October 4, 2010

Another week has come and gone. Yesterday I hit my 8 month mark and in about a week I will hit my half way mark. Can you believe it? Time is flying by especially now that the holidays are coming up.

General Conference was great wasn't it?! It is always such a spiritual feast for me. I always come away from conference wanting to be a better person. There were so many great talks! My favorite one was by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. Mom and Dad, I thought about you during this talk and realized how ungrateful I am sometimes towards you. YOU are paying for my mission! YOU do so much for me. When he talked about the sacrifices his parents made for him when he was on his mission, I couldn't help but to cry. You guys always support me financially but I never thought of the sacrifices you are probably making so that I can be supported on my mission. I just want you to know that I LOVE YOU and I am so grateful for whatever sacrifices you are making that I'm not aware of. You have no idea how grateful I am! If it wasn't for the loving parents that I have, I would not even be on a mission or if I had come out, I probably would be home by now. Thanks for the financial support you make for me, but more importantly the spiritual and emotional support that you provide for me. You have no idea how grateful I am to receive e-mails each week and letters and packages during the week. There aren't many parents that are as diligent as you are. It makes a huge difference for me though! I can always count on my parents. I don't get hardly any letters anymore, which is ok, but I can always count on you. Pretty much your awesome mom and dad! Oh...and Hilary and Harrison, your pretty awesome too. I have the best brother and sister in the world... no joke. I love you family!

Here's a funny story. We were tracting in Rhododendron (Rhody) Park this week and we met this older man who was walking his dog. I don't remember exactly what he said but it was along the lines of "Your talking to a dead man". Um...how do you respond to that?! Anyways he proceeded to tell us that he had been dead for 2 months and came back to life. It was so weird! I had no idea what to think!

Oh...another funny one is that we were going to contact a referral that a member gave us. We knocked on the lady's door but no one answered so we turned to walk away and a Sheriff was walking up to the door. At the same moment this teenager opened the door. The Sheriff said to the boy, talking about us, "I'm not with them. I don't know what they are doing." haha What are the odds that the Sheriff would show up at this persons house just a minute after us. Kind of freaky. It wasn't for anything we had done though. No worries :)

Linda and Amanda came to a session of general conference! They came to the Saturday morning session and they seemed to love it. Now they have been to church 7 times! They still aren't on date. Right now we are just trying to help them build their trust in God. I don't know if I told you but Linda smokes and drinks coffee so that is the biggest road block right now. She doesn't want to disappoint God if she slips after baptism. We have a lesson with them tonight so we hope we can have the words to say so that we can help them progress towards baptism. They are awesome! They just need a little push.

We tracted into a lady and she let us come in to her house to share a short message. She was really nice but was sure if she wanted to learn more at the time. I wish people could just see the joy that this gospel could bring into their lives. If only they knew what they were missing