July 29, 2013

Here are some excerpts from Joshua's most recent e-mail:

Weeks go by really fast when you're in the mission field.  I can't believe it's already Monday again and that I've been out a month.  Everything is going great here.  We have been visiting a lot of member families this week.  In the past three weeks we have visited or at least introduced ourselves with 52 member families and have taught 24 of those families the restoration.  During the day we either tract, visit members, talk to people on the streets, or look for opportunities to serve people, but right now not a lot of people go outside.  Since it is so hot in Arizona many people are on vacation to places that are cooler, but school starts early here so people should be on their normal schedules soon.  I don't know why, but all the school start on August 7th.  The Brighton ward is amazing and all the members are so great! I'm so excited to work with all of them.

No one did anything to celebrate pioneer day here.  I didn't even realize that it was pioneer day until I was writing in my journal that night.  Since it is so dry and hot many places don't let you do fireworks so that's why I'm guessing they don't do anything big.  Also, I'm guessing a 1/3 of the city is on vacation so there are not a lot of people plan a big celebration.

We have been doing a lot of the same things over the last couple weeks so I don't have anything out of the ordinary to tell you about the missionary work in my area.  It's hard only having one ward so we are trying to come up with more ideas to move the missionary work forward.  

I did have a cool experience though this week.  One night while we were riding home through the neighborhood we were coming to a turn in the road.  The turn was kind of dark and as we were getting closer it made me a little nervous.  It wasn't a very long stretch of darkness, so I thought it would be fine as long as we went fast around this corner.  As we are coming around the corner in the darkness my companion decides to stop to write something down in his planner. As soon as he decides to stop a street light that was out turned on.  So we stopped under this street light.  As soon as we started to pedal away the street light turned off again.  The whole time we could see that dark corner that streetlight did not even flicker.  I know Heavenly Father looks out for his missionaries.  I don't know if there was any reason for me to be nervous, but it at least made me feel better.

Thank you so much for all your prayers.  I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Joshua Gandy

P.S. While we were riding to our area yesterday, we saw a huge behive in a tree.  It was probably about the size of a basketball.  I wish I could of took a picture of it but I didn't have my camera.