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Spring has Sprung (4/14/2014)

I really hate that saying by the way. I don't know why it's just one of those sayings that don't sound good and just... bug you! Maybe you feel the same way, maybe not. Moving on.

Spring is definitely here, and in North Carolina that means it's summer already. It was like 83 yesterday plus humidity. Not fun! 

This week was pretty fun, we taught the most lessons we ever have as long as I've been here! We finally got a baptismal date that seems promising! Her name is Delma.

Delma is the non-member wife of a less-active guy named Jon. Missionaries have been visiting them for a little over a year, and she's only been taught the first lesson, which is the Joseph Smith story and the Book of Mormon and stuff. Since I've been here we've been focusing on getting Jon back to church, the fact that Delma isn't an investigator never really crossed my mind. Jon is finally coming back to church consistently, and last week he brought Delma. We extended an invitation for her to be baptized last week, and when she came to church it solidified it. However, the lesson in Sunday School was "The Final Judgement" and needless to say she had some questions... We were able to clear up the concerns and now we have a good reason to teach the Plan of Salvation. But she's very promising and we're looking to get her baptized the first weekend in May. Unfortunately transfers are the 29th, and I won't be able to see it happen if I leave. We'll see what happens I guess.

I don't really know what else to say this week...

There's a video I want all of you to watch. It's called Because of Him and it's an Easter video the church is pushing super hard from yesterday until Easter. We as missionaries (or at least the ones like mine where we test things like iPads, I'm not sure) are trying to get this out here as much as possible. We share it on Facebook, it's got a hashtag, the church even got Youtube to make it the main video on the main page. It is estimated that 109 million people will have seen this video by Easter, and hopefully at least half of those have followed the church website a little after that. It really is a great video, I've already posted in on my Facebook page. The music is incredible. The message is even better. Fellow missionaries, if you're not aware of this initiative, look it up and start sharing it (easter.mormon.org). Family and other friends, start sharing it. Get the word out there. Let the world know what's possible "Because of Him".

Keep calm and hymn 255

Love, Elder Matthew Gardner

"With Patience Bear..."

This last week I passed my 4 month mark, meaning it's time for a monthly testimony. I'll talk about that at the end, but first I want to talk about conference.

Conference was amazing, definitely something worth going back and reading/studying the talks.

I know we probably shouldn't pick favorite apostles, but I think my favorites would have to be Elder Bednar and Elder Christofferson. And I was not disappointed by their talks! I loved Elder Bednar's talk about the Atonement and our real part in it in relation to Christ. Elder Christofferson's was amazing, definitely a great way to end the conference. I love how he said the resurrection is a FACT, and therefore all things related to Christ must've happened. My favorite line from his talk was "Faith is more than mere imagination".

Those of course were just my favorites, we heard amazing talks by all the apostles and leaders that spoke. As always, Jeffery R. Holland delivered. Elder Zwick and Elder Aidukaitis from the 70 had the best "stage presence" I guess is a good word for it. Did you Elder Zwick is from here? He used to be a baptist preacher, that's way he did such a good job speaking. He actually came to our mission like a month before I got here (kind of a bummer). He did a really great job.

I invite all of you to look up Elder Oaks' talk he gave at the priesthood session as soon as it's available. It was by far one of the most intense talks given this last weekend. Let's just say if he didn't completely abolish it, he certainly shut up the protest about women getting the priesthood for a while. Very much worth going back.

If there's a certain theme I could pick out of conference, it's in the form of a scripture.

Alma 7:22 "And now my beloved brethren, I have said these things unto you that I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that ye may walk blameless before him, that ye may walk after the holy order of God, after which ye have been received."

A lot of the talks were about standing up for what you believe in as the world around us starts to crumble. We need to either "awaken" to a sense of our duty to God or get worthy to the point where we can "awaken". These are the last days, so we either need to jump on the bus or get out of the way.

Moving on to some investigator news:

We had an appointment scheduled with Tedarreus, the first one in like a week and a half, and he cancelled WHILE WE WERE ON THE DOORSTEP ABOUT TO KNOCK.

He still shows a lot of potential, but when things like this happen I just want to leave him behind and move on. But again, he still has a lot of potential. I don't really know what to do. Yes he cancelled, but let's look at why. He got kicked out of his girlfriend's house. Meaning he is (currently) living the law of chastity. Since he used her car, he can't go across town to do his smoking job. So he is (currently) living the word of wisdom. Those were the only two things keeping him back, but at the same time we don't really know where he is. *sigh* I just don't know what to do.

