Elder Findlay Under the Sun: 0 to 100 Real Quick...Mesa Week #78

Hey Momma!

Yeah so my p-day was today (Tuesday) because we went to the temple this morning. It was a great experience as usual! I love that place. It’s going to be sad when it closes for renovation in May. I hope I can go to the Gilbert temple again before I go home. That would be fun.

Anyways yeah I heard all about the Superbowl! We ate with the Garners (I know... surprise), and it was sooo good. We ate in the backyard with everyone so whoever wanted to watch the game could go in the house and the rest of us hung out in the yard. Brother Garner's mom and siblings are pretty passionate about football, kind of like Kaitlyn😂 But yeah we had a TON of food as well, it was super good. I felt so sick afterwards😂 The Super Bowl is my new favorite holiday(if only it was a holiday)😝

It sounds like you had a good Stake conference with a general authority. And to answer your question, I’ve had bishops call me up to share my testimony in sacrament meeting but never in Stake Conference.... Thank goodness haha. Speaking of General Authorities, Quentin L. Cook and Juan Uceda are coming to our mission this week and we are having a big mission conference on Saturday. I’m super super excited, it will be cool to have one of the apostles here in Mesa. I’m excited to learn from him.

It’s crazy that the weather is so odd there, it’s already warming up here, it got up to 80 degrees this week. Yikes, I’m not ready for summer yet. And that’s super cool that you guys are going to Nauvoo this summer, I’m a little jealous I must say! You can’t wait just another month for me?😂 That’s super cool, you’ll have to take plenty of pictures for me. I love learning about church history.

This week was a roller coaster of a week. Our investigators have been very flakey, meaning that they aren’t very good at keeping their commitments. We are trying to find more solid people to teach here in this area. Monday night was a miracle for us, we were visiting one of our investigators when we saw a lady struggling to carry some stuff upstairs to her new apartment. We stopped and asked if we could help out. She graciously accepted and we were even able to teach her a little bit after. Her name is Shannon and she is very open, we had our first lesson with her on Tuesday. We taught her the restoration and she was very intrigued by it, it was a great lesson! She has been reading and praying about the BOM! We have high hopes for her.

We also finally found our investigator Waldo!😂 Yeah his name is Waldo and we’ve been trying to contact him for weeks, every time we talked about him we would be like “where’s Waldo?”😂 Finally tracked him down. We actually had a super powerful lesson with him this week, he is really looking for his faith at this time.

Oh and I kind of have a funny experience this week. We wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch called Wings Express, so we decided to bike over there. The street that the restaurant is on is called Main St and it’s been under construction ever since I’ve been here, so it’s a nightmare riding through there. It’s like an obstacle course. Anyways I was cruising through on my bike and I felt like I was racing haha, it was fun.....until I hit a garbage can and tumbled down😂 Elder Burningham was behind me and he said it was the funniest thing to watch haha, I wish I could rewatch it😂 Luckily my bike was okay and I only got some scrapes and bruises...😂

Yesterday was kind of a rough day, our investigator Bill told us that he wasn’t interested in meeting with us anymore. I guess he watched some anti-mormon videos on the internet which talked about some false things. And we had to drop our other investigator Wanda because she never shows up to our lessons when she says that she will. It was a slap in the face that’s for sure. We were feeling pretty bummed, so to make things better we got ice cream at Dairy Queen. While we were sitting in the church eating our ice cream, we had like an hour before dinner, I said that if we exercised our faith enough we would be able to find someone before dinner. So we did just that and went out. As we were visiting a former investigator we saw this man standing outside for a smoke. He was all tattooed up and looked pretty rough. After some conversing me and Elder Burningham went over and talked to him, we told him what we shared as missionaries and how it could bless his life. I asked if he would be interested and he said yes! He said that he was looking for a church and wanted to come this Sunday! We are also going to meet with him again tomorrow. When he said yes I thought that he was kidding, but he was dead serious. I know that because we were willing to act on an opportunity to share the gospel with someone, God placed someone in our path that would be interested. God is a god of Miracles, and he shows me that every day :)

I love the missionary life, it is so fun. I even love being that goofy missionary that runs into garbage cans on his bike😂 I loved your email Mom, I am so grateful that you have such a strong testimony of the Gospel. Have a great week! Love you!

Love, Elder Findlay