General Conference Week!

Dear Family,

First of all, I can’t believe it has been a year since the mission age change!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So cool!! A year and three days ago, I had no idea how amazing my life was going to change to be, what a huge blessing! Also, I LOVED General Conference, if you didn’t watch it- watch it, if you missed any parts or fell asleep in any parts- go back and watch it! If you watched it and tried to soak it all up- go and watch it again! I cannot wait until the Ensign comes out and I can really dive in and study the talks, it was so inspiring! I will get to the good ol GC in a minute, but I’ll start with miracles of the week.

First miracle of the week was our Zone training. I don’t know exactly why, but our zone training kind of turned into a zone conference (yes they are different things). We had the awesome privilege (only ones in the mission) to combine with another zone, and the Killpacks came down with the APs and trained us! It was so amazing! I had been struggling with a few things and knew I wanted to improve in a few areas for the sake of our area and the people in it. But I just didn’t know how to make things better! Then comes zone training and they answered every single question I had, and every question that I had that I didn’t know that I had. We talked about focusing our teaching on the gospel of Jesus Christ and focusing our teaching on the Savior Jesus Christ (dad you were dead on). We also talked about increasing our member involvement, especially getting more members to our lessons, which we need to do better at. We talked about resolving investigator’s concerns and really getting down to the source of the problem, not just the symptoms of the problems.  We talked about dealing with the stresses of missionary work, and we got an awesome new manual of how to do it, this will help a lot and already has! We also talked about a new policy with recent converts- we now get to keep teaching RC for 3 months after their baptism- yay! Then...... We talked about......... some new things coming to our mission........:)....... You can probably guess........... FACEBOOK!!! I am so excited to be able to have this as another tool to be a missionary, I think it will really help our area and help the members get involved! Also just generally help the whole world, which will be nice. We should be getting facebook by the end of the year, which is going to come quickly. I am a little nervous, but I think it will work out. Shout out to Hermana Kaiser who has got me so pumped to do this! We also talked a lot about being obedient now, like seriously NOW! We need to choose to obey all the small rules now so that we can obey all the small rules later. It is going to be awesome, I can’t wait!

Then we went to see P., who is a less active we are working with. She had an amazing experience at the RS broadcast, she really felt her potential and that she was a child of God. We decided with the RS president to talk to her about the temple. While talking to her, I was inspired to ask her if she wanted to take the lessons over again. She said that she had been thinking about that earlier in the week and would love to! She just didn’t know that was allowed. It is going to bless her life so much! She has also agreed to work toward getting her recommend to the temple and getting her patriarchal blessing, which is so cool! I love her so much! She is such an amazing lady, and becoming more and more so everyday! I know I am here for her!

We also had a really good lesson with the V's.! Their dad is home because of the whole government shut down thing.  Tons of people were affected by that down here. They could all use your prayers. But the lesson was awesome! We also had a cool miracle, we went to go see a LA guy, and his LA wife whom we’ve never met answered. We were able to talk to her, she told us some of her concerns and we were able to get her excited about General Conference and also excited about coming back to church. I think we will be able to help them come back! We would love for them to join us. All of our investigators are doing great, so please keep praying for them! 

Here is just a plug, if you didn’t get the memo during conference, I will help you understand. You are all hereby called to serve as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are all called to spread and share the gospel with the whole world to serve with the full time missionaries. I hope you will all take this call seriously. Please pray to have a missionary experience every day. Please actively seek to find and talk to as many people as you can each day, and try to create missionary experiences, then invite the people you meet and are friends with to church, to read the Book of Mormon, or something. Just invite them! Also don’t fear, the Lord is with us and will help us all! We have a promise from an apostle of the Lord that if we can even find one person to share the gospel with, that MILLIONS will come to feel of Christ’s love for them. What an amazing promise, and I hope you and I can bring even more children back into God’s kingdom here on the earth! Yay for missionary work!!!

I had three specific questions for conference and they were all answered in amazing ways! I only have like 5 more minutes, so I will just share some of the highlights from conference that I liked.

First it was amazing to me that many apostles commented on how the world was changing and that our church would not always be thought of as good. Because of this we need to be truly converted now to the gospel! We can do this by acting on the knowledge and testimony we have. That means we must go and do before the blessings come. My investigators need to learn this. I really want to take the sacrament more seriously- because it does not just renew our baptismal covenants but ALL covenants, which is so cool! I also loved that they shared Matt 11:28-30 so many times; it is becoming one of my favorites! I also loved how they mentioned basketball! Basically I love President Monson and all the speakers, it was so amazing!  

Adios amigos and amigas! 

Love, Sister Barnes