Gladys Knight and another very special guest

Family,

I don't have a lot of time to write, but I do have exciting news from this past week!

We worked at the Gladys Knight 'firesides' Friday (Stockton), Saturday (Sacramento) and Sunday (Sacramento) nights, which was incredible! Gladys put together a choir, called the Saints Unified Voices and they go all over the country putting on these firesides. Gladys and her husband William McDowell share their testimonies and there's other speaking parts and then she directs the choir to gospel music. I'll have the song "We sing glory. We sing glorrry. We sing glory. We sing glory unto God" song stuck in my head all week. It was really fun. There was a lot of "amens" and clapping and cheering. We had a really good time and got 777 referrals for the mission--that's about 3 years' worth of referrals. Now we have to visit all those people within 48 days!

The other exciting thing is that each missionary in our mission got to meet an apostle who came for a special mission conference (last minute) on Thursday. He probably came to talk about the organization of the mission president because President Lewis is sick. Have I mentioned that? Yes, President Lewis has had two surgeries since Christmas and is very ill and is now in Salt Lake. I think he was released from the hospital last week and is now at home in Salt Lake, so our first counselor, President Weston, is the acting mission president for us. We've been fasting and praying for President Lewis a lot within the past month.

So the apostle who came was Elder Holland. It was amazing. He shook each of our hands and asked where we were from. When he asked where I'm from, he responded "Well hello Arlington." :) He told us that he interviewed each of us when he shook our hands. He looked into each of our eyes and told us that he is very impressed with our mission. He said that he's grateful for people in the Church who know what they need to do and do it. It was incredible because Sister Fernandez is in love with Elder Holland and she was asked to say the opening prayer. She prayed that we would have more urgency in the work, and he said that was the first time he'd ever heard a missionary pray for urgency. He mentioned Sister Fernandez about 6 times while speaking to us, and she was absolutely elated. I thought that it was interesting that he said: too much of my youth I spent in athletics. I should go back and repent. I should've been studying my scriptures. I thought that was really interesting. I think it's so true--I wish I would have studied my scriptures more in high school. Obviously--I'm a missionary now. :) He promised we would have a lot of success over the next few months as a mission and missionaries far down the line will talk about this time in the Sacramento Mission. It was wonderful.

Love you,

kates