Dear family,
It has been another exciting week! It seems like a lot of great things happened this week. I'm not quite sure where to start.
We had a couple of lessons this week. We met with one of our investigators on Sunday and we taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They have to check his schedule, but he should have a date picked to be baptized by the end of this week. He is doing well and he will probably be baptized at the beginning of June.
We picked up a new investigator this week! There are converts in one of our wards and the wife's mother lives in the ward. Ever since I have been in this area, this convert's mother would come to church with them every once in a while. For the past couple months she has been coming to church every week. One time she brought her grandchildren when the parents couldn't come. She has even read all of the Gospel Principles manual. She watched general conference all by herself and loved it. We have been trying to teach her for a while, and we were finally able to set up an actual lesson. The lesson went well and she mostly wanted a couple of questions answered. We answered her questions and taught about the restoration and she agreed to start meeting with us. She says it will be hard for her to stop drinking coffee, but I'm sure she can do it.
We also found a great potential investigator last night. We just visited a member and we were on our way back to our apartment and we saw someone skateboarding at the park. It must have seemed a little strange, but we pulled over and started talking to him. Elder Anderson can skateboard so they talked about that. We started talking about the church and he said he has been thinking about going back to church. He said it was weird that we started talking to him because he was just thinking about that. We taught him a little bit and he said that was something that he wanted to learn more about. He was really excited about learning more. So we have a lesson set up with him tonight. Now the unfortunate thing is that he lives in California and is just visiting his dad for a week. Hopefully we can teach him while he is here and the missionaries in California can finish teaching him. It is one of those times where we were in the right place at the right time. He just happened to be visiting in Arizona and just happened to be at the park and we just happened to pull over and start talking to him.
Something really exciting happened on Saturday! Someone I taught my very first transfer in the Brighton ward was baptized. Since the Brighton ward is in the zone and is right next to my area, I was able to go to the baptism. She had been taught by a lot of missionaries. She probably took lessons for three years or so. Her baptism was great and the spirit was strong there.
We had an expanded zone conference on Tuesday and Thursday this past week. I was just in the musical number at the beginning, so we just had to be there at the start. The last expanded zone conference is Tuesday this week and this is the expanded zone conference that our stakes are invited to, so this one we will stay the entire time. This week we will have our actual zone conference on Thursday. We also had mission leadership council this week, which is always a great meeting. We talked about planning, Elder Holland's general conference talk, and all kinds of things. We also had stake conference in one of our stakes this past weekend. They had an incredible Saturday evening session. They did a video slide show of all the missionaries from their stake. They showed their picture and then showed a quote from one of their letters. I knew several of the missionaries before they left on their missions and it's neat to see some of the things that they have learned on their missions. I don't know if that made sense, but it was really cool.
Mom, sorry I didn't answer some of your questions from your letter. For some reason the letter didn't come until Monday, so I didn't see it until after I emailed. The weather here is still great! The past weekend a rain storm came in and cooled things down for probably the last time. April has been in the 80's and 90's, but this week it will probably be in the 90's all week. It will only be like that for a little bit though. I don't know when the mission is going to send you something, but I think I will be coming home on the June 23rd. There is still a lot of missionary work to do, so I'm not going to think about that, but that should be the day.
I wish I could include all the things that I'm learning and all the experiences that I'm having, but there are too many things to write and not enough time to write it all. One of the things I learned this week was something Pres. Nattress taught at MLC. He talked about how we always need to be testifying. You can always testify when you don't know what to say and you should always testify when you teach. When you share your testimony it can be the most powerful part of the lesson. If you find a discouraged missionary, they probably are not testifying. I know that Christ is our Savior and I know that this is Christ's church on the earth today. It's incredible to have the fullness of the gospel in our lives and to know we have a prophet on the earth today. Thank you for all of your prayers. I love you all so much!
Love,
Elder Joshua Gandy
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