BEFORE I FORGET: Happy Birthday mom! I know that it was on Tuesday and I completely spaced the email last Monday. Hope you still love me! How was your birthday? I know you guys were flying home, but I hope it was still good! I can't afford to send anything in the mail, but hopefully you know how thankful that I am to have you as my mom. I believe it was Elder Christofferson who was speaking about our families, and I could only keep thinking, "Dad and Joe taught me how to be a man, but it was mom who taught me how to be a man of God." After the Conference mom, that is a greater gift than anybody could ever give me =) I love you and thank Heavenly Father every single day that you are my mom.
What a wonderful conference weekend it was! The Spirit you feel during conference as a missionary is worth the entire two years of service and much more! Every time somebody mentions the missionaries in a prayer or in a talk, you realize that they are talking about you and the Spirit just surges inside of you, once again confirming that what you are doing is right. I went to conference with about 5 questions that I wanted answered during the weekend, in the Saturday morning session, 4 of those 5 were answered, so I went home Saturday night and made up some new ones haha. They were all answered by the end of the weekend =)
The overall messages that I got from the Conference: Follow the Prophet, testify ofJoseph Smith, and own up to your choices. So many other wonderful notes too, but those are what I was constantly aware of. Also, the Second Coming is right around the corner, if you're not preparing, you better get started right now. We can't afford to wait any longer, and it's like you said mom, "It starts with day one." The talk that was in Portuguese was great! It was nice to be able to listen to a conference talk without a voice over for at least a few minutes =) I really liked the talk by Elder Robbins too! In Portuguese, he was asking what side we are on. There are only two, and it's time to decide. I will go over my notes this week too and then send more inpressions that I received over the weekend =) I only took 22 pages of notes...so I will need just a little bit of time haha. I liked Elder Wong's talk too! But it was hard to focus because my brain was thinking, "He is speaking in Cantonese, I'm thinking in English, but I'm understanding Portuguese haha it was quite the thought and my brain was trying to figure out how it was possible.
Thanks for the sports news again!!!! That is sad about Hill, he broke his leg when I was at BYU too and was out for the season. Hendrick Motorsports is going to need some help too...I might just pray for the Nationals! Of all the things in the package, I think the hat is what I'm most excited for!
The week was really normal for us, but we had an amazing experience on Tuesday! =) We decided to just find new people to teach on Tuesday, and that is what happened. However, I had been studying a book that is about missionary work and has a section about knocking doors. The author says, wouldn't you like to receive a reference from the Lord? Wouldn't that be the greatest thing in the world? Did you know that you can? He then explains how we can receive inspiritation for where we need to go to find someone who is prepared to receive the Gospel. The steps are as follows:
1. Repent of every sin that you have
2. Express gratitude for what you have
3. Pray for inspiration from the Holy Ghost, for your companion, and for yourself
4. Go to the map of your area and spend as much time as you need looking at the streets and writing down the name of as many as you feel even the smallest hint of "maybe here" or other feelings that are the Holy Ghost
5. Have your companion do the same until you each have 5-10 streets
6. Compare lists and look at how amazingly you both have a few streets that are the same!
7. Go to those streets and find the Elect of God
He also mentions that you are probably going to have 1 or 2 in common, but has heard of as many as three or four too! We decided to give it a shot, and oh what an expeirence =) We had 4 streets in common! These four streets linked together to ensquare an area of our area that was very specific. We couldn't believe how perfectly it worked out! We practically ran to those streets and began our work. We ended up finding 4 new families to teach and are so excited to work with them! It was amazing, every single one of them was receptive to our message and some of them already know members of the Church! We received referrals from the Lord. I have not had an experience like that, and look forward to having many more!
That's about it =) Hopefully this is an interesting email =) I'm loving life and cannot wait to share with our investigators all of these conference talks! So many of them were aimed exactly at problems or questions that they are all having =)
Love you all! Make sure to keep these talks in mind and to continue studying them!
Elder Sanderson
****He emailed once more and said--***
Love you too mom =) one more thing I learned from conference: We have to love everyone and make sure that we are forgiving them and helping them, no matter what they believe or think.
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