02 Jul 2019

Scott H. Wilmarth
4943 Marilyn Dr
Holladay UT 84117
United States

Dear President Wilmarth,

We are pleased to report that Elder Abram Ashton Gubler a member of your stake, will soon be released from his mission.  Sister Phillips and I will miss Elder Gubler and have enjoyed getting to know such a fine young person.  We are so blessed to have such wonderful, and dedicated missionaries in the China Hong Kong Mission.

Elder Gubler's certificate of release is enclosed. He will be instructed to report to you to receive an official release.

We express our thanks to those who have made it possible for him to serve, especially to you, for your concern and kindness shown to Elder Gubler and his family.  The many months away from family and friends are a challenge for all missionaries but Hong Kong provides a wonderful opportunity to serve other children of our Heavenly Father.

We kindly ask that he be given frequent opportunities to share his testimony and an opportunity to serve as soon as possible. We know that you will assist him to re-adjust and pray that he may always remain faithful. We also hope that Elder Gubler will be given the opportunity to influence other young people to prepare themselves to serve in the mission field.

Thank you again for your assistance. May the Lord continue to bless you in your calling.

Sincerely,

Dennis L. Phillips, President
China Hong Kong Mission

The Last One

最後嘅你哋好

Well this week is my last week and it has been really bittersweet! I gave a talk/testimony on my last Sunday at church and it gave me a feeling i cannot describe. I don't have too much time today but I just want to say how much I have loved my mission and the people here so much! I love the gospel of Jesus Christ and am grateful for the atonement in my life. I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord for 2 years and surround myself with amazing people. I have learned so much these past 2 years.  Hard to put into words. I am very grateful for all those who have supported me through my mission and for those who have written me letters or emails or prayers on my behalf. It really meant so much to me and made a huge difference in how I felt. So I would just like to thank you all for your love and support.

My home coming talk will be on August 18th at 12:00 pm at the Milo Way chapel. I would love to see you there.

Elder Gubler

古長老

你哋好吖

This week has been full of windows. We did a lot of street contacting windows. But so far not too many people have had real interest. We ask them if they have interest to hear a message and then they say yes so we share a message and ask if they would want to meet again later to hear more and they say yes. But then for some Unkown reason every person doesnt answer our Phone calls or our texts. It has been a little frustrating because we teach a lot of lessons but havent seen any success. We dont know what we are doing wrong. It has just been a little bit frustrating lately because the people that we meet say they are interested and then they never contact us again. It has happened the whole time we have been here. So we are trying different finding styles to see how they work.

Other than that we have been doing good. Jackie has been improving and he came and watched a baptismal service this week so that was really good for him! I think it will help him know what to expect when he gets baptized. He just has some friends that also want him to join their church so we are trying to help him understand the importance of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon more.

I am trying my best to keep working hard until the end. I really love the change the mission has bought to me. And i really love that i have gained a deeper understanding of the love. I love my family. I love the people here. I love my companion. And i love my mission. Before my mission i thought i knew how to love the people in my life but then because of my mission i have loved them through the eyes of Christ. And that has been a huge difference. I sincerely want to help the people here to get to know Christ and his love. This change has been huge for me. I have been working on obedience this last week and it has been a good experience. It feels good to be exactly obedient and sometimes for me that is hard. Because i have also been studying a out moral agency i think the choice to be exactly obedient has become easier. And it feels good. I feel more of Gods love and light in my life. So that has been a very cool thing that i have been working on this week.

I am very excited for the future. I am very thankful for all that i have learned on my mission and i am very thankful for the opportunity to change. To continuously improve. That means so much to me. And i am very thankful for the 

Opportunity that i have to be able to improve. I am not perfect. I am far from it. But i love the gospel.

Elder Gubler 古長老

 

 

你哋好啊

This week has been super cool. We were able to meet with a bunch of cool people. Including a less active family. They are a bit older and the wife is not a member but it was super spiritual because when we taught them the husband was really telling the wife how much he wanted her to be baptized so they could enjoy an eternal family in God's kingdom. And it made the lesson so much more spiritual. The reason why he doesn't come to church is because he has been weak. He has to go get surgery this week but after the surgery we are planning on visiting them again and see how they are doing.

