Conference

Well Hello Everyone,

 

I Hope everyone enjoyed conference. I felt a lot of the talks were just great. It’s weird to think that exactly 6 months ago I arrived here in LA! Anyways I really enjoyed Elder Holland’s Talk, and there were others but I don’t have my notes so I don’t remember names. I felt like a lot of them really helped me refocus on the things that matter most. Especially here on the mission. It’s been hard the last few weeks but little by little I see small blessings that help me along the way. Anyways the week was slow and towards the end I was getting really tired, but conference was just a great spiritual boost. We found a new investigator from an excommunicated member that we found last week. She is super awesome and still has an extremely strong testimony. She wants to get re baptized. And her boyfriend is really interested so we started teaching him, he is very curious and wants to learn more, the thing is that he lives far away and so we have to meet with them both at her house. Also we met with roman who was really interested in conference and said he would watch some this weekend because he was interested in prophets. I don’t think he believed us when we said we have a living prophet, so he asked us what is the test to see if he really is God's person? We told him it was the Book of Mormon and also that if he watches and prays about it he can come to know. SO we are going to try and visit him tomorrow and follow up as the apostle said. We also met with Marlon who is just weird, he has lots of chastity and Word of wisdom problems. Hopefully we can help him get over some of his problems, Elder Marin who originally started teaching him says he’s a little bit of a liar and acts like he wants to get baptized but never changes so we shall try him one more time.

But overall the work has picked up a little bit. I was hardly with my comp all week, we went on 2 splits this week so he was gone as I lead in the area, then conference weekend hi was just everywhere and I hardly was really with him. But he’s cool. He and Elder Marin get along great so that’s fun, but elder Marin moved to a different zone and has missed this ward a ton. Now he’s in Watts, probably the most ghetto area in the mission. But it sounds really fun to serve there. There is a ton of work. But here is a little miracle that I was extremely grateful for this week. There was a few but this one stuck out the most. it was Thursday and we had tried a bunch of people with no luck, we were tired, I was frustrated. and no one was home like usual. I just didn’t want to do anything, but my companion, seeing my frustration, told me to stop, so we pulled to a corner and he said a prayer, a sincere but earnest prayer asking to be able to find someone to let us in. we went and tried a couple more people. Then all the sudden the phone rings. It’s Marlon! He called saying that he had nothing to do right now and had about 2 hours and asked if we could come and visit him. Wow. It was a miracle. I counted that as a blessing that day and it strengthened my testimony of prayer. As a missionary you pray a lot! Let me tell you Alot! But I know that even one more prayer will not hurt and the lord will strengthen us, give us someone to teach, or just comfort us in time of need.

I love all of you! Thanks for all of your support. I really enjoy from hearing all of you. Continue in the faith! Overall that was something that I got out of conference. Just like the Gilbert AZ temple celebration, Live true to the faith. I saw a little part of that show and it look great, I’m sad I missed seeing it. But in 1 1/2 years I’ll go. It’s crazy that they are not going to build anymore temples until all of them are completed. I hope all will go well down there in the valley of the sun. Its slowly getting warmer, it’s just been super windy here. I guess living only 5 miles away from the beach cools things down all the time. I just hope it never gets too hot around here. I love you all and hope you have a great week.

 

Love,

Elder Hollingshead