4/8/2024

GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!

 

Well what a great week. I hope you all were able to watch General Conference and listen to the words of our Prophet today! Lets just quickly talk about the AMAZING news for my Mission. The THSM is getting a Temple!!!!! Our mission chat started to blow up after that news it was crazy. Some other note worthy Temples I heard was Edinburgh Scotland, West Jordan Utah, and Lehi Utah. Well lets get on with the week. 

 

Monday

April fools and I didn’t get fooled. Well at least I hope I wasn’t fooled. It was a pretty good P-Day. We prepped our apartment to get sprayed for bedbugs. Yep I do believe they were here but we should be fine now. We explored an outdoor mall in the corner of our area called City Center. It is in Memorial City. Our first stop was to the local GoodWill to see what they had. I found a Salt Lake City mug which was really cool to find in Texas so I bought it for one dollar. We just walked around after that going into random stores and looking at all the random things. That was basically what we did for our district activity. They will get better soon, my arm is already feeling a lot better. In the evening we visited Gisel. Her sister was visiting and we got her info and sent it to the Elders in her area. As of writing this they still have only sent a text. They are kinda being bums not reaching out more. Its kinda sad. We went to another guy and read some of the Book of Mormon with him and he gave us a bunch of food. It was a great day.

Tuesday

There was a lot of finding time but we made it work. We found some people and visited some others. We knocked a little in a neighborhood but Elder West hated it. A lot of missionaries hate knocking in neighborhoods. It makes me feel like the outlier here as a missionary who kinda enjoys knocking neighborhoods over apartments. But we went back to the apartments anyway. In the end it was a fun day.

Wednesday

Just a district council kinda day. That took up most of it. We had a bit of in person contacts before our lesson with Gisel. When we got there she was just pulling up. It went really good. I can really see her being such a great addition to the Memorial Park 2nd ward. Her Faith is super strong. We were just kinda over there for a while and then We got my stuff for an exchange! I went to MP1. The northernmost point of the mission within the city.

Thursday

It was just a standard morning that I usually had with an exchange. This apartment I was at didn’t have a gym. Just a dumbbell and a pull-up bar. I can still only curl with my right arm as my left arm is still in the healing process. I had to hold the sim card for the area phone because Elder Ashcraft is using a mission loaner phone that doesn’t have the little tray that holds the sim card. Because I had the sim we also signed my phone into his account so I can do the contacts easier. This kinda just made it so I was leading the area even though I had just gotten there. It was a bit difficult but I endured it well. Now I can say I led an area I just got to.

Friday

The day before General Conference, we were trying to make sure all of our friends were going to be able to watch at least a session. The last General Conference I was still in the MTC which is a little weird to think about. The start of the day wasn’t looking too good. There weren’t many people answering. We did manage to meet with a friend but then after 2 lesson canceled and a third one was a no-answer. However at one complex a Spanish guy started trying to get our attention. I used the Spanish I knew to communicate and say we will call the Spanish missionaries for them to be able to talk. We learned that he is from Venezuela and has been here for 3 months. Super cool guy. I guess he also met with the missionaries back in Venezuela which is double cool. So now he can continue to be taught. After that it was an alright night.

Saturday

The big day! General Conference. We watched the first session at our apartment because the person we were going to watch it with canceled on us or just didn’t respond to us. Super good session. It was awesome to see Elder Holland back in conference and talking. The amount of jokes at the start of his talk caught me off guard. The 2nd session we watched half with our friend Levis and the other with the Massangas. That was super awesome. The 3rd session we tried to watch it with our Kinyarwanda family but because they don’t really know English they just get distracted by literally everything else and don’t really care about talking over it. I will need to watch that one over again for sure. I didn’t get much from it. All in all at great General Conference Saturday.

Sunday

Oh boy this was an awesome day. We watched the first session with our friend Kevin. He was just talking the whole time. When they starting singing A Child's Prayer we told him that this is a super good song and he should listen to it, he just started talking again. After that we left half way through to watch the other half with Gisel and her family. While there we also helped them setup 2 new tablets for the kids in which we also used to watch Conference on. That was super fun. The 2nd and final session we started at a members house with pizza. Again half way through we left to go watch the other half with another family. This of course is the session with the Temple announcements and I was so happy to hear that my mission will be getting a Temple. Of course I will be long gone by the time its built but it gives me another reason to come back and visit my mission in the future. 

Just a super great week and weekend. I hope you all enjoyed General Conference. I may have been busy making sure my friends could watch it but I still was able to write down a few notes that I liked from the talks. I like when Elder Holland basically said “Be serious in planning for Eternal life”. That's not the exact quote but it's close enough. We really do need to think about how our choices we make here will affect our Eternal Life. We also need to be “Recognizable disciples of Jesus Christ”. We need to make sure that we are living in a way that others can see us as disciples of Christ but also that Christ will recognize us. 

Now I hope you all felt the spirit while watching conference. Keep going strong and have an AMAZING week, especially once the conference talks are on Gospel Library.