Dear family,
It has been an amazing week! I can't believe it is November! This is when the really nice weather starts to happen. As soon as October was over the weather has been practically perfect. Except for the fact that I am use to the warm weather and I get cold really easily now. Last night as we were riding our bikes I was getting a little cold and Elder Bartlett could not understand why I was getting cold. For the next several months the weather is going to be great!
We had zone conference this week which is always great. There are so many things to learn from those meetings. I wish you could have just been there to hear the training because me explaining it wouldn't be as great. Pres. Nattress is a great teacher and tells us about things he has learned from the apostles. During his training he would say things like "Elder Scott teaches this really well." and "I heard Elder Ballard say..."
We also had stake conference this weekend. The Saturday evening session was about the work of salvation and there were some great talks given. They had a wide variety of talks about inviting neighbors, preparing to go on a mission, senior missions, and going to the temple. Also they asked one of our recent converts to speak and tell his conversion story. It was really neat to hear him tell his story. At the beginning he talked about how he was never really a spiritual kind of person and he told how he began to recognized Heavenly Fathers hand in his life. It was also really cool to hear him bear his testimony at the end. I think a lot of the members enjoyed his talk. We are hoping to take him to the temple soon to do baptisms for the dead.
The Sunday morning session was also amazing. The first half hour of the conference the stake president spoke and they did the stake business. The next hour and a half was a broadcast from Salt Lake to 97 stakes in Arizona. A seventy, a counselor in the general young women's presidency, Elder Christofferson and Pres. Uchtdorf spoke. They gave some really amazing talks. Elder Christofferson talked about being truly converted and Pres. Uchtdorf talked about the temple and having a temple recommend. He compared the temple recommend interview to a pre flight check list. The whole stake conference was great. Our 94 year old investigator came Saturday night and Sunday morning. It sounded like she enjoyed it!
We went to the temple on Halloween like I mentioned last week. We were there from 4 to 9. We were able to do baptisms and confirmations, sealing children to their parents and a session. We were also able to do the baptizing. It was a awesome experience. It was the best Halloween. It didn't feel like we were there for 5 hours and I wanted to stay longer.
We had some lessons this week even though it was really busy. We taught a family with some young kids the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is always fun to teach kids, but it sure can be a little challenging. We also had a great lesson again with one of our investigators who is moving in a week or two. We had a great lesson with him and we showed a Mormon message that was perfect for him. He said he was waiting for an answer to his prayers so we were able to talk to him about how God answers our prayers. I was also able to do a baptismal interview this week for a 9 year old. That is always fun!
We also had a couple experiences this week that showed me how important it is to follow the spirit and rely on the spirit to show us where to go. This truly is God's work and he wants to help us with it. We were walking in our apartment complex and we were on our way to an appointment and we passed by someone that was waiting for a ride. We were late to our appointment, but I felt we really needed to go back. I kept of thinking about how we were late, but after a few more steps we decided to go back. We talked to the person and got their number. They would go to the YSA ward so we wouldn't teach them, but I'm glad we went back. Yesterday night we had a half hour left before we needed to go inside and we had four people that we could stop by that lived in the apartment complex. We decided to pray and we both felt like we needed to stop by one of them. We knocked on his door and he was just getting ready for bed, so we didn't talk to him very long. As we were walking away we ran into another one of the people we prayed about. We were able to follow up with him on his Book of Mormon reading. He didn't have a lot of time to talk either so we went by another name we prayed about. They weren't home so we went to the last name and we ran into him walking his dog and he told us to stop by soon. By the time we talked to him it was time to go in. So in a half hour we were able to talk to 3 of the 4 people we prayed about and two of them we ran into outside. Now if we didn't go in that order we probably would have missed most of them.
I'm so grateful to be a missionary! It really is an amazing experience and I'm enjoying every minute of it. It's not always easy of course, but it is amazing all the things that we learn. Thank you for all of your prayers. I love you all so much!
Love,
Elder Joshua Gandy
P.P.S Tell Hunter and Tayler thank you for the drawings!
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