1 Month

Well I hit my 23 month mark this past week. So weird. That's the only way I can describe it, I literally never thought this day would come. But it looks like I'm going to have a baptism my last weekend so that's pretty awesome.

The week was pretty sweet. Helped someone move last P-day, so that took up a lot of the day. Tuesday was interviews, my last one before my exit interview and it was pretty sweet, President gave me a lot of good counsel and told me he really appreciates what I'm doing and we talked a lot about saying your prayers vs actually communicating with God. It's so easy to just say a good prayer, and fling yourself into bed. There is so much more to be gained from sitting and meditating and keeping a notebook next to your bed so you can WRITE DOWN the things that you receive. Because I always forget things if I don't write them down. So that's a big thing I learned and it was really a good interview. We talked a lot about tracting/finding and president basically said "stop tracting". Advised us to focus mostly on less actives and part members and seek to teach them the lessons, and then after they feel the Spirit of the Gospel ask for referalls. He talked about how just asking people for referalls is the most ineffective way to ask ever. So that's what we're trying to do.

Went on splits wednesday night in Las Animas. So I guess Las Animas has an interesting history. Supposedly at one point there was a ward out there, and then some people came and set up a town called Boggsville nearby. Now, these people were descendants of a certain Governor Boggs...whom some of you may know as the man who signed the extermination order against the saints. So as the story goes, these people that moved in basically did the same thing, either just being rude to the members trying to get them to move, or antiing them and getting them to leave the Church. So now there are tons of less actives out there and so we visited a few of them. It was cool though, we showed up at the gas station at the end of the split and I was waiting for Elder Wadsworth to get back, and 3 of the people we had planned to visit showed up at the gas station. So I got to chat with a bunch of people and basically just ask them "ok. what's holding you back. Come to Church." It's one of the reasons I love small towns, the fact that we can go to the town gas station and if you are with a person in the town who's lived there for a while, they'll tell you who everyone at the gas station is. So it was pretty cool.

Also had a run in with a dog. Now, dogs have this interesting thing where they like to chase people on Bikes for some reason. I've seen them chase cars a lot, but there usually isn't a lot of fear of dogs when you are encased in metal. Now a bike is a different story, and this one was coming at me from the front so I couldn't outrun it. So I hopped off my bike and started yelling at it and swinging my bike at it and running towards it. It would run away, but then when I would start getting ready to get on my bike it would come back. So I started throwing rocks, and that worked for a bit. Then I saw a stick placed in a perfect spot, so I used that and I think it decided that I wasn't afraid of it so it left. Then a big semi pulled over and asked us for directions and we asked if he'd read the Book of Mormon and I guess he read it in prison! He wasn't interested though.

And the highlight of the week was a simply a miracle. So we got to this area a while back, and started going through the area book and found a church headquarters referall that hadn't been contacted. So we tried to call, but the phone would never get answered, and the address wasn't showing up on my GPS so we couldn't find it. Fast forward to last week. The Referall coordinator sent us a bunch of old referalls accidently. We told her that all of them had been contacted and weren't interested and so she went to change it, but we mentioned that one was simply non-contactable. She put her hand to it and lo and behold contacted the lady. She told us to call her, and it took about a week but last thursday she answered and we set up a time to go by that evening. It was an amazing lesson and we taught her Thursday and she accepted a baptismal date for August 11th, read the Book of Mormon with her friday with the High Priests Group Leader, and she came to Church on Sunday for all 3 hours. She's already been telling people that she's getting baptized and she truly owns her date. She is one of the most prepared people I've taught on my mission and she literally quoted Section 123 saying "I've been looking for the truth, but I didn't know where to find it". There are so many people out there that are only waiting for an invitation, and she lives out in Fowler, a 30 mile drive from our house so it helps so much to have member referalls. She was a member referall by the way.

Love ya! Elder Gibb