Every Member a Missionary

Hey family! 

How are you all this week? So mom, I can't believe you went to Sequoia's. You were in my mission. That's pretty funny. Elder Watkins is in Exeter. I was in the MTC with him. You were definitely like 1/2 an hour away from me. Pretty sure that's against some kind of rule hahaha

I'm glad Jared had fun at EFY. I always had fun at those with Bryson and Chase. Way fun. So who has their mission calls? (Congrats Elder Gallego going to the California Anaheim Mission, Spanish speaking) It's always interesting to hear about things like that. 

This week was super busy. I wasn't able to work in my area a whole ton. But Elder Thurman was here working, so that's good. I was at leadership training all day on Wednesday and Thursday at the mission office, and then we were on exchanges for Saturday and Sunday. 
Leadership training was amazing. President Gelwix just gets things done. Basically the whole theme was how we aren't performing to our potential. In our mission region area, which is all of the California missions and a couple others, the California Fresno mission in #1 in EVERYTHING. Baptisms, fewest injuries, new investigators, fewest car repairs, obedience. EVERYTHING. And we are wwaaayyyyyy above the rest in baptisms. But it's not enough. We are leading in many areas, but we aren't at our full potential. Not even close. So we just talked about what we could do as a mission to fix that. Elder Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve said "every answer we need to reach our goal of 1200 baptisms this year is in Preach My Gospel." So that's what we gotta do. Focus on that. 

I had an exchange in the Fresno 1st ward with Elder Lee over the weekend. I went to his ward and something funny happened first of all. One of the guys who spoke in sacrament was named Bill Baird. And after the meeting I went to shake his hand and I notice this GIANT shiny ring on his hand. And I ask what it was, and it was a Super Bowl ring from the 3rd super bowl! hahaha I guess he was free safety for the Jets way back in the day when Joe Namath was there and whatnot. But yeah, last thing I would expected was to see a super old super bowl ring like that. Pretty cool.

So that ward I went to was having some problems with missionary work, so I went with Elder Lee to see how I could help and to see actually how bad it was. And it really wasn't even bad. They just need to use their members effectively. And it really hit me how important the members really are. They are everything to missionary work! We were able to pass out a ton of Books of Mormon and really get the ward going.

The first night on an exchange we went to go contact a member referral from a member down south somewhere. And we go there and this really nice lady lets us in. We get talking to her and she said that she works with a Mormon and that he's super nice. We shared the restoration with her and committed her to baptism for the 25 of August! It was way sweet! I know how important the members are. They are the center of the success we have. Their referrals ALWAYS get baptized when we set a date with them! I know that this church is led my Jesus Christ. No member is perfect, but the foundation and organization of the church IS perfect. And that's what we gotta focus on!

Cuidense a todos!

Elder Gygi

Missionary Moms do not like to hear about their son's apartments!