"He is Risen!" An Easter Motto

What an exciting week! Or at least weekend!

As I said last week, on last Saturday the entire mission got to meet with Elder Ballard. It was incredibly awesome! We also got to hear from the area seventy over my area, Elder Sabin, and one of the Seventy, Elder Maynes. It was such a good experience to receive counsel from these General Authorities. And not only did they give us some good counsel, but they were also really quite funny!

Another great part about the mission conference was that I got to see some of the missionaries I have served around in the past. It was awesome to catch up for a few minutes (and they were a few shocked exclamations of, "You're back!"). Another fun little side note about last Saturday, since I had served for 4 months almost to the day when I had to go home, I changed my "mission birthday" to the 19th, the day corresponding with the day I got back into the mission, and I have been back for 2 months now. So last Saturday was my official 6 month mark! One fourth of the way done! It is insane to think of how fast time has gone by (even though it has taken me almost a year to reach 6 months).

Easter Sunday was really awesome! Got to hear more counsel from Elder Ballard and Elder Sabin at stake conference, but not Elder Maynes as he was up hosting a stake conference in Murrieta. Did a small Easter Egg hunt in Elder Rupper and my apartment (he had some plastic eggs, and I bought some candy, and we hid eggs for each other in different rooms). It was a lot of fun!

But the thing I loved most about this Easter is the chance to really think about the Atonement, and then also the Resurrection of our Savior, and the reasons I think I was thinking about it so much were because of..well...I'm a missionary, and the "Because of Him" video that I have had the pleasure of sharing throughout this week. So for my traditional scripture thought I want to share just a couple parts of Luke 24 as a last thought for this Easter season, "...Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is arisen..." (5 and 6). Also, a hymn that has been playing through my head a lot recently (and even more so since I got the CD in my Easter package) is "He is Risen." So let's just all remember that not only did our Savior die for us, but then he took back his life and rose from the dead so that we will all be able to as well.

In other news, this has been my last week with Elder Rupper as he is going to be getting transferred on Tuesday. So I will be getting a new companion, and I will tell you more about that later.

That's all for this week! And I just want to thank you all for letting me come out here and serve!

Love,

Elder Wixom