General Conference Weekend!

Family and friends,

This past week was General Conference weekend! Prior to that, we had some interesting experiences. First, after emailing home we went to the stake center and sister king and shell was there. We chatted for a while when our phone buzzed in a text. Turns out one of our progressing investigators was sent the hospital because of a heart problem and wouldn't be released until 3 weeks later. Saddened by the problems Satan throws at our Deaf people we try to help, I started to lose hope. Sister King said to have faith, and said we should pray. So the four of us knelt down and prayed for her to recover fast. Last that night Elder Oleson suggested we Fast for her the next day. We texted the zone and asked them to pray as well. Just a few days later we got a text that she was released from the hospital and was recovering! We were so happy that it worked!

We had some good lessons this past week, most of them focused on General Conference and encouraging members and investigators to watch it. Thursday night before heading home we tried a referral that I've lost some hope with, but he was home and we taught the Restoration lesson on his doorstep and he accepted a book of mormon! Friday we had zone meeting. In the past, the Saturday morning before General Conference we would go to iHOP, however we decided to go to Red Robin instead Friday afternoon. Then after checking facebook, we found a Deaf social and went to a mall. The mall was huge and a ton of worldly distractions were present. I avoided them as much as I could! We ended up seeing a group of HS girls who were taking ASL classes. Awkward... we spend about 20-30 minutes introducing ourselves and then decided to just leave, haha.

General Conference weekend was fun! But sadly, we missed half of it! Wouldn't you know, Saturday morning the computers and projectors and everything is setup, when just as it starts, everything goes down. The satellite receiver fails. So the other Ward's tech guy and I frantically resetup everything so it could play in both asl and english. Afternoon session we went to a member's house, but they were late by 40 minutes. Sunday morning we resetup things better, but the one projector died, so we had to depend on ASL only. Afternoon was the best, we got a TV to work. I was very happy I could use the little technology skills I could still remember to help out.

(Priesthood session , the man interpreting the songs was my Deaf MTC teacher!)

That's the past week! I am excited to see what happens this week! The Hausman family is leaving in a few days and won't return to Houston until I leave, so we will say goodbye in about 30 minutes.

As Missionaries we have planners that we use to keep track of schedules and stuff. We put pictures on them for fun, sometimes. So for my last planner, I gave the covers to two Sisters that I'm friends with, trusting that they can use their skills to create a fun surprise for me :)

Anyway, that's all I have! Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Gardner