April 7, 2014

welcome to huntsville!

We had to take our car into the shop last week so we spent 4 days without our car. It really helped me appreciate the fact that we don't usually have to walk everywhere! Huntsville is a small town, so we were able to walk to all of our investigators' houses, but man, it was exhausting. I think we walked almost 25 miles this week. I love walking though, because it is so much easier to meet and talk to people while we are walking around town. One day, we were walking up a big hill when a pickup truck pulled up and a Marshallese guy leaned out and said, "are you Elders? Mormons?" We explained that we were sister missionaries, but yes, we were Mormons, and for a second we expected him to just roll up his window and drive away, but instead they offered us a ride. When we got in the car we learned that he and his wife were visiting from Berryville and had been baptized into the church a long time ago. The husband had thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses and didn't want to stop to pick us up, but his wife recognized our name tag from when they used to meet with the missionaries and told him to pull over and offer us a ride. It is amazing how the church brings complete strangers together and how the Lord puts people in each others' paths.

I LOVED conference.  Sister Obeta and I got to watch all four sessions of general conference this weekend. I feel so blessed to be able to hear from a modern day prophet. It's so cool that even though the speakers are addressing millions of people, you can still feel that what is said is for you personally.

Until I came on my mission I never appreciated it as much because to me, it was just a bunch of old men talking about the same thing every time but the last two sessions I've made a point of really preparing beforehand with questions I have and things I wanted to get out of watching it. It makes a HUGE difference. This time, I had 10 questions written down before conference, and I spent a lot of time praying that I'd find answers to them, and it seemed like every talk given was addressing one of my questions specifically. It was so cool. A couple of my questions were "how can I make my prayers more meaningful?" (Elder Corbridge emphasized that Joseph Smith took time to prepare before his prayer instead of just kneeling down in some random corner of his house and praying) and "how can I better show my love for others?" (President Monson's whole talk was about that!)
My favorite talks though, were Elder Zwick's talk about communication, Elder Uchtdorf's talk on gratitude and Elder Bednar's talk about how our burdens provide "spiritual traction" for us to get back to Heavenly Father. I loved the analogy he used at the beginning, it was perfect!