Dear Friends and Family,
To answer your questions on everyday missionary life... We live in a member's house, the Low's. We are related to them somehow, he said something like third cousins, twice removed. They are the nicest family ever! Sister Low reminds me of you, mom. She loves to cook, sew, garden (I have particularly enjoyed their strawberries, they are 100 times better than the ones in the store), and make EVERYTHING homemade. I told her that you two should meet up and become friends, which is convenient because they have a house in Phoenix! We live in the downstairs. We have dinner appointments almost every night, especially since I spiced up the sign up sheet so now it looks cute and bright and it just makes people WANT to sign up. ;)
We have a car, but we also do a lot of walking. We have 2 1/2 full walking days but also just walk if the appointment is close, we want to save kilometers on the car, or we want to tract on the way to an appointment! We are also getting bikes today from a member family. Thankfully my companion is up to getting up and going bike riding in the morning, they have some really pretty biking paths really close to our house. I'm not yet authorized to drive, but I should get the call any day now. The weather is bi-polar. The saying around here is "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes" and it'll change. It's really true. Yesterday is was about 20 degrees Celsius, so very nice weather, and then it got stormy... and we had walked about 45 minutes to a dinner appointment. I send a picture... I was freezing. Everyone here thinks it's funny how cold I get already. I'm nervous about January! (Everyone also makes fun of my Arizona accent, I didn't even know I had one...)
I LOVED flood cleanup. I know I will remember that experience for ever.
On Saturday, we attended our District leader's last baptism before he leaves in a couple of weeks. He's a Mandarin speaking elder, so the baptism was in Chinese. Let me tell you, the church is still true in Chinese. It was amazing. We were the minority, so we got to wear the translator headsets!
We teach a lot of in-actives and by doing so, I have been keeping up on my lawn-mower skills! We help an elderly, in-active lady with her lawn and garden on Saturday mornings, it's actually a lot of fun! One less-active girl that we are teaching is named, Ariah. She's divorced and has a four year old. She wants to go through the temple at the beginning of the year, so we've been working with her. She has really cool spiritual experiences and knows that the gospel is true... Satan just really knows her weak spots, but as she's been reading her scriptures she's becoming stronger. One of my favorite people to talk with is, Bro. Lah. We visit him every Sunday night. He is a convert from Slovania and he is so strong and uplifts us every time.
It's been really neat meeting people from all over the world! I've taught people from Germany, Scotland, Slovania, England, Ireland etc.
We had a successful week tracting as well! I guess when you rely on the Spirit to tell you where to go and who to talk to you're bound to have success. I found 2 men (probably in their early 30s) that look promising and we are going back to teach them and their families later this week! Can't wait :)
One more thing, Karen, our investigator canceled on us on Friday because she got a migraine... doesn't she know the only medicine she needs is the gospel?! But we are teaching her tomorrow and we both separately felt prompted to invite her to prepare to be baptized on August 23rd. I don't know if she'll say yes, but I'm going to ask her anyway. She is so lonely and needs the gospel. I can't imagine going through trials like someone these people go through without the knowledge of the gospel.
Continue with the prayer. I can feel them bless and protect me.
I love you.
-Sister Gardner
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