Zone Conferences are days when you sit a lot. Tuesday, we sat in the car as we drove up to Cape Girardeau. That's about 1 1/2 hours. Then we sat as we had the meeting. That was 6 hours (plus a little standing/moving during lunch and a couple of trainings). Then, another 1 1/2 hours driving home. Grand total: 9 hours of sitting. And it was really cold again, around single digits. We washed our car and the water froze on it instead of drying off. The exciting part of Zone Conference was that it was combined, our zone + one of the St Louis zones, and I got to see my trainer! Hooray for Sister Richardson :) We caught up on all the things that have happened in the two months since we last talked. The conference itself was focused on the standards of excellence. I walked away from it with resolve to invite more people to baptism. We want to increase our number of people with dates.
On Wednesday, we had another meeting! District Meeting. We did Zumba in the morning before, then headed to Dexter. It was a funny meeting this time, we got a little off topic, but it was good for us. We talked about the New Testament. We had some interesting lessons. One of our investigators who has been progressing well towards baptism, Edna, broke her foot. That makes her list of injuries now a knee replacement, pneumonia, a kidney removed, a broken foot, an infection in her broken foot, and other general illnesses. I swear, I don't know what else she could have happen. But she was supposed to get baptized soon, but it's going to have to wait. Then we had a tough lesson with the young mother we've been teaching since last August. She's made a lot of changes in her life, but we feel like she's hit a bit of a stumbling block, and we don't know how to help her overcome it. Then... we had another tough lesson. A new investigator we've been teaching for only about a week was having a really rough time. We spent a couple hours with her, and had the elders come and bless her.
Thursday, we got to email! Yay :) Edna was supposed to have her baptismal interview but she was at the hospital and forgot to cancel with us. We went to the same young woman that we saw on Wednesday and had an okay lesson with her. But then we taught the family that we've been working with (dad, two kids, living with a less active member)! And we had a great lesson. They are coming so close to baptism, it's amazing. I am super excited for them.
Sister Reed and I had a wonderful Valentine's Day. We worked all day, then came home and made a very romantic meal, with romantic lighting and romantic music (well, as romantic as you can get when the rules say that you can't have any music with romantic lyrics or overtones. It was piano hymns). Here's what we ate: two types of chicken (Indian and teriyaki), rice, a salad, fresh steamed broccoli, cara cara oranges, and an Asian style soup. To drink, sparkling apple-peach cider. For dessert, homemade brownies. After dinner, we played with the candle wax and made "modern art."
I had a very ponder-ful study on Saturday. I read 1 Nephi 15:2: "And it came to pass that I said unto them that I knew that I had spoken hard things against the wicked, according to the truth; and the righteous have I justified, and testified that they should be lifted up at the last day; wherefore, the guilty taketh the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center." This scripture impressed me this time as I read it. After I read it, I thought about the things that I hear, in General Conference, or in missionary trainings, or even the things that I read in the scriptures, that cut ME to the center. It's easy to try and justify away those feelings, or to ignore those feelings. But there are times when I hear something and it cuts me. I feel that sharp guiltiness, because I know that the words are true, and I am not doing them! I sat there and just thought, "what commandments cut me to the center when I hear them?" Then I progressed to, "How can I change, so that I don't feel that way anymore?" Really, a mission is all about change. It's about bringing ourselves into a closer alignment with God's will.
To wrap up, a wonderful quote from the seminary lesson that we're going to be teaching next Thursday:
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: “Alma had been touched by the teaching of his father, but it is particularly important that the prophecy he remembered was one regarding ‘the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.’ (Alma 36:17.) That is the name and that is the message that every person must hear. … Whatever other prayers we offer, whatever other needs we have, all somehow depends on that plea: ‘O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me.’ He is prepared to provide that mercy. He paid with his very life in order to give it."
Highlights from the upcoming week:
Teaching seminary!
Another round of exchanges... I'm heading to Illinois!
Our ward is having a President's Day Party!
I love you all, and I think of you often :)
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