out with putting our heart in the right place, and then our mind will follow and then we will work with our might and strength, but if we don't become humble, pure in heart and receive a witness in our hearts we will never be able to channel the potential that our mind has or that our body and spirit have to do good in this world. When our heart first submits itself to God's will, then those elements will align and we can truly serve in the best way.



Daniela's baptism



We just got a call this morning that we will have a missionary waiting on his visa to go to Spain with us for a while, so we'll see who it is when we pick him up at 3:30!

I hope that everything is going great for everyone! Have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Getts



Nilcer's baptism



Dear Everyone!

Saludos from your friendly neighborhood missionary!

The temple steps

A Jerusalem street scene

This week was a great week! It started out with Zone Leader Council on Tuesday. It was really cool because we got to go to the Jerusalem set down in Goshen that the church built for the movies of Christ. It was awesome to go see what they had built. It felt cool to be there even though we knew it wasn't the real Jerusalem. After our tour, we had the rest of the meeting on the steps of the area that they use as the temple. I am including some pictures.



Elder Getts by an olive tree in Goshen, Utah



This week we met with a man named Genaro Inoa from the Dominican Republic! He is 72 and had a stroke and a brain anurism 3 years ago and has recovered great. It is so awesome to hear his Dominican accent! We meet with him almost every day because he just stays at home and he is on date for baptism on October 20th. He needs a lot of time for us to teach him because he forgets things very easily. He came to church on Sunday. So you never know who will accept the Gospel, even old people who are supposed to be set-in-their-ways. We also had another investigator get married with her less-active boyfriend on Friday, so she is progressing toward her baptism on the 29th.

It has been interesting to be serving on BYU, because I see a lot of people I know just in passing and some of them don't recognize me, and some do.

Well, the transfer has come to an end.. Elder Espinoza will be opening a new area in Provo and training a new missionary, so he will be a district leader in the zone. My new companion is Elder Guzman, from Mexico. I don't know much else about him. I am way excited for the transfer and to get to work to lift up the zone because it has been suffering for a few months. President McCune is trying to have a set of Spanish Missionaries for each Spanish unit (ward or branch), so they divided a couple areas and there are a lot of missionaries training in the zone. So we will have a young zone and hopefully their enthusiasm will make the work improve a lot!

Also in our area, the whole ward got together to help a recent convert family who lives in a pretty run-down trailer to redo their roof, but the walls were so unstable that they had to redo them them first. So it turned out into a big project, but I was really impressed by the charity and love that they showed toward this family. I hope we all always strive to show that. They taught a lesson without saying anything!

Love,

 

 Elder Getts

 

Hello Everybody!

 

Elder Getts is doing great here in Provo. I love serving here and it has been amazing to see the hand of the Lord. This week we had some great experiences and I have been loving my scripture study! It just seems to make me hunger more and more to know Heavenly Father and Jesus better through the scriptures and the teachings of the Holy Ghost. This week we talked with a man named Wilbur who left to go back to Mexico on Sunday. He is 39 and has a wife and two daughters in Veracruz, Mexico. He told us that he was looking for the way to guide his daughters toward God and had a ton of doubts but was sincere in wanting to understand. We tried to answer his questions and were bold in declaring the truths of the restored gospel. We made sure to stress the importance of the Book of Mormon and establishing a foundation first before all of his questions could be answered. Elder Espinoza finished by sharing Alma 37:6 with him about small and simple things, and that really impacted him. We shared our testimonies and left full of the Spirit. We probably won't ever see him again in this life, but it was an amazing experience. A returned missionary called us yesterday with a referral about a girl named Nilcer. So we met with them in his apartment. She is from Honduras, and has heard about the church from friends there. She really wants to learn about it and has loved going to church the past couple of weeks. She seems very prepared to hear the gospel message.  We have been having great experiences as a companionship here.

 

I hope everyone has an awesome week and that each of you ACT and DO something to further the work of the Lord among your friends and family who have not received the Gospel yet!

 

Love,

Elder Getts

Highlights from the last two months

June -

After being here in Utah I realize that it really does rain a lot in Montana. I really love that quote about how the Lord works because it is TRUE and AMAZING! I remember reading it before and thinking about how attitude is so important and the Lord can help us be humble and change our attitude and then our environment changes through how we see the world and how we work to change our lives and the lives of others.  This week was good. we only had one lesson that was without a member, and the other lessons were good. We haven't been able to put anyone on date yet, but I can see that they are progressing slowly to be able to accept the invitation to follow Jesus and be baptized by someone holding His authority. Tomorrow we have a mission conference because President and Sister Pitts will be leaving this month and they want to get the whole mission together. We will take a mission picture and all that stuff. It will be good to see everybody there, too. I am going to Saratoga Springs this Saturday. It will be great to see everyone and be able to baptize Carmen and see her kids get baptized. I will also meet her brother who finishes his mission in Idaho in two days.

