Saying good bye

Change Week

Hey fam,

Well its been a long but very productive and succesful week. We had our baptism and everything went perfect. He was ready since the moment he went to church on the first of the year. His name is Luis Eduardo and he came here from TX and has plans to go back in the next 5 or 6 months but was born here so he came back to visit for a while. I already told you all a lot about him. He made it super easy to teach him everything cuz he just has a super open heart, and amazing support. Today we went to the temple.... again as a zone and since we are so many missionaries we ended having to rent 2 buses and so we had a little extra space so we called up and invited all the recent converts of the stake and ended up taking 2 families and our baptism from saturday and the member girlfriend. Its was an incredible experience. One the moms of the familes just broke down in tears with her little 3 year old daughter because the temple was just so beautiful. It kinda made the whole experience really spiritual. Its looking so much better now with the angel... driveway, plants and all kinds of good stuff.

Other then that great news... we not much has happened. I spent a lot of time trying to say bye to members since im pretty sure im out this change since i have nearly 6 months in my area. Plus its just two more changes that I have left. The whole mission has been really stuggling on baptisms lately since we changed the focus on just families and no more kids... at all. Its dropped our numbers but we will see how the Zone Leader council goes this next week with one of the Area 70... Elder Fallebela... is gonna come and most likely shave us but its gonna be good, and interesting to see what he has to say.

This whole week ive been getting up early to do exercized... in this case... laundry haha... since all my clothes have been sitting in my suitcase forever they smell all dusty and weird so i started little by little washing all my clothes by hand on our pila and im gonna be finishing today soo thats gonna be a relief but im gonna be going to my last area smellin super good haha

Ive grown to love washing my clothes by hand and not that i got a technique goin on and it doesnt hurt my fingers anymore... its been really nice!

Im really gonna miss my comp Elder Cac... it took us a while to get the companionship going but we get a long really well and were for sure gonna miss each other. Im just really hoping that the lord takes me out of the city to finish my mission. Thats all i want. Id even be down for going to the south again! We will see and find out tomorrow night i guess.

Anyways.... thats about all the good stuff. I sure do love you all very much though and hope everything is going well!!

Love you fam

Love,

Elder Gardner

Holaaa

Hey Fam,

Weeks seem to pass by rather slow when you go about worried about whats goin on at home haha but ugh it was a big relief knowing that everything is better with dad and everything.

This week was a really good week though in the end. Were gonna have a baptism this weekend of a guy that now has 3 times going to church and is still reading the book of mormon and everything. He was progressed faster than usual and is absolutely stoked to go home to texas in the next year to share the gospel with his family. We found on the church website 6 chapels within 10 minutes of his house in Texas and so he was super stoked about that. The temple is within just 20 minutes of his house as well but he had no idea that it was of our church.

On monday we did a Family Home Evening and made the last batch of Choco Chocolate Chip Cookies that you guys sent me in a package... LAST CHRISTMAS hahah yeah i had them a little hidden and then when I found them we planned it out with the bishop and his wife to make them.... they LOVED them. The ovens here once again are a little different so they got burned on the bottom again but the stake presidents daughter loved them and so did we haha

Were going into the last week of the change this week and then i start my second to last change... last 12 weeks. I had an interview with president this past friday and talked about changes and about dad and other things that have been happening and my own mission president made me baggy... haha he said wow... your getting old arent you... just 13 weeks huh?? I couldnt beleive he said that to me. Im just nervous and anxious to find out where my last area is gonna be.

Anyways... thats all ive got to say for this week. The wood carvings should be getting there this week or the first of next.... keep me updated

Love you all

Elder Gardner

Me and Elder Cac

Wow! under 100 days

Hey Fam,

Well I might have made the mistake to read moms letter about everything that happened this weekend before writing this email cuz im a little distracted and im not sure what to think. I guess I can just trust that everything is fine and that I shouldnt worry. Ill do my best.

Um this week was somthing else... i know its been a while since ive writen you guys a spiritual experience or something cool that has happened. Im sorry about that... they just havent been coming recently but I think it was just the lord testing my patience especially. In this week he decided to send me one of his tender mercies though... maybe it was for conincidence that all these crazy things happened this weekend at the same time that we, here in honduras, were able to have something a little better to say.

Last week for the first time one of the families in the ward took a friend of thiers to church. He was born here but has been in Texas for the past 20 years. We got to meet him at church after having NO ONE to take to church and thinking that once again we werent gonna have anyone in church... well this family did thier part and took him to church with them... He loved it. He hadnt heard anything about the church as he as in there in Texas and obviously came here to learn about it. We talked a lot about the book of mormon in church and he was really interested. The family gave him a book of mormon and this whole past week he took it with him and started reading. One day he was with a friend reading the book in central park here in Tegus and they took a pic of him and the Book of Mormon had this incredible light shining from it in the picture, he showed it to us and it was pretty incredible. He took it as a sign that this book has something for him. We got to teach him just one time in this week but he went to church again... all by himself. Yesterdya after church we taught him about Joseph Smith and how the church was restored and with the video and just after he accepted a baptismal date for the 21st. We got on line as well and looked up his house in Texas just to find the closest church to his house and sure enough there are 7 churches within 10 minutes of his house and he was amazing and got really happy cuz he told us he can see and has felt the love that we have for him and thats why, he said, that he wants to be baptized and become part of the family. Really cool experience that we had!! The lord kinda just through that at us after a very trying week... it would take me hours to write all the crappy things that has happened with us, but you only wanna know the good stuff anyways!!

Me testimony was definately renewed this weekend after fighting so hard to find people and then the lord thows him at us from the no where and no if everything goes well ill have a baptism before leaving this area.

I love you guys... um ill for sure be praying a lot this week and working super hard so that everything gets better!

Tell dad how much I love him and a hug from me too.. please!!

Love your missionary

Elder Gardner

Happy New Years

Hey fam!!

Well its been another week of just eating more then we wanted to and listening to a lot of firecrackers. We got to work a whole lot more this week though but we took a lot of time trying to help the members and other people to put goals for 2012 and meanwhile working on my own. It was weird thinkin that I needed to put goals for what I wanna do when I get home as well. Now that my FULL YEAR in the mission is now over and now im just in the last little bit. I know I have a lot more to do but as I looked at the goals that I had put last year...well I didnt do very good. Im gonna do a lot better on them this year though.

This weekend was really good though, we found quite a few new people and challenged 2 of them for baptism and despite the fact they were going out of town for new years... they accepted.. so in this week we will see how that turns out. We expected not a lot of people to show up to church on sunday since its the first day of the year... and since we had no one to go pick up we got here at 5 till 9 and there was NO ONE... just the bishop, and another really faithful couple that are ALWAYS there. That was kinda tough to see but even we were pretty tired sunday morning cuz we didnt get to bed till about 1ish cuz of all the firecracker and knowing that it wouldnt be worth it to try to go to bed early cuz of all the people in the streets. The only excited thing we could watch was the clock on our cell phone turn over haha

We dont have any baptisms coming up for a while cuz these past two weeks have been hard to get people to church...even the members are getting there late... or showing up late! Everyone wanted us to come over and eat their food but no one wanted to show some dicipline and be there early... whatever!

We were fed very well though... dont worry about us starving here!!

I dont have much time though, today for P-day we went to the waterfalls in my 2nd area and heres some pics.

I love you all!!

Thanks for the packages everyone... im working on getting you all letters so just wait for those!!

Elder Gardner

Elder Price at the Christmas party

Christmas package