April 7, 2014

Greetings!

CONFERENCE WAS SO AMAZING! UGH! I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT HOW AWESOME IT WAS BECAUSE THERE'S TOO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT! I think this is the first time ever watching General Conference without getting tired or falling asleep once. It was so good! My favorite talk was by Elder Bednar. I can't put into exact words why that one is my favorite, but what he said brought me a lot of hope and peace. I appreciate my burdens and trials and I have a new perspective on why we need hard times. I appreciate them now. I still don't like them, but I know I need them :) I also loved Elder Hales talk on obedience. Our ultimate goal is to become like Christ so we need to be obedient like Christ.

My favorite quote from that talk is "Our love of the Savior is the key to Savior-like obedience." I love how Elder Hales taught that as we learn to love our Savior more, being obedient becomes easier in a way and is motivated by the right reasons. I love Conference!

Besides General Conference my week went ok. The beginning of the week was rough but near the end we experienced some very sweet miracles.

One night we were with a member trying to contact people in the Preston ward with no luck, but the final person was... a miracle. The person we saw was Shana who is an investigator. The previous missionaries had a hard time trying to contact her and to teach her so she hadn't been meeting with missionaries recently so we knew nothing about what we were going into. Shana is amazing though. She has lots of questions about the Plan of Salvation and she is wondering if she'll ever see family and friends that she loves that have passed on.

She was very receptive to what we were teaching and testifying to her about. She knows she needs to read the Book of Mormon and said that she would start reading it again. She also watched General Conference with members on Saturday! Miracles everywhere! Our goal is to get her progressing towards baptism this week.

Another miracle that happened was with another investigator named Shelly in the Preston ward. Shelly is the sweetest 80 year old woman.

She's been through so much (very aggressive cancer and more) and is actually very receptive to the gospel. She is Jehovah's Witness and she only has a few concerns. They are mainly about holidays and celebrating things the way the pagans do. But she says that she accepts the Book of Mormon, priesthood authority, Joseph Smith being a prophet, and more but she's getting hung up on little things. But they're big things to her. She has been a JW for a very long time and has kinda been brain washed, for lack of a better term, about things that honestly don't matter. This is the miracle. The member that came with us is a dear friend of hers and she bore the most simple, doctrine-packed testimony I've ever seen a member do. Shelly was touched and committed to read the Book of Mormon with the question and concerns that she has. We're praying really hard that she has a strong enough desire to find the truth. We have faith that she can start progressing towards baptism very soon. She's doing great and has made a lot of progress. We haven't been able to see her as often as we would like because of work and her health that is terrible, but the member keeps in contact with her. Thank goodness for members!

Another miracle happened with Christian in the Vista Peaks ward. We went and played frisbee with his family and friends in the ward. We had a lot of fun and his mom Laura became much more comfortable with us around (a miracle right there!). After having fun we had a short lesson about prophets and Christian's friend from school (who is a member and is 9) bore the sweetest testimony about prophets and told Christian how amazing General Conference is. We invited them to watch a session with us and some members in the ward who are their main fellowshippers. HE CAME AND WATCHED IT WITH US! Miracle! We're seeing him today and we're excited to talk to him about it more. The members are really reaching out to the family and it is amazing to see.

Well, I'm excited for this coming week! I'm super excited about the things I'm going to do and change because of General Conference and to do what the prophet has asked us to do. It's going to be crazy and we're going to work hard to get a baptism date! We're praying extra hard for amazing miracles to happen. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

-Sister Dunn