July 7, 2014

Dear family,

It has been an exciting week!  We started the week with our mission activity on Monday and we all went to the temple on Tuesday morning.  It was a really neat experience to be there with everyone in the Gilbert temple.  The last time the whole mission went to the temple was around Christmas time and we went to the Mesa temple.  After the temple we all met in the stake center right next to the temple and had a devotional with the temple president and matron.  They also showed us a tour they had come up with that they are going to start doing at this stake center right next to the temple.  The tour will involve walking around the temple and touring the really nice new stake center.  They made the stake center look really nice.  It's almost like a visitor center you can put up and take down.  I think they said we couldn't call it a visitor center for some reason.  After the devotional we all split up into zones and had a short zone meeting and then we had lunch there with the mission.  After the lunch we all went outside to take a picture as a mission in front of the temple.  It was a little warm in suits, but I'm sure the picture will be really cool!

We got a new investigator this week and he accepted the invitation to be baptized!  He is going to be baptized at the end of July.  He is divorced and has a 6 year old daughter.  He came as a member referral and we taught him in the members home.  He is really excited to be baptized and has been telling people about his baptismal date.  He came to church and when people asked him if he was visiting he told them he planned on coming from now on.  Usually investigators don't drop out of the sky like this guy, but it's exciting when they do. 

I saw a good size dust storm this week!  It happened on Thursday.  Apparently it was on the news.  I got a couple pictures of it in the distance.  We didn't have a good view of it, but you could see the cloud of dust.  We just went inside the church and waited till it blew over.  It actually didn't last that long which was good, because we had people we wanted to visit.  I still want to see a really big dust storm.  If you're wondering we didn't really do anything exciting for the 4th of July.  It was a pretty normal day except we had to go in at 7 just for safety reasons. 

I'm so grateful for the chance I have to be on my mission.  I feel like I'm learning and growing so much.  I really believe that when we bear our testimony it grows and I'm grateful to do that every day.  I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that through him we can be cleansed from sin and return to live with our Heavenly Father.  I'm grateful for the peace the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings to our lives.  I love you all so much!  Thank you for all of your prayers.

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy

Here are a couple pictures of the dust storm.