These past 3 days I have been pretty sick. A little dizzy and been coughing. It made it hard to do the windows that we had scheduled but i tried to do them and i am still alive after haha. But this week we were able to accomplish our 10 windows and 10 contacts per day and read the Book of Mormon daily. And it has been interesting because we have been teaching a lot of street lessons to people who want to hear a message and seem like they are prepared but then later when we try to contact them they don't reply and answer our calls. It has been frustrating because we have found and taught a bunch of people but none of them have replied at all.

This week we have been extremely busy. To fit in all the windows, we haven't done any studies. We normally have time for personal study, but the other two studies we have had struggles to fit in. But we have been able to accomplish the 10 windows per week.

That is pretty much all that has happened this week. I am so grateful for my mission. It is an experience that i wouldnt change for anything. I have learned so much. And overall i have grown closer to the Savior, felt his love for me. And I in turn have loved the people of Hong Kong. This is something that i could have never learned on my own if i didn't serve a mission.

Elder Gubler 

Hello Everyone,

This week has been pretty good! I didnt have any time to write last week. But here is what has happened. I have moved areas. And me and my new companion, (黃長老), who is from hong kong, have white washed the 尖沙咀 and 九龍城 areas. We cover two wards here and we are in like more of the city part and so recently we have been getting lost because the city here is so big! Bigger than anything in america and yet it still isnt the biggest city in hong kong. But it has been fun. Just me and my companion live in our apartment which is a huge change because normally we there are 6 missionaries crammed into one tiny apartment that is smaller than my room in america but now we have the whole apartment to ourselves and it is pretty good! 

This week we have met with a lot of less active members. The previous missionaries were working with a lot of LAs so we just met them all. We have had about 3 lessons every day which had been super busy because we combined two areas. None of the investigators are really close to Baptism though but we will keep working on it with them. I am excited to be here and the wards seem super great. 

I Think that is enough writing haha ill just let the pictures do most of the talking. 

古長老

 Playing darts in a clubhouse and chilling in a theater.

Saying good bye to Elder Siddoway.

 My new companion, Elder Wong from Hong Kong.

A picture of the harbor from the harbor walkway.

 Moving to TST

Hello,

Hey, I don't have too much time to write this email but here I go. So this week we got our transfer calls and I will be moving to TST which is in the middle part of Hong Kong. I am pretty excited but also really sad because I have to leave Elder Siddoway. I really learned a lot from him and we worked really hard. I originally thought I would be trunky with him but we ended up working really hard. 

In my new area I will be white washing two areas and be put with a companion from Hong Kong. So hopefully my Chinese will improve more. I am very excited. 

I am also very sad to be leaving some of the people we have taught here. We have med a lot of good people which have been really fun to try to help them understand the gospel. The ward has been really great too!

This week we also had a meeting with President Ballard and it was super cool. He talked a lot about putting in our all and being worthy to have the Lord be able to trust us. It was super good. I learned a lot. 

That is pretty much it for the week. 

Elder Gubler 

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!

First off I want to say happy mother's day! My mom has played a huge role in my life. So thank you.

But this week was really interesting we did a lot of work and trying to find more people but I think this week I got rejected more times than I have on any other time in my mission. People were just sour towards us and we even did a mother's day find with posters that said "why do you love you mother?" and people were supposed to fill it in but people just didn't even want to talk to us doing that either. So I think both Elder Siddoway and I were pretty discouraged from all that.

But on the other hand we had met with a few cool people and investigators. For example we met with Ian who is from Cantonese speaking portion of mainland and he said that he has thought about being baptized but sadly he said that he might not have another opportunity to come back to Hong Kong for a couple of months. But him and his friend that were back in mainland both really liked what we were teaching. So we taught him the gospel of Christ and then gave him the address of the Kowloon Tong chapel and the phone number of the office and told him if he wants to be baptized he can go down to Kowloon tong. We also told him that we might not be here the next time he comes down but there would be missionaries here as well. He really sincerely thanked us. It was honestly so spiritual. I never seen someone like him before. It was very good for me and it was sad for me because I know he has to go back to mainland but i felt like everything would be ok.

