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. :)