ONE WEEK TIL GENERAL CONFERENCE!

Hola a todos...

Happy Birthday Mason!!! (¡Feliz cumpleaños!). Wow, you are going to officially be a teenager, that`s cool and scary all at the same time. You`ve grown up so much since I`ve been here in the mission. Thanks for the packages! I have received the peanut butter and chocolate chip (which arrived as a chocolate rock) package and also the pictures that you sent, but I still haven`t received the Conference Snacks package (but it is still possible that it can arrive tomorrow morning).  Thank you so much.  I can`t believe that Conference is this upcoming weekend!!! I`m so excited to hear what the prophet and apostles have to say and to here the great faith building talks that we will hear this weekend.

This last week has been a more trying and difficult week with it being spring break here and everyone going out of town for the week made it a little difficult to teach our investigators and led to there not being a single investigator in church yesterday. We worked hard and did our best so I don`t feel discouraged or sad but it was a little disappointing to see that none of our investigators made it to church. I felt a great peace and comfort from the spirit which made me feel a lot better and excited to keep working to get these investigators to General Conference this next week. It will be a challenge becasue the ward wasn`t able to rent a bus to take the ward there, so everyone has to go a little farther this weekend to see conference and there are very few people here in Uruguay who receive BYU tv  with their cable. So please pray for our investigators so that they can come to at least one of the sessions of General Conference this next weekend.

I have been reading the talks from the past conferences and have learned and remembered a whole lot of what they talked about. Because of the time difference from Utah to Uruguay the Saturday sessions are at 1pm, 5pm, and Priesthood starts at 9pm (morning sessions don`t exist here and Priesthood session will end at 11pm). Then I will have to take a bus back home, so I`ll be getting to bed around 12 midnight. And to make things even better... Uruguay changes the hour the night in between conference and I`ll end up losing another hour of sleep because when midnight comes around... the hour gets changed to 1am, so it will be like getting to bed at 1am sunday morning and having to get up at 6:30 like usual. so I`ll be a little tired during conference on sunday, the sunday sessions are at 2pm and 6pm.but that`s my conference schedule.

Now that it is starting to heat up a little, we have started to go running in the morning to help with our house`s Biggest Loser competition. So far I am winning with having lost 4 pounds in the first week. It`s hard to lose weight in a ward where all the members love us. They are always making goodies when we visit them and they always try to cook a lot for the missionaries. But I`m determined and fighting the small temptations to eat sweets when it is possible to avoid it. I feel a lot better when I go running in the mornings it just makes the day seem a little less stressful.
 
We are excited to see the zone doing a lot better now, we had 10 baptisms in the month of september with 3 more baptisms for this friday and 10 baptisms planned for the week after conference. I`m so very grateful that the Lord has helped us to help the zone here and that we are all a little more excited to be missionaries here in the Maroñas zone. Thanks for your prayers and words.

This is the true and only church of Jesus Christ. and He will be sending us His personal words of counsel this weekend through his special witnesses, the prophet and apostles. I hope that we will all give the attention and listen with the desire to make the words spoken a part of our lives by applying everything that the spirit tells us to do as we listen to conference. Read the talks from the last conference in this week to better prepare yourself for the new counsel and instruction that the Lord wants to convey to us having fresh in mind the last words He spoke to us. I love this work and hope that we all search for opportunites to share the gospel in this week. Invite your friends and family to watch conference along with you. When you do it you will be blessed and will receive more out of conference than any other way.

Love,
Elder Gardner