Lessons from Elder Giforos

 

 These last four months have been the best in my life. I am extremely grateful that I am serving here in Pontevedra and that I was able to be trained by Elder Giforos. I wanted to share this week some of the lessons that I have learned from him over the past months.

1 Open your mouth and share. As we are willing to open our mouths and have prepared ourselves always the Lord will fill it. Whether it is out contacting in the street, teaching a lesson, participating in a Sunday School class or in whatever other moment the important thing to do is to open our mouths. When we do this we can feel the Spirit guiding us in the things that we should do. I admire Elder Giforos for always being willing to open his mouth to share even when it is hard. He was always sharing the feelings of his heart with those around him.

2 Have a purpose in what you are doing. If you don't know what your purpose is why would you ever do it? When we can see the vision for our lives, for the area that we are working in, for our investigators we can then understand what we need to do to accomplish that purpose. When we lose that vision or purpose in our work we are not effective.

3 Love is the key. We first have Love for the Lord and then for our
fellow man then we will be effective servants of the Lord. I saw this this last week as we went to visit a member of our Rama who has health problems. When we got there he was visibly shaking and very sick. We sat down with him and tried to calm him down, made him some food to eat, gave him a blessing but still he was not doing well. Eventually he agreed to let us call an ambulance that came and picked him up and took him to the hospital. I am grateful for that moment that we had to be instruments in the Lord's hands. As we went and visited him at the hospital over the next couple of days I felt so much love for him and I saw the way that my companion worked with love for this great member. The member has recovered and is doing better resting in the hospital for a couple of days. I am grateful for Elder Giforos and all that he has taught which is far more than I could ever put in any letter.

I look forward to meeting my new companion tonight, Elder Bartholomew who actually went to High School with Elder Giforos. I look forward to being able to see a different way of doing missionary, work to learn from another great missionary.

Our investigator Victor could use your prayers to help him continue feeling the spirit and have desires to be baptized. Pili is amazing, as always she has really great questions and continues learning and understanding the doctrines. It is like light bulbs of understanding
keep going off.

I am grateful for all of you and your prayers on my behalf and on the behalf of those we have the opportunity to teach.
Love,
Elder Gustafson

Burger time!

Selfie with friends!