General Conference. Enough Said.

In complete honesty, Conference was not the only fun thing from this last week, but I do think it was definitely the highlight. This last week a lot of the highlights I was sitting. I did lots of sitting this last week. And all for good reasons.

Tuesday: We had a zone conference. And it was awesome. Talked about how when we are teaching, we need to make sure we spend our time teaching those people who are the "elect" meaning those who hear the gospel and want to know more. The ones that are touched by the Spirit and are driven to try to understand the things of God. Really, overall we just talked about how we are out here, not for very long in the grand scheme of things, and we need to spend the time we have to fulfill the missionary purpose of inviting others to come unto Christ.

Had exchanges in the middle of the week (don't worry, this part I wasn't sitting). Went to Discovery Hills again, but this time with Elder Waite. We had a good exchange, started off with taking Elder Johnsrud to the doctor's office because he has a nasty cough lingering from being sick (don't worry, now they have him on medication and he is doing a lot better), and then Elder Waite and I had a really good exchange. We spent most of the time going around trying to stop by potentials, but we did talk to a really nice elderly lady named Sister M, who due to health can't come to church, but is super sweet.

Sort of went on another exchange this last week. It wasn't a traditional 24 hour exchange. It was just that I, along with Elder Leal, the other district leader in the zone, got invited to go to Missionary Leadership Council (MLC) this last week. It was pretty cool. A really good chance to hear and talk with President Kendrick about how we can help the mission fulfill the missionary purpose more fully. It was also really nice seeing a lot of my mission friends again, because many of them also happen to be district leaders and zone leaders. So that was pretty fun. But the meeting itself was really good. We had lots of good talk about managing stress and at the same time feeling the urgency of the work. Which doesn't really make sense that both of those work, but they do. It's great.

And then General Conference this last weekend. Oh. My. Amazingness! It was so good! Got to do the normal missionary thing where all the missionaries in the stake gather at the stake center to watch conference. Which is fun because I get to see all the other missionaries in the area (including Elder Spencer again), and it helps us stay focused because we are in the quiet reverence of the chapel. I really loved the overall theme of conference, of building our testimonies on the simple truths of the gospel, and also the theme of doing a self assessment, asking ourselves what we can improve on and seeing how solid our testimonies are. A couple things specifically that I liked were in Elder Bednar's talk, where he quoted Elder Worthlin saying, "Come what may. And love it." Good words to live by. I also really liked President Eyring's talk about how no matter how small or insignificant the success of our labor may seem. We need to work our hardest to fulfill the purpose the Lord has for us. And then I really liked Bro. Durrant's challenge to "ponderize" a scripture per week. I'm definitely going to do that.

Well, by way of spiritual thought...go back and re-watch conference. Because I know that as we "feast upon the words of Christ" and study the teachings of the prophets, "the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do." (2 Nephi 32:3). I love hearing from the living prophets and apostles. It is such a blessing to live in this day and age.

Love,

Elder Wixom