28 Mar 2016

This week was good. On Monday we played basketball and volleyball. I hurt myself trying to dunk. I hyper-extended my knee a tiny bit so it's a little sore. It's not very bad though. It was a good activity.

On Tuesday we had zone conference. We were combined with the Taylorsville zone. President Palmer started off the zone conference by announcing the terrorist attack in Brussels where those missionaries were hurt. He told us not to focus on the negative things in the world. Then he went on to describe how the Iron rod is Christ and how everything we doing missionary work is of Christ. President Palmer also told us if we are unified as a mission, miracles will happen. He also told us that what we are doing is the most important work on the earth and we are doing it full-time. And it is not about us. It is about Christ. Then the sister APs gave the training on being unified with Christ. They told us that we should love him let him change us and follow him. Then the assistants gave a training on being unified as a companionship and testifying after each other. After that we had lunch.

After lunch we resumed the zone conference by hearing from President Young. He instructed us on the importance of the Lord in this work and how it is not about us; it is about the Lord. He also told us to use the time on our missions to strengthen our foundation on the Book of Mormon. Then we watched part of the missionary broadcast where Elder Bednar was training some missionaries. Some things that stuck out to me in the broadcast was where that all people have agency and if they don't use the agency they have to accept your message; don't get down on yourself. We also need to be obedient and relieved to have the Holy Ghost with us at all times. The training was a lot about using the Holy Ghost. Something that Elder Bednar said that really stuck out to me was that people don't learn from anything we say. They learn from the feelings they get from the Holy Ghost. The biggest roadblock towards progression is our own pride and lack of submissiveness. He also mentioned that teaching is listening and observing. Then at the end President Palmer closed the meeting with saying that we shouldn't focus on the little things in the church. We shouldn't be bothered if someone sits in "your" bench. He said that we should switch it up and not sit same bench every week.

On Wednesday we taught a lesson to the Wilkes family. They have an eight-year-old daughter who is not yet been baptized. So they want us to come over and teach the daughter. It was a very interesting lesson, because the daughter gets distracted very easily. Then after that lesson we went to the McFarlane family. They are really awesome family. They really like superheroes and guns, so we have lots to talk about.

On Thursday we had weekly planning. During weekly planning we got a call from some missionaries from the Salt Lake mission. They said they had received permission from their mission president to teach our investigator who speaks French because one of the elders in their mission can speak French. But we already have set it up where we teach once a week with the Temple Square sisters that speak French. Then later that night we got together. All the missionaries in our zone that it they're 18 month mark. We had a mass pants burning ceremony, and since Elder Paul it is 18th month mark, we went. It was fun.

Friday was a pretty slow day. We didn't have district meeting because of the zone conference. So we had district lunch instead. We had grilled chicken, it was really good! We brought a lemon meringue pie that a family gave us because we weren't going to eat it all on our own. While we were waiting for lunch to finish cooking we were playing with these remote control army tanks. When one of the army tanks shoots the other the controller shocks the person's hand who got shot. I played for like three seconds.

On Saturday morning we had a meeting with our ward mission leader in the third Ward. We discussed everyone we are working with in his ward and what they need to progress. We also discussed people that we could start teaching in his ward. The rest of the day was pretty slow until we got in for the night. Right after we finished planning and I got changed we got a call from one of our ward mission leaders. He said that brother Neffs nephew had gone into the hospital and brother Neff wanted us to come and help give his nephew a blessing. So I got changed and we left. We got to the hospital and give the blessing and then we left. It was kind of exciting.

On Sunday we had a farewell talk in the first ward we went to, a homecoming in the next ward we went to.  Then we had a ward conference in the last ward we went to. I really liked the ward conference because they had an awesome musical number by these five sisters from Hawaii. They were really good. And that was pretty much our week.

We are taking a guy to the Saturday afternoon session of conference.