On a brighter note, we met someone named Q a few days ago. Q is a 22 year old guy who wants to get his life right, and we had one of the best lessons ever with him. We started by just talking to him and finding relevance for him, then did the usual lesson stuff. After we talked about Joseph Smith and the first vision, he said it sounded like poetry and gave him a warm fuzzy feeling (which was weird hearing those words out of a black guy's mouth). We assured him that was the spirit which helped him recognize it during his prayer. He gave probably the simplest prayer ever but at the end he literally prayed and said "... and I can't stop smiling. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." Then he looked up and asked us why. Well why what? "Why can't I stop smiling?" We again assured him that was the spirit and we planned to see him again tomorrow night. It was a really great experience and we're excited about Q.

Now on to my testimony this month.

It's about patience. We studied patience a couple weeks ago as part of our Christ like attribute study where we study an attribute for a week for 9 weeks until Easter. Since then I've been thinking about different things that have been happening/ have already happened in my life when a little patience has paid off. One example is my mission in general. If you were to ask me back in July, I would've said that I would never have the opportunity to go on my mission. A month later I got my call! Another is my experience with Elder Leishman, my trainer. Don't get me wrong, he is a good missionary and I learned a lot, but we didn't have the best relationship. Now I have a companion that I can call a true friend. In those and many other situations just a little patience has paid off. Patience doesn't mean to sit back reserved until something good comes out of the bad, it's about moving on and pressing forward regardless about what's happening around you (kind of similar to the theme I got out of conference). Progress requires patience. We can't have either without diligence (this week's attribute), meaning we keep going. So keep going friends! Just as my favorite hymn "Be Still My Soul" says, "with patience bear thy cross of grief or pain..." and always remember Christ has been there before and is waiting to help you, you just have to ask.

Until next week,

-Elder Gardner

I'm coming home.

I can't take it anymore. I am so sick of being away from my family. I don't feel like I have a strong enough testimony to convert anyone down here, and that's obvious in my astounding number of baptisms (SARCASM). I feel like I'm wasting my time and money, just to walk around uselessly with no one to talk to. I already talked to President Craven, I'm flying out this weekend to be home for conference. Normally he calls home before I leave, but I told him not to so I could tell you all today.

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April Fools. Too soon? I mean is a day early that uncalled for? It was my only chance! Haha but no I'm fine. Although it's true it's a little disheartening not having at least one baptism by now, because next week marks the 4 month mark. However, there are things going on, slowly progressing to the point of baptism, for now anyway. I'm having fun though, Elder Smart is a great companion and actual friend.

I have done some counting... and I should be leaving December 7th, 2015. We have a "license to preach" or something like that in our white handbooks, and that's the expiration date, as well as that the transfer meeting is that day. It's apt to change, but that's what I'm going with for now!

The work is pretty slow right now. I think I mentioned last week that we did a little "spring cleaning" through our area book, sorting through the ones that have some actual potential and who we have just for the sake of teaching a lesson that day. We have to go back to doing a lot of knocking on doors, but at the same time the few that we are seeing a lot we have appointments for all throughout the week.

About Tedarreus... He has been our most progressing investigator since the day we found him back in January. Lately however, he's gotten on this pattern of not contacting us or not answering when we contact him, for about a week and a half at a time. Then, we'll have an amazing lesson with him like we always do and there's suddenly hope for him. Everyone has been telling us we need to think about dropping him, district leaders, zone leaders, even President Craven's wife. I was about to, then Elder Smart told me about an investigator he had in his first area named Cedric. He was in the exact same position Tedarreus was in, he even looks like him. E.Smart was saying that Cedric would have the same teaching pattern, and almost never come to church. But he showed so much potential. E.Smart never got to see it, but Cedric was baptized. That helped me a lot, and we're going to keep being patient. In fact, that's the Christ-like attribute we studied as a mission this last week. Patience.

Patience is "the capacity to endure" according to Preach My Gospel. And that's true. The gospel of Jesus Christ includes Faith, Repentance, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and ENDURING TO THE END. We really can't have any hope unless we have patience, and we can't have patience without the faith that we can endure. Romans 5: 1-5 does a pretty good job at explaining how we can gain patience as related to the other Christ like attributes. Patience is the means by which we can endure to the end!

So one last thing before I go. We got to help with Primary yesterday! It was so much fun! We each (the four missionaries) got assigned a character, got to dress up if we wanted, and had to tell our story and testify of the resurrected Christ. The Sisters were Mary Magdelene and a Nephite Woman. Sadly they didn't dress up. But we did! Elder Smart was Joseph Smith. He had a suit on, I let him borrow my sweater vest, he popped his collar and tied one of his ties to look like those ascot things they wore back then. He even has a copy of the BofM how they were originally printed! It was perfect! I was Thomas, the apostle. I just had a bed sheet wrapped around me like a toga with a tie around my waist to hold it together. Oh yeah and a shaving cream beard. Bam. I have pictures but I don't have my camera. If I don't get them out today I will next week.

