Hola familia y amigos!
Wow what a change! This past week has been honestly a big change from what we were doing in San Fernando Zone. Here we are in the middle of South Central, there are so many Spanish speakers here which is super good for us. The whole atmosphere here in the city is completely different than in the valley I'm not sure how to explain it but people always just seem to be more focused on where they have to be next rather than what they are doing in the moment. Parking is absolutely the worst and traffic as well. We live about 13 km from the temple and it took us well over an hour to get there. Without traffic it takes us anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.for me I've been trying to get adjusted to all the new street names and remembering the names of all the people we're teaching. As well as meeting the ward members and developing a relationship with them.
My new companion is Elder Longoria and he is a stud. This guy is a convert of 2 years baptized his family right before coming out and is trying to walk on for BYU as a QB. Me and him both love to work and we are both working super hard. This week I've been especially grateful for the GPS on our phones and for ABP that can guide us to any member or potential or person we're teaching. It really does help the work quicken because without it we would be wandering not knowing where to go.
Something cool that we're doing that I've never done before is teach an English class. So all the Hispanic people that want to learn English so they can get a job come and take the English classes (gratis) and it's a great way to find people to teach.
Also another thing that is new to me is since the visitors center is in My zone we have half the VC hermanas in our zone. So my entire district is hermanas. It's just weird because ive never been in a zone where there are just as many hermanas as elders. So we will see how that goes.
Ok another cool experience is we got a call from the AP's on Friday night and they asked us elders are you doing anything Saturday morning from 9-2 so we told them, "just some studies." they asked us would you like to represent the mission at an event in the LAPD headquarters building? We said sure and then they were all like, "there will be media and news people there so wear your suits and look your best." So we got to go to this event and it was super cool. It was a huge service activity where we put together boxes to help people get established in their apartments who didn't have much money. (We may or may not have been on the news). Anyways the reason I thought it was cool was because the church has a mission for public relations and in whatever instance they can they develop good public relations with agencies, consulates, and countries. For example the queen of Ugandan was in the visitors center for national women's day and all the VC and public relations missionaries were there to establish that relationship with Ugandan. So some very important things are happening down in the city zone and I had no idea that things like this even happened because I was up in the valley for so long. So although I love the valley Im grateful for this new chance to serve the people here in South Central.
I live missionary work! I'm not sure if I've written that in an email but this is the best thing that I have ever done and I've fallen in love with the gospel of Jesus Christ and the ability it has to change hearts and bring true happiness in joy. There's no other place I'd rather be. Love you all so much have a great week!!
-Elder Gibbons
