Good week, traveled to new town and got spelling calling in Branch!

Good week, traveled to new town and got special calling in Branch!
Hello family and friends!

This past week was great! Just after I emailed a week ago, the fire alarms went off in the building. We were informed it was not a test and we were all required to leave. So we all went outside and firetrucks came. Turns out that it was just a kid who pulled the red lever. Gosh! I have a photo of a member, T, with Elder McGill and I. He goes to school there and happened to be with us during the alarm so I interpreted what was happening.

We visited a lot of members and investigators this past week, one of them moved to a very nice upgraded house. Used to live in a trailer home, then moved, now to a nice one story house.

We are using our young man named M now with us for a few investigators, including S. S still doesn't fully accept that he needs to be baptized to progress. He believes that he needs to know everything before he's baptized. So we are encouraging him to come to church and learn every week. Maybe someday he will feel confident and satisfied enough and be willing to be baptized. He's ready!

We also have another investigator, J, who we are struggling to communicate well with. He doesn't know a lot of sign language, and it's hard to act out and classify a lot of the principles and concepts we teach, such as pre-mortal life or life after death. We try to teach him sign language but that's hard as well. We are hoping to meet with Brother Tuck, the one who helped interpret the ASL General Conference in April, he was the one in glasses. He is pro at interpreting and we hope he will be willing to teach us how to teach the gospel with acting and not sign language.

On Sunday we got a surprise. We had a member from the high council come. This only happens if we have changes in the Branch or new callings, etc. He pulled Elder McGill and myself aside and asked if we would be willing to be called as first and second counselors in the Elders Quorum Presidency. We accepted. So we got set apart and now I have the following callings:

Missionary
Transportation messenger
Interpreter
1st Counselor in Elders Quorum for the Branch

I think this is a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of and try to work hard. I will be doing a lot of normal member stuff now, but it's worth it. I want this Branch to grow and I'm willing to accept the extra responsibility.

Also after church we went over to Dayton Tx, near Houston. An hours drive. Have a few photos of that. It was neat seeing not-Houston. Seeing more Texas, wild west country kind of stuff was cool. Of course the less active we were meaning to visit wasn't there so we hope they will call us on the vp.

Anyway, that's it for this week! Hope you all have a great week!

Love, Elder Gardner.