It was a lot of fun, and the common message is still the same for us today. Christ resurrected and now lives. He loves us and wants to help us, as long as we ask for it in prayer (John 15:15). I love you all and will talk to you next week! Also... General Conference is next week! Find someone who isn't a member and invite them! It's going to be great.

--Elder Gardner

_EldersSmart&Gardner_

So the title is our signature on our cell phone, just in case you were confused.

As you all know, transfers were this week. Elder Leishman's in a place called summerfield, and my new companion is named Elder Smart. HE IS WONDERFUL.

We have a lot in common, we both love music (both playing and listening), in fact he's taken music theory, so we can talk about music a lot. As well we both had a childhood based on classic cartoons and homestar runner (for those who don't know what that is, look it up). We quote Brian Regan to each other a lot. He's funny, and more importantly he thinks Im' funny ;)

Basically he's super happy and easy to get along with, and he's excited to do the work. We've already had our fair share of adventures just in this last week. Our recent convert friend Chris is the one who took us to Charlotte and back for the transfer meeting, and that was a trip. At that moment Chris hadn't slept in 72 hours, had 6 redline energy shots (you're only supposed to drink half the bottle withing a 24 hour period), and 4 energy pills. We thought we were going to die.

We've met quite a few strange people. The strangest is two girls who we met outside HPU who were very drunk and very high. They were very concerned that both of us have girlfriends and are still virgins. Well... We tried to bring the conversation back but they tried to invite us to a party to get us drunk and rape us... We're still both laughing and in shock about it all. 

We also helped the Terry's (members) cut down a tree. I'll include some before and after pictures.

Which reminds me, I'm going to start taking more pictures! Elder Smart and I are both pretty bad at taking pictures, so we're going to do better. The pictures I do have, Which may be in this email or in a separate one:

The ice storm a couple weeks ago.

The before and afters of the Terry's tree.

My sweet tan-line.

Elder Smart holding the part of a chainsaw the chain goes around. While cutting off part of the tree, the huge limb came back and bent the chainsaw part he's holding. Luckily he didn't drop it or fall off himself. If you're wondering why he's in missionary clothes, we were back and forth between appointments and cutting down the tree, and we were just leaving to an appointment. So don't worry, we didn't cut a tree in our good clothes!

I love you all! See you next week!

-Elder Gardner

insert creative subject here

Attention people of Earth (and some beyond)!

So this Teusday is transfer day. Saturday was the day we would get calls to see if we're moving. We got a call.

I'm staying here in HIgh Point. However, Elder Leishman is leaving. Not only that, he's going to be a district leader wherever he goes, so good for him! It's a little bittersweet that he's going. Our comapnionship was rocky at first, but since then we've sorted things out and now he's leaving. Maybe it's because I don't like change and there's a possibility the new guy will be worse than he was (yikes). I'm not training this transfer like what usually happens I guess. I'll keep you posted more on transfers when they actually happen tomorrow.

Update on Maurice:

One night we decided to check up on a family we dropped like 3 weeks after I first got here, to see if they were ready yet. We talked with Sean, the questijonably sane 17 year old son. As we were about to leave however, he said "have you heard about what happened to Maurice?". Naturally we were intrigued. According to the story he told and some information check we had our recent convert friend Chris look up, Maurice is in jail. Yup, he came to church a few weeks ago and later that week he ROBBED A BANK and is in jail. His bond is $280,000 dollars. We aren't sure of the reason, but all we have is because his girlfriend broke up with him. Elder Leishman sensed he had another side to him when he and Elder Kleinman taught him before I got here, and his assumptions were correct. So that was our most-progressing investigator. Everyone else is slowly fall;ing away, we can't get hold of anyone. I have a feeling my new companion will want to do some "spring cleaning" and we'll go back to tracting. Hopefully all goes well.

We had stake conference this last weekend. It was really good! I had never gone to one of those up until then, and I enjoyed it. Apparently they have brodcasts form Salt Lake and you hear from apostles! If I had known that before I would have gone a lot more. L. Tom Perry spoke at this one and he talked about the importance of The Doctrine and Covenants. It was interesting when he said: "The Bible and The Book of Mormon are great books indeed. They are records, commandments, and testimonies of those living anciently. The Doctrine and Covenants are the records, commandments, and testimonies of our day. It is our book. It belongs to the Latter Day Saints." Powerful! Makes me want to read D&C more carefully. If you haven't before (like me), go to your next stake conference.

Not much else happened this week, so I'll see you all next time!

