26 September 2016 - OLD FAITHFUL

This past week was definitely one of my favorites in the whole mission. Seriously. First of all, earlier this week we had a mission tour - meaning two general authorities came to meet everyone and hold zone conferences with us.  Elder Brent H Nielsen (gen ath 70 and head of mission department) and Elder Joaquin Costa (gen auth 70) came.  They're brilliant.  We had a zone conference and 2 missionary leadership council meetings with them.  One of my favorite parts was when our mission president, in order to illustrate the allegory of the olive tree (see Jacob 5) literally GRAFTED TWO TREES AT THE PULPIT IN THE CHAPEL.  Our mission president owned a very successful nursery of trees in Oregon for his business.  Meaning he literally grafted trees all the time.  It was wonderful. I'm still reviewing my notes from the whole mission tour, but I'm excited to be a better missionary because of it.
Then, we got to go to Yellowstone National Park on Wednesday which was beautiful and JUST the soul-cleansing that I needed. It was probably the sulfur haha. That's why I didn't email last week.
THEN we got 3 new investigators this week - from Nepal, Germany, and Vietnam. And each of them are SO prepared in their own ways. The one from Nepal agreed to a baptismal date yesterday, and the other two have said that they want to get baptized!!
Another amazing thing is that we were looking for a particular house, supposedly "Jared" lived there - a nonmember that the elders before us found that was interested in taking the lessons. When we get there, we learn that nobody named Jared lived there (anymore, at least) and now a young couple with a daughter lived there. The wife told us that she was baptized a few years ago, but now she and her husband were less active. They're both smokers, but said that they've been looking for a way to quit and come back to church and invited us over again for a lesson!!!!!! We're so excited. But we're still looking for Jared, too.
THEN to top it all of, we got to watch the General Women's conference of the church.  I enjoyed ALL of the talks, but my favorites were Sister Oscarson's and Elder Utchdorf's.  Sister Oscarson's talk, like, made me just want to cheer the whole time.  I could have genuinely just started applauding at multiple points because of how unapologetic and straightforward and hardcore she is.  Then Elder Utchdorf, if he isn't enough of a charmer already, told wonderful stories about having faith and enduring and trusting God.  A lot of what he said very literally answered some of my questions in very real ways.  It was amazing.  I encourage you all to look into the conference regardless of whether or not you are a woman.

I love you all.

This week was great.
I will send pictures.

xoxo
Sister Mc