Friday, December 20, 2013

The Week of the General Authorities

Family!

Greetings from icy Ohio!  It gets really icy here!  They actually canceled the English ward this week because there was just too much ice in the parking lot for them to take care of.  Crazy!  But they didn't cancel our meetings...  I'll get to that in a bit...

Well, if you will remember, a while back we had transfers, and I completely forgot to mention who the new Elder was that replaced Elder Garcia.  It was..... Elder Bradford!!  He was in my MTC district, and it is super cool to be working with him again.  We have all these awesome MTC inside jokes, and it's kind of funny to speak Spanish with him and think back 6 months ago to how our Spanish was back then.  The Lord has definitely been helping both of us!  Anyways, I tell you all this because I got to go on exchanges with Elder Bradford this past week.  Not too much exciting happened, just a lot of trying people and finding them not at home.  We did have a lesson with an investigator who started off the lesson like this: "So I started reading that book you left me last time, and I'm a little confused about these gold plates..."  YES!!  He actually read out of the Book of Mormon!  That was exciting for us.  We also had a great lesson with a guy, during which he explained to us all of the intricacies of crossing the border into the U.S.  The things people go through to get here blew my mind!

We've recently been starting to have success in re-contacting former investigators from the area book.  I wanted to tell you one story real quick about one that we contacted this week.  We were cleaning out a corner of our study room, and for some reason or another, we found a stack of teaching records that weren't in the area book.  So I split them up by area, then gave the ones that fell in the other Elder's area to them.  A few days later we get a call from Elder Taylor.  He said the night before he was looking through the records, and he saw one named J---- H------.  The next morning, he ended up sitting next to a lady who spoke Spanish on the bus.  He asked her what her name was, and she said "J----." and before she could say her last name, he said "H------".  That ended up being her last name, and she was a little spooked out by that...  =)  But anyways, turns out she was in our area and I had just been mixed up, so he gave us back the record and we went to go visit her the other night.  I thought that was a great example of how the Lord knows his children, and he has small things happen; like us cleaning out that part of the study room or me mixing up where this lady lived, just to get us in touch with people again.

This weekend we had some amazing opportunities to hear from some general authorities!  We had an amazing zone conference on Saturday with Elder Perkins of the first quorum of the seventy.  He taught us a lot, and I was able to learn so much from him and from the Spirit that was there.  That night, we were allowed to attend the adult session of stake conference in our area.  Elder Smith of the seventy was there, as well as Elder D. Todd Cristofferson!  We were standing at the door talking to some other missionaries before the meeting started, and all of a sudden, there was Elder Cristofferson!  He shook our hands as he walked into the meeting.  Two apostles down, 10 to go!  Anyways, we got to hear from him that night, as well as the next morning for the general session of stake conference.  That was a great experience.

D----- has accepted all of the commandments we have taught him, but he still has a few doubts about the restoration, so that is what we are working on with him.  The baptismal date is still for this Saturday, and as of right now, that's still the plan.  After tonight we'll know more for sure what will happen.

Two other quick things.  You may remember that I ate some super hot salsa a few months ago at a member's house.  Well, they got a new kind, and I tried it this week.  It was called "Black Mamba Salsa: A Venomous Hot Sauce."  I believe that was a great description.  It was insane!  Definitely the hottest thing I have ever eaten...  Also, I had a lady lecture me for about 10 minutes on Mexican herbal cures.  That was a pretty interesting conversation...

Well, that's it for this week!  Thanks for everything.  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote