I love my mission so much

Hola mi familia! Thank you so much for all of the emails. It was so awesome to read about how everything is going back at home in Saudi Arabia! I still remember the craziness of Saudi National Day! The citizens of KSA are absolutely nuts when it comes to celebrating the creation of the nation!

This week in Logan has been so awesome! We had some lessons fall through as usual but we had some pretty awesome miracles. Thank you all so much for the prayers. It really helped! 

Do you guys remember about that investigator that fell off the face of the earth, Paul? Guess what, we finally found him! It turns out that he just lost his phone and he found it in the Lost and Found that morning when we saw him. We had to ask a member to let us into the USU dorms so we can knock on his door and see what's up. College dorms are absolutely crazy! USU is so crazy! Some of the students are crazy cool and it was so good to see Paul!

This morning for P-day, the zone had a basketball activity and my companion and I invited Paul to come and guess what?! HE CAME! We got to play basketball for like 3 hours and it was so much fun. Paul can ball! He is really good!

This Saturday, I will be having my first blacktism (I am not trying to be racist but that is what the mission calls it when black people get baptized; a blacktism.). Nikki Jackson will be getting baptized by his father, Ron, this Saturday! On November 1st, the Jackson family will be sealed in the Logan temple for all time and eternity! I am so excited to be able to go with Ron and his wife to be endowed and witness the family be sealed. I am so excited to go back inside the temple. President Hiers made this rule a few months ago: we are not allowed to go to the temple but in order to go, we have to take a recent convert. I am not a big fan of this rule but it really helps us have that motivation to bring our recent converts to the temple. I haven't been to the temple in a few months (last time I went, we were going with the Loftus family to be endowed and sealed) and I am temple-sick. Wait, let me "re-write" that.  I am SO temple-sick, my apartment is literally almost FIVE BLOCKS away from the temple!!!!! I love temples so much!!!!

Speaking of temples, the Ogden Utah temple got dedicated last Sunday and it was so, SO amazing! I was able to go to a couple sessions. Jeffrey R. Holland, David A. Bednar and  Henry B. Eyring spoke and they talked about temples. Henry B. Eyring shared a personal story and he was crying. That story hit me in the heart. It was so amazing! personally LOVED David A. Bednar's talk! He talked about temples and that as the things of this world are quickly tearing families APART, the temple is strongly sealing families TOGETHER by the power and authority of the priesthood. Second, as the world is struggling in constant confusion, in the temple we are able to gain knowledge and wisdom about so many different things. We are also able to feel the Spirit so strong in the temple. We can feel His love for us so strongly in the temple. I know that the temple is the house of the Lord. It is really HIS house. What a wonderful opportunity AND privilege we all have to be able to go in and make covenants with our loving Father in Heaven. Oh, how much I love temples.

Elder Freitag and I are currently working with Aaron Marez and that guy is a stud. He totally looks like wolverine. He even has the facial hair and hairstyle. We have a lesson with him tomorrow and I hope that I will be able to take a picture of him. We talked a little bit about the movies and man, Aaron is a huge fan. He is awesome! He is a nonmember that has met with missionaries before but the issue with Law of Chastity held him back from being able to get baptized. Good news is that he is finally getting married to his fiancee whom he has been living with for the past year THIS SATURDAY!!! Aaron does want to be baptized and I am hoping that Satan will not interfere with this. So please, pray for Aaron Marez (pronounced Ma - rez). 

Also please pray for the following people, they really need your prayers:

Gay Burge

Miya Autry (she REALLY wants to be baptized but her father, Cory, is the ONLY one that is stopping her from being able to get baptized! :() 

Aaron Marez

Paul Warren

Nikki Jackson

Ron Jackson

Lyndsay Jackson

Dan Hall

Marc Leager

Mudrow (pronounced Mu-dro) family

CJ Pink

Amber Lui

Renae Zhou

Tiger (yes, that is a real name) 

Tiffany Jones

Ryan Jones

Taylor Baysinger

Sister Bigelow (pronounced Big-a-low) 

Mahryan (pronounced Ma-rya)

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! I love you all so so much! You all are so awesome. Thank you so much for all you do for me. Have an awesome week and stay strong. You can do hard things! I love you all! Love, Elder McGrath

Logan is so amazing

Hey guys, It was a great week to be a missionary in Logan. The fall season here is so so amazing. I love how much the leaves are changing color. It is finally cooling down and it is awesome. Elder Freitag and I are getting along so well and we are working super hard. We have been seeing a lot of amazing things happen. I love it! :) 

First things first, I want to make a shout-out to my most awesome brother, Jake McGrath. He is getting ordained as a Priest. Congratulate him through Facebook!!!! 

Well, this past week has been so amazing. Jeffrey R. Holland (yes, the Elder Holland from the Quorum of the Twelve!!!!) came to our mission! We had all of the missionaries from the entire mission come together in Logan (in the Aztec building) and it was so awesome. I have learned SO SO SO much from listening to Bishop Davies, the Area 70 for Utah North area, AND Elder Holland. Elder Holland was so amazing. He talked so much about converting ourselves. These are the things I have learned from him:

- What does your mission mean to you? Do you want to remember it for 53 years and 364 days? Jeffrey R. Holland told us that he counts every day and the day that he spoke was when he was about to hit his 54th year after returning from his mission. Isn't that incredible?

- "Once a shepherd, always a shepherd. We don't have time to worry about our shepherds. The sheep are enough" 

- If you  have served right, you will never be the same you were before. This is as close to REAL LIFE as you can be. 

- My favorite one: Why is the work hard?

   + "Why is this so hard? ... I am convinced that life is hard because Salvation is not a cheap experience!! Salvation was NEVER easy! Why would we believe, we would we think that life would be easy when it was never, EVER easy for Him?!"

That last one struck a chord in me. Life is hard for everyone but the Gospel provides much strength we need in this life. 

Nikki Jackson is doing so amazing! He s on date for September 27th and he is so solid! We taught him the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom and he is accepting everything. He has been saying a lot that everything makes perfect sense to him. He is definitely going to get baptized! 

We are also working with Nikki's father, Ron, and his step-mother, Lyndsay. They are planning on being sealed in the Logan temple on November 1st, 2014! They are struggling a little bit so please keep them in your prayers. We have been going over there every couple days to help the family out in any way we can. 

Nikki really likes hanging out with us. When Elder Freitag, Nikki and I played basketball together last Saturday, Nikki was talking about what he wanted in his future and he said that he is considering about a mission, even though he is only 15 years old. We are going to take him out on splits in the next couple weeks so he can get a taste of what we do all day. It will be so awesome. 

Paul Warren was doing SO AMAZING! We had two lessons with him last weekend and last Saturday night, we had an awesome friend of Paul there with us and we asked him about church and he said that he is planning on going. Sunday morning, as Elder Freitag and I were heading to his ward so we can go through church with him, we got a text from Paul's friend saying that he can't get in touch with Paul (his friend was going to give him a ride) and we started worrying. He wasn't answering our phone calls or text. We even snuck into Aggie Village (you need a pass to get into it) and went to his dorm and knocked on it. He wasn't there. To this moment, we are still trying to get into contact with him. Like, he dropped off grid. Because he wasn't able to go to church, he can't get baptized on September 27th. :( Please keep Paul Warren in your  prayers.

We have found some new investigators last week and we are teaching a lot of families and working our butts off. We are trying to get into contact with all of our potentials but we are so so so busy with all of the lessons we have so it is difficult to contact them. 

I love the feeling of working so hard. I love feeling super exhausted. I love being a missionary so much. I love being the Lord's servant. I love serving the Lord with all of my heart, might, mind, and strength. YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS! 

I love you all and have an awesome week. Stay strong. Please keep Nikki Jackson, Ron Jackson, Lyndsay Jackson, PAUL WARREN(!!), Cherry Lui, Aaron Marez, Dan Hall, Derek, Biegelows, Miya Autry, CJ Pink, Gay Burge, and Chad Whitcome in your prayers. They need your prayers. 

Thank you all for everything you have done for me! You are awesome! I love you all! Love, Elder McGrath

I love Logan

Hey guys, Thank you so much for the emails. It was so awesome reading about things that is happening back at home. It is so cool. I want to make a big shout out to my dad! He was just called to be a first counselor in the Branch Presidency in the Dhahran branch in Saudi Arabia!!! CONGRATULATIONS!

Man, where to start... This past week has been so awesome. My companion, Elder Freitag, is so awesome. I am so glad that I am finally finished with Elder Reinhart and get a hard-working companion. It feels so good to finally work my hardest now. It feels so good not having to argue about going out and contacting people. Elder Freitag is so awesome and he is such a good missionary. He teaches really well and he is hilarious. 

My area is so awesome. I love the members here and the Logan Central stake had Stake Conference last weekend. The Stake President, President Horsely, is a STUD! He is so missionary minded and he gave some incredible talks in Stake Conference. The main theme of his talks was about treasuring up the word of God because it will protect us against temptations and evils of the world. He talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how it was meant for us. I have gained a ton of revelation and I cannot wait to start sharing my revelations to my investigators. It is AWESOME! :)

My area is also huge! Elder Freitag and I cover the Logan East stake, Logan Central stake, ASL branch (that pretty much covers the entire mission alone) and the Chinese group (kinda of like a Chinese branch but too small to be a branch). 

So, Logan Central and Logan East stake is pretty much like a family stake of USU. We teach some USU students and they are studs. I have met a ton of USU students, walked around campus and talking to everyone. USU is an awesome place and a lot of people are really chill here. Did you know that USU has the largest LDS population outside of church schools. This alone explains why there is 6 YSA stakes and 10 missionaries covering all 6 YSA stakes and 2 Married Students Stake. My companion and I cover the family stakes. So if the student or the person that we are teaching has a spouse and/or a kid that wants to go to the residential ward, they are under our jurisdiction. Also, since we cover the Chinese group, we are responsible for teaching ALL of the Chinese students, regardless of marital status. We have like 7 potential investigators for the Chinese group and I am hoping that they will pan out. 

Last Wednesday, about two hours after arriving into Logan, my companion and I got a text from a guy named Paul Warren. He wants to meet with us and he told us that he has a wife and two kids (ages 1 and 3. and they both live down in Ogden). We set up an appointment that night and since he lives in the Logan East stake, we had to bike almost 3 miles with 1 mile that is uphill to get to the appointment. But, man, it was WORTH it. As we were talking to Paul, he is a GOLDEN INVESTIGATOR! He was accepting everything we say and when we talked about baptism, he talked about how he was forced baptism in the Christian church and he didn't like that. He wanted to make that choice to be baptized. We then talked about the importance of baptism by immersion and following the example of Jesus Christ (Matthew 11:29-30. 2 Nephi 31:5). He loved everything we say. He kept saying that he needs to start following Jesus Christ and get his life back in order. He is definitely a golden investigator. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted! He is on date for SEPTEMBER 27!! It was so awesome!!!

Also, we taught Paul again a couple days later and the lesson went super well. We taught the first half of the Restoration (we teach lessons in half so we can teach twice as much and hit the Standard of Excellence more often). At the end, I asked him to see if he remembers his baptism date and he does!! He also told us that he has been thinking about baptism all the time. He is so excited to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority of God. 

So, in our first couple days in the Logan East stake, we already picked up a super solid baptism date. The Logan East stake has been struggling really bad for the past couple years. They only had like 9 baptisms in those two years. 

We have another super solid potential in the Logan East stake. Her name is Cherry Lui and she is from China. She has been going to church for the past month and developed a big desire to meet with the missionaries. We are going to start meeting with her and hopefully, put her AND her 9 years old son on baptism date! It will be awesome!!

Also, we are currently teaching a Jehovah Witness named Nikki Jackson. He is a guy by the way. He has been meeting with the missionaries for a few months now and a couple weeks ago, he accepted a baptismal date of September 27th and he CHOSE that date for himself. January 27th is his birthday so he chose the 27th of September (September is closer than January so that's why he chose it). He is a super solid investigators with a baptismal date. 

So of as right now, we have two investigators with a date and a ton of potentials! We have a guy named Aaron Marez. He is a MMA fighter and he calls himself a Mormon even though he isn't baptized. We are going to start meeting with him this Friday. He has met with missionaries a bunch of times in the past year and the two only things holding him back from being baptized is the Law of Chastity (he is living with his fiance) and court payments (roughly 2k dollars). He is getting married on SEPTEMBER 27th so the Law of Chastity issue will not be a problem anymore. Also, the WML of that ward told us that if he sees Aaron Marez have a big desire to be baptized, he will pay the court fees for Aaron so he can get baptized. The WML is a CEO of the trampoline company called Propel Trampolines. He is a stud! 

Also, something really cool: the Branch Mission Leader of the Cache Valley ASL branch picked up a new investigator last week. Since I am not proficient in gospel sign language and my companion knows absolutely no sign language, the mission president gave the Branch Mission Leader (he isn't deaf but he served an ASL mission in LA, California) permission to teach him without us but we have to teach one lesson. It will be very difficult to translate what we say so we are going to teach the easiest lesson with him and have them do the rest of the work. We decided that would be the best path to go. BUT, convert baptisms has to go through the missionaries. My companion and I are responsible for getting our District Leader to do an interview with the investigator (there will be a translator there).

So, we will be having a baptism in Logan East and Central stake, and a really good possibility in the ASL branch and the Chinese group. 

We are picking up a ton of new investigators and they will be getting on date shortly. I love inviting people to make the baptismal covenant with our Father in Heaven! I love seeing people enter the waters of baptism. I love Logan so much. I love the gospel so much. I love serving with my amazing companion, Elder Freitag (he is from Erfurt, Germany). 

I love you all and have an amazing week. Stay strong and you can do hard things! :) Love, Elder McGrath

We are so so so busy
Blue are lessons
Red are meetings
Purple is calls that we have to make and planning
We are working on unreported lessons after we finish our emails. :)

Transfers

Hey guys, It was a great week in North Ogden! I have some crazy news to share with you all since this week is transfer week!

I have been released from my District Leader role and will be going up to Logan to serve with ELDER FREITAG (pronounced: fry-taug. the g isn't silent). Guess what, he is from GERMANY! He is going to be my third companion that is from Germany! My MTC companion, my trainer and my next companion is from Germany! 

Elder Freitag is kinda of an introvert and he needs some help with confidence so I am companions with him. Also, I will be training him on being a senior companion so I am junior companion right now. Elder Freitag will be senior companion and President Hiers wants me to make sure that he knows what to do as a senior companion AND I have to "train" him as a DL. President Hiers wants me to pass on my knowledge and skills as a DL to him. I am excited for that challenge! 

The coolest thing is that when I came into Clinton to serve in the Clinton West stake, that is when Elder Freitag also came into Clinton to serve in the Clinton North. We both came into Clinton and left Clinton, all at the same time. I was his District Leader for three months and it was awesome. He is a really good Elder and we both are going to tear up the area in Logan! It is going to be sick! I am so excited!

ALSO, I have another challenge too! I will be serving in the Logan Central stake and I just found out this morning from Elder Freitag that we will be opening up an area that was dead for months, the Logan East stake. President Hiers also has assigned us to work in the ASL branch. So, I will be working in TWO STAKES and ONE BRANCH! There will be a TON of people to teach and I will not have time to "waste" on those who are going to take a while to get baptized. It is going to be SICK!

The Logan East stake is SO HUGE! It is going to be so CRAZY! I am so pumped up and excited to take on this challenge! Here is the boundaries for Logan Central stake.

I am really sad to leave North Ogden, even though I only spent six weeks here. I have grown to love a lot of people and I am really sad to leave BUT I am excited for the next challenge. I am going to work so hard and bring all of the people I can to Christ! I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior! "He is the greatest being to be born on this earth - the perfect example - and all religious things should be done in His name. He is Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Creator, the Savior, the God of the whole earth, the Captain of our salvation, the Bright and Morning star. He is in all things, above all things, through all things and round about all things. He is Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last; his name is ABOVE every name and is the ONLY name under heaven by which we can be saved." - BD definition of Christ. Page 633 of BD. I have just finished memorizing the BD definition of Christ and every time, I recite the definition of Christ, it brings me much peace that I need in situations where I am stressed. I know that He lives!

I love you all and have an awesome week!! Love, Elder McGrath