For my spiritual experience I read an interesting talk and it had a quote from Les Miserables that said, "Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man." And this quote really stood out to me. It is when Jean Val Jean stole the two candlesticks from the Bishop and that is what the Bishop told him. I thought it really had a lot of meaning to me. The Lord has saved us. But, we need to do all we can to become and "honest man." I really like the thought of becoming an honest man. It has so many different meanings to me. So that was cool.

See you all later

Elder Gubler

Zone Conference!

Hello!

This week was a pretty cool week! to start it off last Pday we played some volleyball on a sand court. Then this Tuesday we were able to go to Sai Kung and go on a boat to some of the islands that are out over there for zone conference. So our president shared the the spiritual stuff on the boat and on the island that we went to. It was all super fun and super spiritual. It wasn't like any other zone conference because normally we go to Kowloon tong chapel to have a meeting there. but this one was a lot more interactive. 

Then other thins that happened this week is that we met with the a super good investigator named Ian who is from mainland china but speaks perfect Cantonese so we have taught him but he comes down only for a few days a week because he tests down in Hong Kong but when we found him he was super golden. and he is honestly the perfect investigator. So we are hopping we can keep meeting him in the future because he does live in mainland which might make it a little hard to keep meeting. 

We also went to a lunch with our other investigator named Edward who is a 50 year old retired man and he is super cool. He came to stake conference with us this Sunday too. He is honestly super cool! 

another cool miracle of the week is that our mission is allowed to use Facebook now and within an hour of creating a Facebook I got a message from a random guy and he said that he wants to join our church and so we told him how but sadly he lives in the Philippines. but we were able to refer the missionaries that live near him to teach him which was super cool. I don't know how he found us or me but it was a pretty cool experience. 

that is pretty much it. 

Elder Gubler 

你哋好啊！

This week has been super fun! We started it off by going hiking with my recent convert from my last area and a few other people from my last area. It was super fun to see him and the others that i taught! 

Elder Siddoway and I have been working really hard too. Every day pretty much just in the streets of 粉嶺 looking for new people to teach. And on one of these days we happened to run into an person we knew in our ward that got baptized 3 years ago. We talked to him and he had some of the coolest experiences that I have heard on my entire mission. It was honestly just amazing and we really felt like the Lord had led us to meet him and help him out. It was honestly most amazing.

Later this week one investigator named Yao Ming invited us over to his house and we met his wife and he cooked us some way weird Chinese things and we ate and it was a good time we even got to share about families! It was super cool and he loves coming to our English class. He made us eat the fish eyeballs of the fish he cooked haha 

We met another person named Vincent and he is just a classic high school kid except for he is a bit older. And he has way long hair haha. He is super cool and he is just looking for a bit of direction in life so we are trying to help him out with that.

Also this week we had a family home evening after church on Sunday and that was super fun! Ate some really good food and then we shared a message and a played a small game which was really funny but fun! 

That is pretty much it. I have learned quite a lot on my mission. It has been interesting to see how I have changed. Elder Siddoway and I were talking about it this week but I feel like my personality is still the same but the way I think about things has changed. Just the way I view things and the way I see others. It has really been a change for the good so I am very thankful for my Heavenly Father to help me over come some pride and to change. 

That is pretty much all haha. 

Elder 古.

爭分奪秒！下次再傾下啦

你哋好

This week was a pretty good week. It was full of excitement. 

So this week was my last few days with Elder Wong. It was pretty cool and I learned so much from him. I learned a lot more about the atonement when I was with him and it was really rewarding. We didn't have many people to teach but I think what I learned about the atonement was necessary for me to learn before I can continue my missionary work. So in that sense it was super cool and really a blessing. 

I also got to go to 九龍塘 to pick up Elder Siddoway. And while I was there I got to see my MTC companion, Elder Nesbit, who came back to Hong Kong this week. It was so cool to see him and also another big testimony builder to see him come back and to really have a desire to serve the Lord. And then we got a picture of the original 4 squad that we had in the MTC (me, Nesbit, Clarke, and Siddoway) it was super cool. Then Elder Siddoway and I went back to  粉嶺.

It rained a lot out here but Elder Siddoway and I were out on the streets finding people. We met a few cool people that have interest. So hopefully it will turn out good!

That is pretty much it! I love you all! 

Elder 古

 

 

 Original 4 Squad from the MTC...below.