11/18/13

Dear Family,

This week has been fun and uplifting. We have 3 new investigators this week, Vic, Alicia, and Emily. Vic is a guy we found as we were walking on Tuesday. We went back and taught him the Restoration on Friday, He read and seems interested in learning more. Alicia is a referral we got from a lady in our ward, well she told us about Alicias husband and so we went to find their house, we had a general idea. We talked to Alicia and she was sick but told us to come back on Sunday. So yesterday we met with her. She is from the Philipines and knows the two sisters in our ward who are Fillipino, and knew they were Mormon, she didn't know we were Mormon at first. We talk about how God is our loving Heavenly Father and that he wants us to live with Him forever and then we taught the Plan of Salvation. We pull out our pamphlet, and she was like "I have one of those somewhere!" so She has been introduced to the church, but we didn't even know it. She loved what we taught her. It was cool to think that we went over to meet them, and they had already been introduced to the Gospel. I don't know the whole background but I think that she is ready now to hear more. Emily is 17 and her sister just joined the Church in March. Right now she just wants to learn more, but has seemed to really like it. We had a potential investigator named Meto, we set up an appointment and went over there on Sat, her mom said that "she's 15 and doesn't study with Mormons". That was so sad for us. When we asked Meto if we could teach her, she said yes right away.. One day she will be able to learn. On Thursday we were in Joshua Tree and we got to our appointment early so we decided to walk around the area for a few minutes. We saw an old man walking his dog and so we talked to him. anyways he was like I'm not really a religeous person... I asked him if he knew anyone who would benift from the message of Jesus Christ. He started telling us about how his neighbor could then goes on about how he's thought about learning and going to a Mormon Church.A lot of people think we are Jehovah's Witness out here, which is probably what he thought.. We were like "We're Mormnon!" Long story short haha he said he would be at church on Sunday. He didn't end up coming, but it was still a cool experience.

Saturday was the best day ever, besides not being able to meet with Meto. We had our mission conference at the mission office. It was so cool to have all of us there. It was good to see all of the missionaries I knew from the MTC, but the best part was the things that we learned. There were a lot of rumors about some big announcement, but there wasn't one. The purpose was to unite us as a mission. We talked a lot about our goals and what we can accomplish as a mission. Another thing that I loved was just keeping it simple. We have been challenged to teach 5 minute lessons and to keep it simple. The Spirit will be there as we teach simply, when we get complicated, the spirit leaves. It was a great reminder that we are teaching people not lessons. President Madsen, talked to us about how we are God's warriors and how he will fill our mouths Jer. 1:5-8. We may be young but we are powerful.  President Miskin,(cool story, some of the boys in my EFY group like 5 years ago are from Redlands and Yucipa and President Miskin is one of their dads.) talked about being obedient. There were so many cool stories shared. I learned a lot about what I can do better in this area right now. I am really excited for what is happening. There was so much more, but my notes are at home.. :(

I love you all and hope all is going well!

Love,

Sister Kellee Gardner