-Elder Matthew Gardner

Let Us Stand Together

Hello family and friends! This week I actually kept a list of things I wanted to talk about this week so this e-mail will actually have some substance!

First off, remember last week when I talked about rain? Well later that day the rain turned to snow and later that week the snow turned to freezing rain. Last year Utah got some freezing rain but not like here. The rain froze to the ground when it hit and we literally got a 1/4 of an inch of ice over everything. As a result of this, Guilford County (county I'm in right now) went into a state of emergency. This was a legitimate natural disaster! The ice weighed down several trees and powerlines, and the roads were a mess (even for us practiced Utah drivers). All in all 80% of High Point lost power, from homes to businesses to street lights. Several cities around had similar problems, but I have to stay in High Point therefore only really care about High Point right now. Off subject, what do you do if the street light isn't working? Treat it like a 4-way stop, right? Could someone please tell that to EVERYONE IN NC? Anyway, so this was a big deal, and there are people still without power and hot water. Just before anyone freaks out though, us missionaries are all safe. We never lost power at all, and those in other areas who did only lost it for a short amount of time. We're all safe, warm, and fed. Although it doesn't really matter because the snow/ice is already all gone with temperatures back into the 70's the second the storm left. Yay for NC weather. We didn't teach a ton of people while this all went down, because a lot of people left because they don't have power. So a lot of our appointments fell through, but we did make a lot of calls. Especially while we were home-ridden while it was all coming down. Still haven't heard anything from Maurice. Everyone else seems to be fine, but we haven't had a lot of contact with people. This week will be better though!

Even though we didn't do a lot of teaching, we had lots of opportunities for service. Mainly cutting up trees that fell down. We helped this one guy who is neighbors to a member, his name is Tom. His tree split in to three pieces, one blocking the way into the backyard on the side of the house, one hit his house and the back porch (but luckily no damage), and the other is still standing. We cut it up and cleaned it all out in about 2 hours, and it was a big tree. Many hands make light work, and even though there were only the 4 of us I'm sure the Lord had a few hands helping us for providing service.

The 40-day fast ended on the 6th. Next day cracked open a root beer. It was delicious. I didn't think it would be that hard, but it was. Although I'm drinking soda again it was good practice making sacrifices and resisting those temptations. I probably would've had a more spiritual experience if I hadn't only focused on giving up temporal things, but I still learned something from it. 

I have a joke! The 2nd counselor of the bishopric told this one to us. So back in the times of the Spanish Inquisitions, part of the job was to get all the Jews out of the land. Because both parties are God loving people they didn't use force but first decided to debate the issue. However, the Catholic Priest only spoke Spanish and the Jewish Rabbi only spoke Hebrew. But they did the debate anyway, with hand signals and objects to make they're point. So the debate starts and the priest starts by holding up 3 fingers. The rabbi holds up 1. the priest waves his arm above his head, the rabbi points at the ground he's standing on. The priest brings out some bread and wine, the rabbi pulls out an apple. The priest gives up and says, "that's it, the debate is over. They won, they're staying here". The congregation goes wild. How? What did he say? So he tells them, "well, I first started explaining the trinity and he responded by saying there is still only one god we all worship. I then tried explaining that God is all around us, and he said that God resides within each of us. I then pulled out the bread and the wine to talk about Christ's sacrifice for us, then he pulled out the apple saying we're all accountable for the sin adam and eve made in the garden. The Rabbi was also talking to his congregation. Well what happened? They said. He told them, "well he said you've got 3 days to get outta here. I said ain't one of us is leaving! He then said ALL of you gotta clear out of here, and I said no, we're staying right here! Well then what happened? They asked. I'm not sure, he pulled out his lunch and I pulled out mine.

Haha! Funny!

So because it's been 3 months of my mission offficially, my testimony for this month can really be summed up in one scripture. 2Nephi 7:8 "And the Lord is near, and he justifieth me. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine advesary? Let him come near me, and I will smite him with the strength of my mouth."

This is the scripture I chose because of what happened with this storm, and what I've been learning about Christ like attributes. All those members who were fortunate enough to retain power reached out and helped all those who weren't. There were families sleeping over, eating, and showering at these homes and all was done with the brotherly kindness that should be had in a ward family. And even though we didn't lose power, a lot of people were checking up on us and were making sure we were okay. All in all it struck a note in my mind that when the devil sends bad things our way, or even if God sends things our way to test our faith, we all need to stand together. It doesn't even need to be exclusive to church members. We can stand together as neighbors and communities, too. There truly is strength in numbers, as I said about many hands helping Tom. We do not have to go through trials alone, there is always help available. Even if we feel we are alone, God will not forsake us! I know that that is true!

I love you all,

-Elder Matthew Gardner