The real reason for the flood

Salutations,
This week was exciting and we made a lot of progress. We received 9 referrals from the Mesa Temple Visitors' Center and one of them turned out to be less actives that are not on our records. Another is a really cool guy in his 20s who has been trying to arrange a time with his wife for us to stop by again. And another is so eager to learn about the gospel. We stopped by and he said, "Hey can we set up a lesson for tomorrow?" I was actually on exchanges the following day but the lesson went through and we said that he will absolutely be baptized, but wants to see a baptism take place before deciding on a date. Pretty incredible right? And he works with a member of our English ward so he's already got someone he can turn to for questions and support (a man from England who is a hoot). It's amazing how prepared some people are. Hopefully I'll have more to add next week about him.
We are teaching a 12-yr old right now that has a lot of family troubles. My companion thinks that the mother is crazy :) Our lesson early last week had a lot of distractions from her family and she was really unsettled about religious things. Her brother told us she seemed really bitter about the Church because some other family members had discouraged her. But when we came back a couple days ago it was drastically different. The lesson was reverent, free of distractions, and she told us about things she had done to help her family, and be more of a peacemaker in the house. It was wonderful. She seems to be understanding the teachings of Jesus Christ in relation to her life and she is recognizing the Spirit.
Last night we were cruising the streets and walked past a husband and wife sitting outside. We couldn't see more than the husband's outline and the wife was the one chatting with us. She said English missionaries had been by a couple weeks ago, but her husband couldn't learn because he only speaks Spanish. So we turned to where he was sitting and starting speaking Spanish. He stood up and walked over to us and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. Our brief conversation with him made me think about the need to explain first that the Book of Mormon testifies that Jesus is the Christ. First and foremost it leads all people to the Savior. And our words should first and foremost do the same.
Well there are many more experiences taking place out here but I hope you enjoy and are uplifting by these. I love you!

Elder Joshua Gathro