mis-sion-ary (noun): someone who leaves their family for a short time so that others may live with their families for Eternity.

Monday, July 25, 2011

MORE PICTURES

FOOD FIGHT
BAPTISM #1
BAPTISM #2

THREE BAPTISMS THIS LAST WEEK

Hey there

To fill you in on the week, there is a surprise in here too..

So we did have both of our baptisms. The one on Wednesday was with Alisha Golsan she is 15, so the whole young womens sang the sisters in Zion song, for her and then they all went and had a movie night. SO that was pretty sweet. Then the baptism on Saturday happened, haha that was funny. So this guy that got baptized is literally crazy, he wanted to buy some refreshments for the baptism, so we were like, yeah cool man. he goes to the store and buys 5 types of ice creams, 5 different cases of soda, toppings for the ice cream. it all ended up to be 75 dollars worth of stuff. haha then the baptism was interesting, if you notice in the picture of him, he is wearing a shirt type thing under his baptism clothes yeah, he didn't want to take that off, at first he had a black shirt under and we told him he had to take it off. Then during the baptism, right before the closing hymn and prayer he gets up and walks to start getting some of the refreshments, haha so we essentially walked out of his own baptism. it was really funny.

But they both were baptized and confirmed so it was really cool and it has definately been a testimony builder for me that heavenly father is preparing people that are ready to hear the gospel. I read DC section 29 bout the elect, and these two that were just baptized are definately the elect.

So the surprise that i just found out about today, was that in the Eastlake ward ( my last ward) they just baptized one of the girls that i started teaching while i was there. The baptism was also yesterday. So last week i had a total of three baptisms. That would be kind of sweet if i could have that many every week for the rest of my mission!

Before i forget, i need a new SD card because my camera has like 15 more pictures that it can take before it is full, so if you could get more that would be legit.

You asked about Bobby, so i was on exchanges and I didn’t get to teach him, but Elder Smith went over there with a different companion, and they talked about the baptism and he said that he still wants to get baptized but he says that he doesn't think that he is ready. Its good though because he recognizes that it is a big commitment in his life, and so we will just try to help him over the next couple weeks, he should hopefully get baptized next transfer.

So yeah our transfers are in a week, i don't really know what is gonna happen. I think that i will probably stay and get a different companion cause he has been here for 3 transfers, but who knows with the new mission president. he doesn't really even know how long we've been here or where we have already served, so it would be sweet if he sent me back to Thornton as a zone leader.

Brother Olson called me today, he is going to Cheyenne and on the way back he is going to come visit me, so that will be pretty cool.

That is nuts that Bode is already 1 year old, tell him happy birthday for me, if he can even understand it. that will be cool.

So i sent you another picture and its of us and some of the singles ward in a food fight. It was pretty crazy. i borrowed some old guys clothes when i got to the house, and it smelled definately like old person. and he wears size 40 pants so that was cool. But the food fight was epic. There was soy sauce, peaches, salsa, hershey sauce, and the worst was pancake mix. That got in my ear and it crusted up and i was picking at it all night and some of the next morning. i wrecked the old guys clothes, but he didn't care, he is rich and he didn't really like those clothes anyways, so that was way fun.

How is the weather in Utah, its ridiculously warm outside. We went and did a mountain bike trail at a place called Devils backbone today,the place is super cool, you should check out some pictures of it. But it was ridiculously hot, the trail was difficult too, it almost wasn't even any fun, because it was 98 degrees when we were doing it..at 1200, right now its 100. I'm sick of the hot, living in the attic isn't the most spectacular thing ever either, its not that hot, but its definately never cool, and you know how i like it to be cool. oh well.

Anyways, that’s about all that i got for this week, so i hope that you guys had fun on your fishing trip, the pictures were cool, dad is looking super old cause he is 50 now, haha just kidding. Anyways, peace, love have a good week.

