Level Up! You have learned 2 new skills: Caulking and Physiotherapy

Adds +5 to your Dexterity and +3 to your Vitality

Ha!

I have to say, one thing I love about a mission is all the cool things you learn how to do that you can list on your resume! Managing experience, Public Speaking, Teaching, Construction Tech, Landscaping, Counseling, Home Renovation and Repair, Short and Long term planning, Event Planning, Addiction Recovery, Painting, Gardening, Sewing (quilting woohoo!), Consulting, Exterminating, and Military (well....we are in a war...with Satan...ya maybe not that last one)

Anywho, it's been a pretty good week down in the massive supercity known as Sanford. It's also been a rough week. Satan, unhappy with all work we are doing has decided to wage a counterattack, which caught us off guard, but we've fixed the holes in our strategy and are prepared to proceed onward to victory.

Let's talk a little bit about Zone Conference. It was...amazing? Yep learned a ton about planning, and companionship's, and just an overall fixer upper of our individual areas. We are talking a lot about becoming "Master Planners" in addition to master teachers. Check out chapter 8 of preach my gospel if you've got time, got a lot of life advice in there. If we don't set goals and make plans we don't go anywhere. That was a great thing to work on. So Elder Hakes and I have truly become better planners, the only problem now is following through with our plans which is where we went wrong this week. If we make a plan, we follow that plan. Or we should be. We didn't do so well this week but will do better!

Elder Russell M. Nelson came to the Alamosa stake last Sunday (grrr...why not the Manassa stake?) for their stake conference, and he said a lot of neat things. First of all, he promised if they kept the Sabbath Day holy, he gave them, literally, an apostolic blessing that it would rain. And rain it did. Sunday night and Monday day and night it poured. So that was a nice little thing. It rained more than I've seen it rain all summer. He also told President Anderson during breakfast on Sunday that he believed that conditions in the valley were right that missionary work could move forward in a miraculous way! I think personally, if they built a temple that would help a lot, but then again I'm not in the First Presidency. I guess it's been in the works for the past 130 years. But seriously, it's eerily similar to Utah here, and Utah baptizes a TON, so why can't that be us. So we're trying to be pure vessels that can gain those blessings.

One of our investigators smoked this week, but it's ok because he has a little bit before his baptism. His baptism is next Saturday at 7:00, and I guess everything just kind of went wrong. But it's ok, we can make mistakes. His interview is tonight, but he's got a strong testimony so we aren't too worried.

I guess there's a "gang" in Sanford. A bunch of kids that like the band ICP (which is a terrible piece of trash) write it on themselves and graffiti'd up the town park. But luckily they did it before our "Day of Service" Saturday where we completely fixed up the park. And me and Elder Hakes Recaulked the bathroom. But they sanded down all the tables and got rid of all the graffiti that had been there forever.

But yes. Things are going good! One investigator is hopefully going to be baptized in October when his wife gets home from back east! He's doing solid! Missed church though due to literally some secret project he couldn't tell us much about. ahhh I love it! We think he's cracking open Bin Laden's computer. And that's not a joke either, super smart guy. I feel it's a good reason to miss church.

Well, that's all for now, keep up the good work! Baptism next weekend! And I'm doing the confirmation for it! Ahh!

Elder Gibb