Conference Weekend

Conference is always a mixed feelings time for me. Great because I get to watch conference, but sad because it marks another quarter of my mission finished. This is my 3rd conference, which means I'm almost 3 quarters done with my mission. We got transfer news yesterday, as I predicted we are both staying together for another transfer. So I will remain in Grand Junction.

The zone leaders also asked me to give a talk tomorrow for transfer meeting about "helping investigators progress." So I think I've decided to talk to them about the importance of what you do after and before lessons that will help them progress. Every missionary knows what to say and what to do in a lesson to help them progress, but I've noticed that once missionaries walk out of a lesson, that's the last time they think about the person until the next week. So I will briefly give a couple points of advice. 1. Pray for them as if they were your own children. (I'll share Alma's father, Alma praying for his wayward son as an example) 2. Constantly think about them and where you want them to be (sharing president Monson's experience about a missionary who managed to baptize every month by envisioning each of his investigators in white ready for baptism). 3. "Remember Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, and diligence." (D and C 4: 6) hopefully it should be pretty good.

One thing that I got out of conference was the Brethren apparently want us to change our approach to missionary work. President Monson shared an excellent talk about how we can insure our success. He suggested some things that don't really have an immediate connection with missionary work such as "plan your life with purpose." but the most important I think being, "teach with testimony." A lot of talks encouraged us to bear powerful testimony with our teaching. I especially liked Elder Uchdorf's talk about our "titles" that we have in priesthood. I even used the analogy of the struggling toddler in my teaching yesterday. How we are all infants compared to our Father, and he wants us to walk, even if we stumble.

On the missionary news front we gave away a golden investigator to the Young Single Adult missionaries L We got a referral for this guy who is 22 and wants to change his life around and be baptized, but because he is a YSA we had to hand him over. But that’s okay.  It doesn't matter who or where he is baptized, because we all hold the same priesthood under the same church.

I framed a "conference theme." and I think it was "preach the gospel and build the church." a lot of talks really emphasized this point.

Well that's all I have for today. I wish I had more, but this week was mostly about getting people to watch conference. I love you all!

Elder Bringhurst

 

PS Funny picture for the week:

 

Yes, there are Hobbits in Grand Junction