LOVE ELDER GNEHM

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

NEW PICTURES

ELDER GNEHM AND ELDER SHEPHERD
P-DAY FUN


CRAZY BUT GOOD WEEK

Crazy Week
So i'll fill you in on what has been going on this week.
So that less active family that i told you about, how they have been completely
activated again, they haven't missed a day of church since we went over to their
house. Their 15 year old daughter went on girls camp, and we invited her to be
baptized, so she is getting baptized this wednesday. (tomorrow) Its awesome, because
its a lot like what happened in thornton, we activated the less active guy Aaron and then we
baptized Brandi. and its the same deal here, so i think that working with the less active part
member families is the best way to go. The young women are going to be singing at Alisha's
baptism tomorrow, and she is solid, its gonna be awesome.
The crazy guy that i told you about last week. . We went over there almost every day and taught
all the lessons super fast, and he has been to church every week since we have seen him.
He is getting baptized this Saturday. He is pretty solid, he still is absolutely crazy, but he really
does have a strong testimony of the gopsel, and he definately is ready. There has been a lot of blessings
lately, with these baptism, that have just come out so fast. The ward is super excited right now too, because
this ward hasn't had a baptism for over a year. And just in this last month we are going to have 3 baptisms. Muy bien.
In the singles ward we still have Bobby set with a baptism date, he came to church this sunday and he seems a little
bit solid. We are going to have to work on this one a little bit but hopefully all goes well with it, so please pray for him,
his name is bobby billanueva. He comes to a ton of activities though, he went to another baptism and he came to the
singles wards date night, which is 3 dates in a day. haha he was so weirded out by that though, he's like and...their parents
know about this right? haha dating is completely different when its outside LDS. but he enjoyed it and so hopefully all will go
well with him. With Laura, we invited her to be baptized, but the langauge barrier is kinda hard, she didn't really understand
that getting baptized in the church here will be the same if she gets baptized in columbia. She has a strong testimony but
she doesn't completely undeerstand and its hard to teach, but we are going over there on friday for dinner, so hopefully we can
get her brother to teach it to her.
So yeah that is how the work is going right now. Its crazy good, its awesome right now. It definately keeps me excited,
and helps me to enjoy missionary work a lot.
As far as fun things going on. We went golfing yesterday with some old guy who is a non member. He's like 80 years old, but he
is a boss. He paid for all our stuff. I did suprisingly good for how long its been since i have played. I actually didn't do bad at all.
we did 18 holes and i ended with a 92. My drives were incredible sometimes, and i had like 4 or 5 putts that tiger himself would
be impressed with. It was way fun, i miss golfing a lot. It was good to do that.
Then right after, we went up with a couple people from the singles ward to Estes Park. I sent pictures of it. It was way cool up there.
we saw a moose and a ton of deer. It was so hard to breathe up their though. We walked up a hill and i was struggling. The whole reason that
we wanted to go up there was to get a picture with the sign that says how high it is. But the trail to get up to the very top was closed. So we
only made it to 11750 ft. But it was still cool, the trail ridge road up to there is super pretty, and i got some good pictures. Estes is a cool
city too, we didn't spend much time there but i want to go back and check out the shopping stuff.
So yeah it was a really good week, so this week we just have to get those baptisms underway, and make sure that they happen,
and it will be even better.
Thankyou for putting my pictures on facebook, if you want to put these new ones that would be awesome thanks. :)
Well i gotta run, love you have a good week, by the way i haven't gotten a package in a while :) haha
love ya bye
ELDER GNEHM

Monday, July 11, 2011

CRAZY INVESTIGATOR

FAMILY
haha that stinks that dad got poison ivy. that sounds miserable. how is dads work and stuff going? i sent him a letter last week
with pictures of the testosterzone but he never wrote me back, jerk. just kidding but seriously.
Lucky, i want to go golfing so bad. But i can tell you a story that happened this week.
So remember how i told you about the inactive family that has been coming back and they brought the non member to church
last sunday. yeah so we went over to his house this week, his name is tyrone. haha he is absolutely nutsss.
We spent 3 hours at his house, yeah we didn't mean to but a lot of crazy stuff happened. so he just got a horse, and he doesn't know
how to take care of a horse at all. he was like elbowing it trying to get it to go a certain direction. so he was like alright lets take my
horse for a walk. so we did. he was just talking crazy the entire time. then we got to some mountain side, and he';s like check out
the fossils in these rocks...there were no fossils, it was like dirt. The whole time he was talking about his dad that lives next to him
and about how his dad is out to "get him" He said that his dad has threatened him, and he also said that like 5 other people have
threatened to kill him also. haha yea we don't know if its true or if he's off his rocker. But the reason that i told you this was because
we were trying to leave and get home, because we were already there forever. Then he's like hey i just got a new taylor made golf club,
do you like golf? haha yes. so he lives off in the mountains all by himself secluded from the real world obviously. ANd he gets a sack
of golf balls, and we just start hitting golfballs down into the valley from his back yard. haha. It was awesome, and it made me want to go
golfing really bad. anyways yeah that was my crazy experience for the week. But we met with the guy again, he came to church again
and he really wants to be baptized, and so we are just working on the lessons right now and if nothing goes wrong he should be getting
baptized within the next two weeks.
We got another new investigator in the singles ward. Her name is laura. she is from columbia, she speaks very little english but she refuses
to take the discussions from spanish missionaries because she wants to learn her english. She is awesome though, we taught lesson 2 and 3
about the plan of salvation and the gospel of jesus christ, and she seems pretty solid. Her fellowshipper was telling us that the concern that
is going to be the biggest problem is coffee. because she is from columbia where the grade a coffee is from. So hopefully she can get over that
but she moves back to columbia next month so we will have to be swift. haha she is funny though and she has a little 14 year old brother named
niko, and we went to a ward barbaque in lyons. Both of them were playing frisby and volleyball for the first time and it was hilarious.
but Lyons, it an awesome place. It is really close to estes park which by the way we are going to next week. but in lyons we were at meadow park
and the mountains that were surrounding it were awesome. I want to go back there for another p day and try to find some sweet hiking trails.
WOw that seems weird that callie knight is getting married, didn't the knighton girl get married too? who else is getting married and getting
there mission calls? is brayden christensen planning on going on a mission. pierce wrote me about 2 months ago and said that he was at church
with an emo girl and they were all over each other the whole time. sounds pretty filthy. how is gavin and kyle and taylor doing, are they still
trying to be cool, and not going to church?
haha to answer your question if it would be weird if things worked out with them. yes. but it would also be pretty cool because i dont need to learn who she is that much, because I already know her, and so that was good. It took me a little while to warm up to jess..haha just kidding.
you can tell her i told you that.
Can you do me a favor though, either you or derek or jess, if you could put the pictures that i have emailed to you, on my facebook, that would be awesome.
i always have members that tell me that they have looked at my facebook, and if i could have a ton of pictures from my mission on there that would be
pretty sweet. so please. Do i have to commit you and promise blessings? cause i wont.
Welp, i should probably get running, love ya, have good week, be safe, play lots of golf and tennis without me, see what i care.
haha chao.
love elder gnehm.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

