May 4, 2015

Dear family,

It has been another busy week!  It seems like we had a lot of meetings this past week.  The meetings seem to take a lot of time, but we still saw some great things happen this week. 

We were able to have a lesson with our new investigator from last week, on Sunday.  I believe I already told you about her in my last letter.  In our first lesson we mostly answered her questions and briefly taught the restoration.  This time we finished teaching and retaught parts of the restoration.  The lessons went great!  As we were talking about prophets, she told us that that was something she learned while coming to church with her daughter.  She talked about how it makes sense that God would have a prophet now.  We taught her more about the Book of Mormon and invited her to read and pray to know if it is true.  She told us that she knew she needed to pray about it, and she knew she would receive an answer.  We invited her to be baptized at the end, but she said she wanted to learn more about Joseph Smith first.  We are probably going to take her to the Mesa Temple visitor center to see the Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration movie.  She asked us a couple of questions about baptism and told us that she has already been thinking about it.  I'm super excited to continue to teach her! 

We also had a couple lessons with the kid we met last Sunday at the park.  We had a couple lessons with him and even gave him a church tour, but he ended up going back to California.  He was super excited to meet with us and said he wanted to be baptized.  Hopefully the missionaries in California talk to him soon.  When we taught him the Restoration and we got to the part about the Book of Mormon, he stopped us and asked "Why did you guys stop to talk to me Sunday night?"  We weren't quite sure how to respond exactly because we talk to everyone.  I can't remember how we answered, but he then told us how he found a book like that at his house the other day.  I have no idea how he already got a Book of Mormon, but maybe some body gave it to him or a family member forever ago.  It is kind of cool that he found it just a couple days before we talked to him. 

We had a cool miracle happen this week.  There is an inactive family in one of our wards with a son who is not baptized.  We were walking through the neighborhood and saw the father throwing a football to his son.  We ended up talking to him for 15 minutes and passing the football around.  That was the first miracle because we heard that he didn't want any contact with the church.  As we were talking to him, a ward missionary in the ward was biking around the neighborhood and stopped to talk to us.  This ward missionary was just assigned to be in charge of scheduling our dinners and told us that while we were talking to the father.  At the end of the conversation with this inactive member, we asked if we could come back to get to know their family and share a message with his family.  He said they were really busy, but said they would sign up to have us over for dinner.  The miracle is I don't think it could have happened any other way.  If we knocked on his door he probably wouldn't have talked to us for very long.  If that ward missionary didn't stop by, he probably wouldn't have had the idea to have us over for dinner.  It's always amazing when we are put in the right place at the right time.  This truly is the Lord's work and we cannot do it without him.

We had the last expanded zone conference this week.  Pres. Nattress invited all the members who came to use Elder Anderson's apostolic promise to pray to know with whom to speak.  We are going to be following up with all the members who came and see if they have someone they want to share the gospel with.  We also had our normal zone conference this week.  It was another awesome zone conference!  I wish I could explain all the things we were trained on, but there isn't enough time to write it all.  At the zone conference we also got Tiwi in all of the mission cars.  I don't know if you already know what it is, but it's a box that keeps track of how good of a driver you are.  It tells you if you are driving too fast, don't have your seat belt on, or are driving aggressively.  I don't really know how to explain it, but you could probably look it up.  We also had our mission choir concert this week.  It has been a busy week.

I'm so grateful to be a missionary!  I love the gospel of Jesus Christ.  As we follow Jesus Christ's example, it brings so much joy, happiness, and love into our lives.  Thank you for all of your prayers.  I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy