December 22, 2014

Dear family,

We have had a busy week!  On Thursday we had a mission temple trip.  All of the missionaries in the mission went to the temple in the morning and afterward we took a picture as a mission in front of the Gilbert temple.  Right after the temple trip we had interviews with President Nattress.  On Friday we had our Christmas mission conference.  They made us dinner and we had a couple activities.  After that we had a devotional that was really amazing.  I'll have to tell you more about what we did when I call on Christmas. 

We were also able to have quite a few lessons this week.  It is always really exciting when you have many opportunities to have lessons.  We had a couple lessons with M. this week.  She is just preparing for her baptism on January 3rd.  We are almost done teaching all of the lessons.  She also came to a baptism of someone else that was being baptized in the stake.  We also have another investigator and we had our second lesson with her.  She said she was thinking about being baptized in February.  February is a little far away, but at least she is thinking about it.  She came to church on Sunday with her twin boys who are 5.  She also came to a baptism of someone in the stake on Saturday.  So we actually went to two baptisms on Saturday.  We also had a couple unexpected lessons with friends of youth in the ward.  One youth invited a non member friend for dinner when we came for dinner.  Another youth invited their friend to a fireside our mission had on Sunday.  We also had a lesson with a less active member in the singles ward.  He hasn't been to church in probably ten years.  He has a lot of questions and he takes notes in our lessons.  It is really cool to teach him because you can tell that he really wants to learn and know for himself.  He is so sincere in wanting to learn. 

That fireside that I mentioned was something that our mission does every month.  They have a couple recent converts speak and a member of the mission presidency speaks.  They are always really great, even when everyone is nervous that the recent convert is going to say something strange.  One of the converts we taught earlier in my mission actually was one of the recent converts that spoke this time.  It was really cool to hear him speak again like he did in stake conference a little while ago. 

This is going to be one of my shorter emails.  We don't have as much time today to email.  I'll talk to you on Christmas though and tell you more.  I was typing fast so hopefully my grammar isn't too bad. It is amazing to be a missionary and I'm grateful every day for this opportunity.  There isn't anything I would rather be doing.  It's a wonderful time of the year to teach about Jesus Christ and the gift that He is from our Heavenly Father.  Thank you for all of your prayers.  I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy