Elder Gardner Reporting In...

Hola familia...

Hey you have to call me on Sunday the 9th, around noon your time, which I believe is 4 p.m. my time. You actually can call any time from 3 to 5 p.m. my time. Whatever works best for you. I`m excited to get to hear from you all. I received your package last week and the watch is working great! Gracias!

Things are going well here in Bella Italia and we are getting to know the area a little better. We haven`t had any baptisms yet, but we are going to have 2 real soon who are members who just turned 8. We also have one investigator with the baptismal date of the 15th and another that we are going to place a date with tomorrow. We have been so blessed here. We have 3 really good families that we are teaching and all of them are married and seem to be really interested. Our greatest challenge is trying to get them to read and pray about our message. We are working really hard here and have seen some great miracles... But Shakira won`t lay any eggs, I don`t know why.

One miracle that we saw this week was on monday after lunch and we were offered a ride home by the members because it was a really long to walk and we had a lot of stuff to carry from the package that you sent and we received a blender. The car died and wouldn`t start for some reason. We tried pushing it to help start it up. We tried looking under the hood, but we couldn`t see any problem. Then I remembered... We haven`t prayed yet! We got in the car and said a prayer to help the car start or help us be safe in walking home. We tried again and the CAR STARTED!!! I know that God hears and answers our prayers. We were extremely grateful that we didn`t have to walk the nearly 4 miles back home.

I love you all very much and sadly don`t have much time to write today, but we`ll talk on Sunday!!! Elder Jimenez was very excited to receive your e-mails -- Thanks! He said that he`s going to write you a letter and is glad to have a family to talk to because his family doesn`t write him. I know that the church is true and that the Lord loves you.

Elder Gardner

P.S. Elder Jimenez says: Thanks for your prayers and for having such a great son and I hope to help him much. He is going to become a great instrument in the Lord`s hands. You are a special family and I hope some day I can meet you in person. Love you.