Well what a crazy week!
Last Friday was a pretty good day! We always make a really good dinner
because Fridays we have something called weekly planning which is where
we plan for the next week. So we do our planning while things are
cooking. Anyways Elder Manivanh made me Chicken feet soup! It was a
little different at first but all in all it was pretty dang tasty. I
have some good photos of me chowing down--haha it was a blast.
Saturday we knew that nobody was going to go to the
church to watch conference so we stopped off at the grocery store and
got some candy and snacks and then went the church for conference which
started at 6:00 because of the time difference. We watched the Saturday
morning session Saturday night, the Saturday afternoon and Priesthood
Sunday morning and the Sunday morning on Sunday night. I still haven't
seen Sunday afternoon. So we got all our candy and went and one of our
Amis actually came so we were super excited! He speaks English and
German so we got to watch conference in English with one family that
came, the sister missionaries and our ami Jonathon. It was awesome
listening in English because I hate listening to a translator when I
know that's not what the people's voices sound like. So anyways after
the session I started talking to the ami about everything and he told me
he wanted to join the church! so I asked him if he knew what he would
have to do (he already has been taught the first three lessons) and he
was like "yeah i gotta have faith in Christ, repent, be baptized, and
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." I was thinking yeah buddy we are
gonna have a baptism soon! so I asked him why he wanted to get baptized
and he said he wanted to because he knows that this church is the true
church. So I am on cloud 9 trying to keep myself under control. We
invited him to go to conference the next day and figured out a ride for
him and everything. So the next day he came for one of the sessions and
we introduced him to everyone and since we had a member there we decided
to grab the member and teach him the word of wisdom. So we go in and we
start teaching him all about the word of wisdom and we explain the
blessings and testify and then we go to commit him and he said, "I want
to be a member because I know its the true church but I like smoking and
I refuse to quit" Man I just about flipped a lid and wanted to call
this man to repentance and then it clicked and I said to myself "How
many times do you sin knowing better?" It really made me think a lot
about how Christ just asks us to follow him and to do our best. Luckily
most people are willing to try to do their best, but him refusing to try
taught me another lesson. I have heard that as missionaries we will
experience a fraction of the sorrow that Christ feels. It really was a
heavy blow to have someone you are working with tell you despite their
testimony, they refuse to accept and obey the things we are asked to do.
All we can do is keep trying. We are going to try and work with him a
little more and I hope it clicks for him.
So anyways conference was really good. My favorite
talks were definitely Elder Holland's and Elder Packer's. I just
finished the book Believing Christ and I feel like I know so much more
about the atonement and then while listening to those to talks I just
felt the spirit so strong. It was great! I also really enjoyed something
Elder Nelson said. It was something along the lines of our desire is
based on our worthiness, personal conversion, and preparation. That
really made me think too. All in all conference was awesome and after
president Monson's announcement about the new ages for missionaries I am
stoked to hear about some mission calls. I am sure glad I was 19
because at 18 I would have been terrible and would not have gone for the
right reasons even if somehow I ended up going, but I think that it
will be great for those who are ready to leave to not have months of
waiting.
Well those are the big things that went down this week. I hope you all enjoyed conference!
Elder Lerdahl
No comments:
Post a Comment