May 25, 2009

Greetings loved ones!

How is life in the good ole United States of FREEDOM!! Life down here in Chile is really good, I could not even dream of complaining!

This last week we had an awesome experience, stake conference. It was really amazing because we had presiding at the conference Elder Carlos Amado of the Seventy (nothing new, he presides at sacrament meeting every week, we also have Elder Lawrence Corbridge of the Seventy in our ward too, look up his talk from two or three conferences ago, its killer.) Anyways the treat was that President Morán asked us to be at every meeting of the conference to help our ward leaders out and we also were there to help present a ¨ward council¨ according to a talk that Elder Tom Perry wrote to all the mission presidents a while back. It outlines an efective ward council meeting and how the missionaries can help every auxilary retain its members and help strengthen its quorom members, its a killer plan, i suggest that all read it, unfortunately i only have it in spanish but i can still send it out if some of the spanish readers would like to take a look at it, just give me a hollar. Anyhow Elder Amado made a couple of things crystal clear to us all in the Priesthood session, primarily he asked us all what was more important, our families or the church. A few answered in the affirmative for the families before he threw the hammer down on them and asked them what ordinances their families have done to bring them salvation. The obvious answer is that the family can´t help us to complete any saving ordinances but he went on the explain how they are both equally important, the family can not exist forever without the saving ordinances the church provides and without the family the church wouldn´t serve a purpose. It was interesting. The theme of stake conference was that and also that we need to find and help the lost sheep, he said that the single mothers that are praying for their loved ones to see the light have no answer to their prayers without us, the faithful members of the church. It was super powerful, especially for me because he asked me to read the quote that President Monson told him that he needed to share with the stake which goes as follows:

If you don´t intend to do it,

You wont do it.

If you don´t do it,

Why are you here?

We also had a sweet conference earlier this week with the missionary who baptized our President of the mission when he was a young kid. it was cool but it made me realice how precious and short life can be. I think he is 55ish and he already has cancer and doesn´t have a long time to live. Its scary that honestly their are things like that in the world that can just creep up on us and take our loved ones away in the blink of an eye. Don´t let it happen to any of you, i love you far too much!!!

Alrighty i´m runnin out of time but i love you all like crazy and miss you too! Put a smile on and invite someone to listen to the missionaries!