FOURTH OF JULY PICTURES


FOURTH OF JULY

What up familia
Hey whats crackin? so this week was a pretty dang busy week for us, there was a lot of stuff that happened.
So yeah Friday was definately interesting, we got a call from some missionaries to help this guy move in our area,
so we went and met the people at some storage unit. and there were about 6 of them. Come to find out that every
single one of them was deaf. I don't know if you know, but its hard to know where to move boxes to when you cant
understand sign language. But it didn't stop them from trying to talk to us in sign language anyways. So yeah that was
crazy, i was definately singing count your many blessing that whole day.
Saturday we did meet President Toombs. He is from Logan utah. He is super cool guy. He just comes over to me the
first time i meet him and he's like hey man hows it going, and gives me some sort of bro hug that young guys do...you
wouldn't understand.. haha. but yeah he seems like a really good guy, he's down to earth and he's not as straight down
to business as president ely was. He was eating lunch with us too, and he was crackin jokes it was cool. In Zone Leader
Conference not too much changes were made, the only thing thats crazy is that next transfer every companionship
in the mission is getting a portable DVD player to watch the district dvds and the proselyting dvds like the restoration and such.
So yeah that will be interesting to see how that goes, and see how long it will be before our first problem happens with that
with some dumb missionaries. (probably soon)
Sunday we had the confirmation of our baptism that we had a couple weeks ago. It was good, haha but then she was like
Elders come here i have somethning thats been weighing on my mind all day. We were like oh great i hope she didn't drink
coffee or something. But she tells us how she woke up at 330 in the morning the day before by the sound of a trumpet
and she woke up looked out the windows at the stars and heard a voice say the marines have saved you. haha . so
i don't know exactly what that means, but it was cool..i guess? I dont know if i already told you this but there is a less active
that was offended in utah and we went there one day not knowing anything about them and they let us in. (apparently for the last couple
of years they have been super anti and yelled at everyone that comes over from the church) but we went in not knowing anything and
we talked and they came to church and have been there the last 3 weeks and are super excited about it now. haha they even brought a
non member to church on Sunday who wants to know more. haha so yeah less actives are doing more work then the active members
there is something wrong with that. but cool nevertheless.
And yesterday was a way fun 4th of July. We went to a breakfast with the ward in the morning, and got to know some people.
Then we spent the day with the berezay family.remember that family i told you that was stalking me. yeah them. haha they are probably
reading this so it will just make them mad, which makes me happy for some sick reason.. ALso i'll mention the Hawkins family because they are probably stalking me too, so i'll talk about them to make them happy. They are a cool fam, that made us funnel cakes, i don't know what it is either, and it was weird but it was actually pretty good. but anyways, yeah we went to their cousins house
and played some tennis with people, played corn hole. I don't know if you know what that is but you throw a bean bag into a hole. haha it sounds
pretty lame, but its actually kind of fun. its like horseshoes, with a bean bag. But it was super hot yesterday, i was dying.
But we stayed with them the whole day, and yeah we got to watch them light off some fireworks, and there were tons of people around us doing
some illegal ones so it was actually exciting. But a guy with us threw an m-80 (small dynamite) into a sewer, haha it was the loudest thing
I have ever heard in my life, it like shook the ground from across the street. It was cool. But yeah we hung out all day, and did that
i'll send some pictures of that, and also the cake. and also some pictures for dad of the guy in our ward who shot the worlds largest
moose. so show him those.
About alan coming to see us, i'll have to ask our mission president and see what he says, haha i have no idea. tell blaine fowler to take us our when he comes to fort collins to do sport games though.
Anyways, i gotta run but i'll get some pics. So i love you guys and hope you guys have a good week. BYE
ELDER GNEHM