Happy New Year!

Family and Friends,

Happy 2014! This new year and I have a "new" companion and 'new' area. Elder McGill and ASL South. Good thing I've had experience with both, or I'd be very nervous!

The branch is growing strong. Our area is slowly rising in activity again. We just had a member receive a Temple Recommend and another one will soon get his as well. Then they can get married in the Temple! I am so excited! So many members will be able to enter the Temple by this Summer. I hope they can all enter before I leave.

Everything is going decently well. Elder McGill and I have cleaned out apartment so much that it's spotless basically. We have organized everything. There is little to no mess. We need to take our member and investigator lists and organize them soon, though. I haven't been able to teach a lot of people, especially investigators, for a while now. But that's because of our many projects and our responsibilities as Elders Quorum. I know the Lord is pleased with us, though.

I hope everything is going well with yall. Hope you all have a good, new year and that you can setup goals you can actually keep! I'm used to goal setting now that i'm a Missionary. We set goals for everyday activities, weekly goals, monthly goals and yearly goals as well as transfer goals and mission goals. Sometimes we even have hourly goals. It's important to setup a goal that's realistic, but still stretches your potential.

Anyway, I hope yall have a good new year! Attached are three photos. One is a young adult named Taylor (with all of us in a line by the stage). She's helped us so much the past 6 months. She's interpreted a lot, we've taught her, and have become good friends. Hence the photo. She's gone to Utah for school now and we all miss her (because she would interpret our meetings of course!) but we wish her luck.

The one with me and a sister is during the Christmas Conference. Prior to that, i was in ASL North and would go to a place called SOS on tuesdays to do service. The english district would go there and so we asl missionaries decided to join. It's a food bank so we do a lot of stocking there as volunteers. Anyway, beause we are asl often times the missionaries ask us the signs to the food or just how to sign in general. Sister Barnes was one of them who really likes asl but struggles to learn it. So I started to teach her ASL while doing service. We became friends and so we got a photo together.

The last one is me at a member's house the week before Christmas. They let us have christmas dinner and make gingerbread houses/trains/whatever. So I made a train.

Anyway, hope yall have a good week!

Love,

Elder Gardner.