October 6, 2014

Dear family,

I got the package and thanks so much!  I love all of it!  We all had a good laugh at the birthday card.  It sounds like you had a great trip to southern California!  Thanks for all the pictures. 

It has been a great week here in the mission field.  Conference weekend is the best!  I just loved every minute of it.  I can't wait to get the Ensign to read and study the talks.  We didn't have any investigators come to the church to watch conference with us, but there was a less active family that came for one session.  We talked to one of the newly baptised members  afterwards.  He watched every session of general conference and he loved it!  It's amazing to see people get excited about the gospel.  Even though we didn't have any investigators watch it, we are still going to invite them to watch the talks online.  Technology is great!  We don't really have a good excuse to not watch conference, because we can watch it whenever we want. 

We got a couple new investigators this week.  We were able to teach a young couple who actually went to the temple open house with us.  We haven't been able to teach them until now.  We taught them a part of the restoration and they invited us to come over for dinner and a lesson this week.  We also had a lesson with a man that we talked to on the street earlier in the week.  We were able to teach him the restoration and he said we could come back next week.  Finding new investigators is one of the hardest parts of missionary work, but nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach. 

We also had interviews with President Nattress this week, which is always great!  I also was able to go on exchanges with one of the elders in the district this week too.  We also found out today that we will be watching the Meet the Mormons movie on Wednesday.  I'm super excited to see it!  I'm guessing you have heard about that movie and how it is coming out in theaters.

I don't know if we are going to do anything special today for my birthday, but we are having a lesson with a couple  tonight.  We are going to teach them about temples and help them to start preparing to go to the temple.  I think that is a great birthday present for me.  I can't think of anything greater than to teach this family about how they can go to the temple and be sealed together as an eternal family.  That is the thing I'm looking forward to the most today!  It's amazing the blessing of the temple and the peace and joy it brings into our lives.  I'm so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings of the temple.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support!  I love you all so much!  Hope everything is going well and that you all have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy