October 15th, 2012

Hello Everybody! Last week was another good and tiring week here in Naic. It's only been since Wednesday since I last emailed so I will start from there. We had our temple day and preparation day last Wednesday and man, it was the craziest P-day ever!!! We left from the computer shop to go to the temple, spent about 2 hours on the bus, I got my going home Xray at the area office next to the temple, did a session, then spent another 5 hours on the bus. And that was our preparation day! Haha! We were really tired after being on a bus for 7 hours, but at least we got to go to the temple which was really great! Hopefully next time though our temple session isn't at 3 in the afternoon though. Thursday was a good day. We visited the Duazo family. Part of the family is inactive and part is active and one of the sons wife is not yet a member. So we taught the son, Don Jon and his wife Mirasol. They are a really great family. Don Jon is actually a returned missionary who served in Angeles mission. We really want to see him come back and have his wife come into the church. We also taught the Manuel family that day, who are doing really great. When we saw them that day we were able to teach them about prophets. We had a really good lesson with them. We were even able to give them a baptismal date that lesson in November. We really want them to come to church this week. Brother Manuel has been really reading everything we have given him and finds it pretty interesting. We have a return appointment with them this week. Brother Joseph is doing really great too. He is only going to be baptized in November though because he smoked once. He also needs to start coming to church again too. He really has a desire to be baptized though. Then we also have the Novero family. They are all doing really good. We were not able to teach them this week, but we're going to really focus on them and get them to church this week. We seem to be doing pretty good with finding. We only were able to get a few investigators at church last week. One of them though was very interesting. We talked with someone on a trike who was driving us to the church for the Saturday session of General Conference. He said he knew a few people that were members and after talking to him for a bit we finally got to the chapel, and he said our church to him always looked really nice, so I asked if he wanted to come inside to see what it looked like. We brought him in showed him around showed him the sacrament hall, the tabernacle choir was singing at the time for Gen.Con and then we walked outside. He was really happy and said that he felt like he was in heaven. We invited him to come to church tomorrow and guess what? 20 minutes into general conference during President Eyrings talk, I see him standing way in the back, so I went to him and brought him to sit with us at the front. He stayed for the whole session and loved it. I even noticed tears when he was listening to Elder Hollands talk! He lives in Trece, which is an area in the Naic zone so the sisters assigned to that area are going to teach him this week! We're really excited for him. I unfortunately will not be able to send pictures this week. Have you guys been getting the ones that I have been sending? Because I have been sending pictures. Also if I had any advice for Justin, it would be to really study and apply everything in Preach My Gospel, especially Chapter 3. A great thing would be to always work. In Chapter 6 under diligence there is a quote by Ezra Taft Benson that says the secret to missionary work is WORK! If he always works then he won't have any problems, even if things aren't going well in the work or with his companions or just about anything he will always feel better when he works! Also one more, this is really just loving everything about the work. He will do great though. OH Something else, that I wish I knew is that ALWAYS finding is very important. It's something that our mission has been struggling with, but there really shouldn't be a time on his mission where he isn't finding some new people to teach. I'm really excited for him though. I hope Andrew doesn't get too lonely though. It will be weird to only have one boy at the house. As for General conference I thought it was really good. I was actually talking about it with Elder Gadberry, one of the district leaders here and we both thought that everything was more directed to the whole world instead of just our church. I loved Hollands talk it was a lot like a talk that he gave at the MTC that we watched for a zone conference once here in the mission. Really great talk, I think that was my favorite one. I also loved Elder Nelsons talk and President Uchtdorfs talk. I really loved his last line where he said, "I pray that we will not wait until we are ready to die before we truly learn to live". It was a great talk. That was about it for last week though. I'm out of time now. I hope you all have another great week! Have a great time in Salt Lake! Also I hope Justin has an amazing time on his mission. I know he will do great and have a fantastic time! I love you guys and have a great week! :D Love Elder Gagnon