Dear Family and Freinds,

This week has been so tremendous! Where to start?

My Trainer is Elder Christenson, and guess where he's from??? LOGAN UT! He knows the Triplets from swimming. He went to Mountain Crest and his little brother is a Champion swimmer I hear. We are in the Albuquerque South Valley, Los Lunes Zone and I am in the Sage area. Our area is HUGE and we live in a house on Gun Club Road. Haha I got a big kick out of that. The mailing address is: 2015 Gun Club Rd, Albuquerque, NM 87105. We keep telling people that in Utah and area this big would have at least 8 stakes with as many wards per stake! So there are plenty of fish! As for P-Day it is on Tuesday and we are in the same time zone so I will be e-mailing from 10:00 to 11:00 or pretty close to that time every week.

My companion and I get along so well. He has only just finished training and now he is training me so we are both still learning so much but He is such a good example and he is a very hard worker. Our Ward is good. There are definitely "Clicks" that people hold onto so it's proving to be a struggle to get people to fellowship less-active and investigating individuals. But we are trying our best. The ward mission leader just got changed and actually we won't find out who the new one is until Sunday. I got the chance to bear my testimony on Sunday and introduce myself to the ward and that was a great privilage.

The work is rough. Many people are Catholic and they don't really give us much chance to explain what our purpose is but the Lord has surely lead us to a few people that we are hopeful for. There is one girl who is set to be baptized in January, Her dad won't let her so she has to wait until she turns 18 and I have only met with her once but I can see that she is really determined to do what she knows is right. There are so many people that fall through for appointments and that has been the hardest thing for me to cope with. Yesterday we had a member out to visit an investigator with us and they called and said that they have to reschedule. Then we went on a wild goose chase through our back-up list without much luck. Finally we found Brother Smith. He has been struggling while his wife was in the hospital and it was a powerful meeting where we shared a scripture and spent some time offering the comfort of the spirit. We are going to go to the hospital later this afternoon to give his wife a blessing as well. After Brother Smith we went to Brother Dixon who is in for surgery today. Elder Christensen and I were able to give him a blessing also. The biggest thing that I learned from this is that even though some things don't work out the way we plan, the Lord always has a purpose. People are suffering all around us and it's our job to reach out and "bear on anothers burdens." It was a great end way to end what started out to be a discouraging day.

I love you all so much and thank you for your letters. I am grateful for the stories the pictures, and the strength that you all give by taking the time to share parts of your lives.

​Love​

Elder McGarry