September 8, 2014

Dear family,

It has been an eventful and exciting week!  First, we had transfers!  My new companion is Elder Bartlett.  He is from Saratoga Springs, Utah.  That will be my fourth companion from Utah.  There are a lot of missionaries from Utah.  He just graduated this year and something interesting about him is that he likes to ballroom dance.  I guess he did competitions and stuff like that.  He is really excited to be here and get to work!  He is not shy and is very out going. 

We started teaching a new investigator this week.  We first met him at the ice cream social that the ward did.   He requested to take the missionary lessons so we set up our first appointment early this week.  We ended up meeting with him three times this week!  After each lesson he tells us thank you for coming and says that he is excited to learn more.  He is wanting to move into the ward really soon.  Unfortunately if it's going to be a while till he moves, we are going to give him to the missionaries in his area so they can baptize him there.  We are hoping to find out this week if he is going to be moving or not.  The ward mission is really excited since the week before the ward mission leader was telling everyone that he felt there was someone ready right now.  They are also excited to see something happen from the social they put together.  Not surprising at all, they are planning another activity at the end of the month.

We met with J. a couple times this week.  We had a great lesson with him before Elder Jewkes was transferred.  We read Alma 36 where Alma the younger tells his conversion and how he repented.  He really enjoyed reading it with us.  It's great to still see him grow in the Gospel.  He is looking for a job right now, but it's amazing how much faith he has that Heavenly Father loves him and he knows everything will be okay.

We also had dinner at a non members this week.  A couple weeks ago part of our district helped someone move from one apartment in our apartment complex to another apartment.  They wanted to make us dinner to thank us for helping.  We had a great dinner and we were able to share a message with them.  We weren't able to set up another lesson, but we invited them to our mission choir concert on Thursday.  We hope to see them there!

Overall it's been a great week with teaching and finding some new potentials.  I'm trying to get into training mode.  I realized it has been a while since I trained last or even served around a new missionary.  I'm really excited though, and I remember how much I learned the last time I trained.  I'm probably going to learn just as much this time too.  I'm grateful for all that I've learned on my mission, especially what I've learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I know it's true.  I believe I told you about the mission website arizonagilbertmission.com.  They had all the missionaries write their testimonies and they are putting it on the website.  I don't know how many are on the website yet, but it would be great to check out! 

Thank you for all of your prayers.  I love you all so much!  Hope you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy

P.S. So it rained a lot here last night.  It has been a while since it has rained that much.  It's kind of cool because a lot of parking lots and parks are flooded now.  On the way to email we saw some kids swimming in a lake that use to be a park.  As soon as the sun comes out it should dry pretty fast.