Arizona Gilbert Mission

Gilbert is a technology mission. I guess most missions are now, but we have smartphones. We were actually the first mission to ever get smartphones. We were the pilot mission, but you will be in charge of buying an approved smartphone before your mission. It will have all the church protections and filters on it and whatnot, but I suggest like brushing up or like starting to get familiar with the safeguards for using technology. It can be found on the Gospel Library app. That will help you a lot to adjust to using technology in a different way than you ever have before. That's a big thing is use technology for the Lord's work and you'll be able to avoid the distractions and the temptations.

I served Spanish-speaking and one of my biggest questions was like, do you actually get to serve Spanish-speaking? And yes, you do. President Wheeler, at least, was really good at keeping the Spanish missionaries Spanish their whole mission. There were only 14 of us in the whole mission and there's like three and a half-ish units, wards that you can serve in. There's Santan, there's Queen Creek, and there's Gilbert up north. There's Pueblo that we share with the Mesa mission. And I think that's it. So you'll serve in those wards your whole mission. I switched around a lot. So I was in, I started in Queen Creek, then I went to Gilbert, then I went back to Queen Creek, then to Santan. But you could stay, I had a companion that stayed in the same ward for 14 months, so you never know. But it's just so fun to see the people progress and you really get to know the wards and it's the greatest. And you'll really get to know the missionaries too.

There's a lot of members in the Gilbert mission. It's, they call it like Provo South. There's, it's a high saturation of members, so they were really pushing when I was there, working effectively with members. So start brainstorming of different ways that you can get the members involved and excited to do missionary work, and try and think of ways that you can be effective in doing it, because just going by and stopping and chatting for 20 minutes isn't going to be effective as, like, taking them out with you to, to see what missionary work is, or, or asking for referrals, or visiting their neighbor, you know, like, so try and, try and bring, brainstorm ways that you can take advantage of all the members in, in Arizona, and use, use that to further the work of the Lord.

For biking, for sisters, if you're wearing a skirt, have like, they'll be like this little circle thing with a string and a clip. Clip that to your skirt, always helps to not have your skirt fly up or get tangled in your brakes for your bike at all. I know you have pants now, so pants are the easiest way for biking, but yeah.

Because a lot of people in Gilbert are ranchers, you'll pick up a couple of unique skills. I learned how to process and skin meat rabbits, as well as process chickens. I picked up the basics of roping. I had companions that learned how to brand, how to castrate, how to do all sorts of farm-related work. Things you wouldn't really think you'd pick up on your mission, but because of the unique atmosphere of kind of urban culture meets the cowboy culture that Gilbert has, you pick up a lot of interesting skills.

The service opportunities in Gilbert vary a lot. It tends to be a lot of ranching stuff. A lot of people in Gilbert have horses or goats, so a lot of the service tends to be down-and-dirty yard work or mucking out stalls, things of that nature. You do get a fair amount of helping elderly folks. A lot of people like to be snowbirds in Gilbert, so there's a lot of Canadians that come down during the winter in Canada, and they'll go down to Gilbert for the summer. So you get a lot of opportunities to help people there as well as a lot to help people out on their little homesteads or ranches.

You'll usually live in houses with other sisters. Elders lived in apartments sometimes, or there's some sisters that lived in apartments too, just the two of them. But mostly it'll be houses with at least four or six sisters. I lived with six sisters most of my mission, and it's just a blast. You get to know them so well, and it's so fun to come home at night and exchange stories and all the shenanigans that go on. It's just a blast.

A lot of people wonder about music because it's different with every mission president. I was with President Wheeler, who has since come home, so it might be different with the new mission president, but his basic rule of thumb was if you and your companion can feel the spirit, if it invites the spirit, then you can listen to it. So we were allowed to listen to like the EFY soundtracks. I love those ones, or even some like it depends on your companion too, and it depends on your preferences. Some like Christian, good Christian rock, or not rock, but Christian, you know like the Christian non-denominational songs that are just all about Jesus and so nice. So we could listen to that kind of stuff. We could listen to obviously tabernacle choir and hymns and instrumentals and stuff, but he was pretty relaxed, but it might be different with the new president.