This work is the work of the Lord. I know that He will help those who come unto Him with their problems and weaknesses. Today I was reading in Ether 12 about humility and charity. I could feel the truth of the words and how that if I apply them that I really will be able to be like Christ and share is light for my whole life with everyone I meet. I hope everyone has a great week!

 

July -

I hope that everything is going well for everybody. This is the Lord's work, and everybody can do it. Just start out with the goal to start a gospel conversation every week, and then you can work on it and make it higher. I read a statistic that says that between 3 to 5 % of ACTIVE members of the church regularly participate in missionary work. And we still get almost 300,000 convert baptisms a year? Imagine if 50% of active members participated? Each person can choose to add their little part to the great work of the Lord. I promise those that do that the Lord will magnify their small effort into a great force for leading people into the Gospel. Talk with your friends. Leave small testimonies. And the number one factor that affects missionary work in a ward or stake is the personal righteousness of the members. Live up to your covenants. Keep the commandments. Be more like Jesus Christ every day.

 

Things have picked up a lot here. And it is definitely God doing it. We just try to be obedient and diligent and He has brought the people to us. We have 2 baptisms planned for the 11th and 2 more for the 25th and hopefully a few more people we are teaching will be ready by September. The sad thing is that I am leaving the area. I am staying here in Provo, in the same district actually, so I will be able to come back for the baptisms. Crazy, huh? My knew companion is Elder Espinoza. We will actually be in a trio for a couple weeks with Elder Prettyman, who is finishing his mission 4 weeks early to get to school on time (he will be back at BYU too). It will be a good transfer. It has been amazing to see Elder Kuhn progress. He is way better at Spanish, although he still has a long way to go, and he isn't as quiet with the members and investigators as he was at the beginning of the transfer. The past week I have been pretending like I was a missionary new to the area and making him lead me to our appointments and decide who we were going to visit if one fell through so that he would get used to it if they were going to transfer me. It is definitely a good thing we did that because he will have to introduce someone to the area now!

Something weird that happened is that I was talking with the 21 year-old daughter of a member family that we visit who is going on her mission in September to the St. George Temple visitor's center, and we found out that both of us went to Rock Canyon Elementary together! It was weird because we don't remember each other at all, but we remember a ton of the same people and the same teachers and everything! It almost felt like I met a long-lost cousin or something. How small is the world!

 

Well, I hope that everyone will have a great week and will do what they can to come closer to Jesus Christ. He lives and is our Savior. He restored His Church and the Priesthood and the Fulness of the Gospel for us in these days. Keep moving forward!

August -

Transfers were last Wednesday. I was only with Elder Kuhn for one transfer, but it was still amazing to see his progress. It looks like he has a great companion and they should have some success together. I am still in the district so I can keep tabs on him. :)  We are in charge of the Grandview 20th Spanish family ward and all of the Spanish YSA investigators. There aren't any Spanish YSA wards, so we just have 21 YSA stakes and teach young single adults who speak Spanish. So, technically I cover Marissa's ward! Crazy, huh? So tell her to look for Spanish referrals for me!

 

Love,

Elder Getts

Finding new investigators

It is definitely not the Pacific Northwest here. After living in Montana for 10 years I have realized that they were right when they told me in elementary school that Utah was a desert! I guess that is just an example of why we have to experience opposition to really understand. If I hadn't lived in Montana or traveled to other places, I would never have realized that Utah is dry and dusty and deserty. One thing I don't like about the valley is the inversions where all the smog and everything clouds the air. It is pretty gross.

This week we found a bunch of new investigators, We received a referral from a guy from Haiti and he set up the meeting and everything. We went and the whole family was there. There is the husband and three daughters who are not members, and the mom has been inactive for many years. We mostly just taught them about prayer. The daughters had never been to any church or read the Bible or anything, so it took a while for them to understand prayer. They do believe in God, and are a really sincere and loving family, they just haven't learned all of the amazing principles of the Gospel. I am excited to teach them and see their eyes open to these amazing truths. We tried to get everyone to try a practice prayer, but only the 15 year-old daughter would do it. She said a great prayer and there was a great spirit there. The mom and the 17 year-old daughter were crying. At the end of the lesson the dad asked when we were going to come back, which is a good sign that he wants to learn more! (Usually we have to ask when can we come back.) Then we met another family, where the dad is really sincere and wants to follow God, but he told us the first time that he met us that his wife doesn't really like to come listen, but she came and listened along with all of their kids and we also taught them about families and prayer, and we had a kneeling prayer that the dad said. He even told us that our church is probably true because his wife actually came and listened to us! I really hope that these two families will progress along with other individuals that we have found here.

We gave talks in the Parkway 6th Ward yesterday. It was good. I basically taught the Restoration and bore testimony of it - one of my favorite things to do. And then I explained a little about Preach My Gospel and encouraged everyone to study it. Elder Lampinen, a Finnish Elder in our district told me that Elder Perry in a Stake Conference in Spanish Fork promised the members that if they would study the first 3 lessons in chapter 3 of Preach My Gospel, that they would always have some words to answer any question or doubt that someone would bring up. Preach My Gospel is really an amazing book, inspired of God, and I know that if we study it we will become better disciples of Christ and better missionaries in our wards, communities and families. So please, study it and apply what you learn!

I love you all and hope that you look for ways to serve other people this week!

Love,

Elder Getts

Leaving Saratoga Springs - Heading to Provo

Dear Everybody!

Well, my long sojourn in Saratoga Springs is coming to a close. This Wednesday I am going to be transferred to the Provo West Spanish area - west of the freeway, by Utah lake. My companion will be Elder Ramirez. I don't know much about him, just that he is from Jalisco, Mexico. I am a bit sad to leave all of the amazing people here in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. I have come to love this area and the people here so much! It is amazing how much love that Christ can give you toward others, and it just comes from serving them. There are two people who want me to baptize them, so hopefully I will be back a couple times during the next transfer. I am excited to get to a new area and build it up again, to find those who are looking for the truth and help them to change their lives, make covenants and endure in the path of Christ. I know that that is how they will find true and eternal happiness. Without any doubt.

This week was pretty good. Carmen moved out from living with her boyfriend, so in two weeks she will be ready to be baptized, but she is waiting until June 16th to be baptized because her brother will have ended his mission in Idaho on the 14th. So I should be back to baptize her that day. It will be the best birthday present ever! We also had an opportunity to lay some sod again, which was fun. It only took us about half an hour this time because the yard was tiny and there were a bunch of people. Hopefully the family will remember the service that we did, because new Elders are coming to the area so we are giving up the English stake.

Well, I hope everyone will have a great week and that they will do whatever they can to be more like Christ and to show compassion to others!

Love,

Elder Getts

Photos:

1. The District at Neptune Park  - the pyramid is the only one in the Western Hemisphere!

2. Hna Arteaga's Family (he was the SS ward mission leader)

Baptisms!



Gisela and her family



Elder Dickinson, Tyson, Danny, and Elder Getts

Hi, everyone,

Everything is going good here in the area. We had two great baptisms this weekend. The first was a 16 year-old named Danny. His best friend, Tyson, baptized him and he got the priesthood and was ordained a priest just after sacrament meeting on Sunday. It was really awesome to see him with so much opportunity to serve in the church and go on a mission. His non-member mom was even crying. Hopefully she will also be baptized in the future. Then on Sunday we had a baptism of Gisela, a sister who has basically been active in the church for about a year without being baptized. She finally gave up coffee and was baptized. She will be confirmed next Sunday. Elder Campos came to perform the baptism and I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. There were so many people who came that we had to do the service in the chapel and then go to the Relief Society Room for the baptism. It was great to see her finally making such an important promise with God so that she can follow Jesus Christ more fully and achieve much more happiness and be sealed to her family.

This transfer is almost over! It has been way too fast here in Saratoga Springs / Eagle Mountain. I am leaving in about a week to who knows where. We will just see where the Lord wants me. I have had such a great time here, and the area has been really successful even though I heard a bunch of negative things about it before coming.

This morning we went with the Saratoga Elders and hiked up a hill by the lake. We could see the whole valley and even into the Salt Lake valley when we looked north. It was pretty fun.

I know that if everyone will strive to be a good example and then to share their testimony with others that the peace, safety and joy of the Gospel will spread into the hearts of others. Please commit yourselves to living a more virtuous life and follow that commitment every day! You will be greatly blessed for it!
Love,

Elder Getts