Conferance and Mission Arrivals

Well I had another good week. As we went into the weekend things went well. A lot of time in the office because of the training of Elder Silva. Then obviously we had General Conferance which I enjoyed. We were able to watch it in english which is always good, I did watch the Priesthood session in portuguese though. Above is a picture of the group that we watched in English with throughout conferance. The two girls on the end are in my ward and they have lived in the United States and speak english quite well. I seem to enjoy it more in english. I understand the portuguese perfectly but when the talks are translated they loose a little bit of the feeling and the voice and feeling of the speakers.

I enjoyed many of the talks and I did learn a lot. I enjoyed in particular the strong testimony and talk given by Elder Holland. I could see that many of the general authorities spoke about the spirit. One thing that really caught my atention was how many was spoken on the fact that we must accept the spirit. We must let the spirit or light of Christ enter into our lives. I can see that principle so much here on my mission. Many people that we teach do not make the choice to let themselves receive the spirit to know that all this is true. I wonder sometimes why when our investigators pray and yet do not receive an answer. I have learned that the Lord will never answer if they do not really want to know. Moroni knew the difficulty many would have when he taught to pray with a sincere heart and real intent. Without these two aspects the Lord has no reason to answer. If we pray to the Lord asking something that we have already made our mind up, many times we wont even get a response. As I said though I enjoyed conferance a lot.

Then yesterday we had eight new missionaries arrive in the mission. We got one American sister, one Brazilian sister and six American elders. There arrival went well. The first week of transfers are always busy with missionaries leaving and others arriving but things went well. The begiinning of the next transfer will be worse, 16 missionaries will be arriving.

Well I guess that was my week, nothing to exciting beyond Conferance and the arrivals. I got Kristen´s wedding announcement, thanks for that. Hmmm let me think what else. Nothing to much. I love you all and miss you all too.

Until next week...