Gary Vuelve A Mi

super belated feliz navidad and feliz año nuevo hooligans! 

Sorry ab not sending an email pdays are loco. Just one less email in your inbox. But im back!

Lets catch ya up to speed.

A highlight reel:

-We had christmas zone conference and it was incredible! We were supposed to have it on thursday but its been poooooouring rain here! Like dumping and dumping. At 2am we were woken up by blaring alarms from our phones giving us severe flood warnings and even a tornado warning!! We had a moment of concern but our exhaustion outweighed it so we prayed, turned our ringer on extra loud, and went back to sleep. We really said jesus take the wheel on that one.

-Slept for a few hours but had to wake up earlier to travel for zone conference. We got all ready and then they rescheduled it cause of the weather, we shouldve known

- When we actually had zone conference it was aaaaamazing!! Every district had a book of mormon teacher, title of christ, and christlike attribute and prepared a song to perform to go along with the topic and it was so beautiful! Everyone did so good and the spirit was so strong! I love the way music brings the spirit! 

- Pretty much all of our friends are in mexico for the holidays or super busy cause of the holidays so we havent had a lot of lessons. But that just means we'll find everyone else who is here while we wait! 

- theres a teeny tiny little landingstrip right by our apartment and we see little planes fly by all the time and one of our lunch hours we had lunch at the landing strip which was super cool. Felt like i was in top gun

- i learned the words to gary come home in spanish 

- its been poooooouring rain the past week and my companion was hesitant to go out finding until i grabbed her shoulders and said "hermana, you know the more rain that falls on you on your mission, the hotter your husband." And she was out the door in a flash

- im in denial about it being 2024 that's not real

Other than that not too much to report on here just preaching the fantastic word of God, please keep our friend Gerardo and the Ortiz family in your prayers as we work with them towards accepting baptism 

I loved this byu devotional called "Knowing When to Persevere and When to Change Direction" by Janet G Lee and its something we should all remember as we start this new year. Sorry it's a long read but it's worth it. And these are just some parts I loved

"When my daughter Stephanie was five years old, I took her to register for kindergarten.  

A teacher was sitting just outside the room with a box of crayons and several sheets of blank paper, and I smiled confidently to myself from across the hall as Stephanie was asked to choose her favorite color and write her name. “She could write all the names in our family,” I thought to myself. “She is so well prepared, there isn’t anything in that room she can’t handle!” 

But Stephanie just stood there. The teacher repeated the instructions, and again my daughter stood still, staring blankly at the box of crayons with her knees locked and hands behind her back. The teacher asked once more, “Stephanie, choose your favorite color, dear, and write your name on this piece of paper.” I was about to come to my daughter’s aid when the teacher kindly said, “That’s okay. We will help you learn to write your name when you come to school in the fall.” With all the restraint I could muster, I watched Stephanie move into the classroom with a teacher who believed my daughter did not know how to write her name.

On the way home I tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible why she had not written her name. “I couldn’t,” she replied. “The teacher said to choose my favorite color, and there wasn’t a pink crayon in the box!”

How many times are we, as Heavenly Father’s children, immobilized because the choice we had in mind for ourselves just isn’t available to us, at least not at the time we want it? what happens when we look in the box and the pink crayon just isn’t there? It is so easy to lock our knees, put our hands behind our back, and do nothing when things wished for and dreamed about are beyond our reach

Elder Richard G. Scott wisely instructed in the October 1991 general conference: "Trust [the Lord], even when in eternal perspective it temporarily hurts very much. Have patience when you are asked to wait when you want immediate action. . . . The path you are to walk through life may be very different from others. You may not always know why He does what He does, but you can know that He is perfectly just and perfectly merciful."

When my son Tom was twelve, his dream was to be a professional basketball player. Even though he practiced into the night, he was worried that he wasn’t the best on his team and even more worried that he was too short. I remember one night when he asked me, “What will happen to me if I don’t reach my goal?” We talked for a long time about choices and individual differences, about challenges and how to know when to persevere and when to change direction.

Tom made the high school team, but when it became apparent that there were other things he could do better, he changed direction. The crayon he would have chosen as a teenager just wasn’t there for him. He had to color his life with other choices. At twelve he thought his life would be worthless if he couldn’t play pro ball. At twenty-seven he feels successful in what he is doing and is happy in his profession.

Let me share with you part of a letter someone wrote after hearing the story of Stephanie and her crayons.

I don’t have all the colors of crayons that I want—but I do have all the colors that I need. When I need new or different colors in my life, Heavenly Father will make sure that I have them. I know that he will never give me a challenge beyond my reach or beyond the tools he has given me to work with. I also know that the challenges and trials I have are in reality blessings, and I will be better and stronger for having gone through them."

I love you all and your emails mean the world to me even if i cant always respond just know i read them all and my serotonin goes through the roof! Thank you for all the ways you've blessed my life! I'm so thankful for 2023 and all the amazing memories and blessings it brought me and excited for what 2024 holds!

Pictures 

Comp pics 

Lots of rain

The service where I had to climb in a spider web infested shed piled with stuff

Just call me maverick