Week 35, April 6, 2015 - General Conference, baptism, and the miracle of the banana bread and ice cream

This email starts off week six of being in Oviedo. And that means transfer information will come this saturday. As for the district, we´re pretty sure the hermanas will get changed up, but it´s also possible that my companion will head somewhere else. I doubt it, but I know that I´m not in the islands things are a little more shake-up-able. In the Canaries, people usually stay for six months and that is that. 

The biggest news of the last two weeks (I know, I´m sorry) is that Ada, our investigator, is going to get baptized!!! The sisters put her on fecha, and now that day will arrrive this saturday. We (the elders) have planned a bomb program complete with talks, musical numbers, and food. The hermanas were very surprised to find out we could handle such a monumental task. 

We also watched General Conference! My favorite part was Elder Holland followed right after President Uctdorf, both of them talking about Grace. My goal is to spend one of my upcoming mediodias studying those two talks along with "His Grace is Sufficent" By Brad Wilcox and "In the Strength of the Lord" by Elder Bednar. Just spend about two hours reading just about grace. I felt such a powerful spirit as we listened to the the modern day prophets and apostles. My other favorite part was during the prayer of the SundayMorning session which we watched live - I realized that in many places around the world, I was saying "Amen" with faithful members and missionaries and maybe even my family. 

In other news, I tried to make cookies but then found out that I had bought a cookie sheet that didn´t fit in the oven....That was frustrating. So I made banana bread instead, and found out that during our one-hour break between Saturday afternoon and Sundaymorning, no one had brought any food. So with a little loaf of banana bread and a some ice cream from the hermanas, the whole branch got a snack to tide them over for our last session of conference. We had exactly enough banana bread and ice cream for the branch, my companion, and the Australian hermana. I and the other Utah hermana didn´t get any, but that was just ok! Because that was our loaves and fishes miracle of general conference. 

Love, Elder Stew

To Eric:

I just read your letter about Apostacy. Thanks. What´s funny is that another Elder in our district just recieved "The Great Apostacy" by Elder Talmage for his birthday, and I´ve been reading it whenever we have intercambios. Really, really good.

The fact is that we find/are told about/get hit with anti-mormon stuff quite a lot. More than I thought. But I found a recurring theme in this conference that relates back to an awesome talk by Elder Holland hace a couple years titled "Lord, I believe". And my reaction is the same as yours - I´ve seen too much good and felt too many things to deny what I DO know. 

I was wondering if you had any thoughts about how the people yelled "No" during the sustaining of the Prophet. It kinda made me mad, which I know was not the correct reaction. Obviously its just something I should ignore, but I was curious. 

Elder Stew

To Lara:

I just read your letter about Apostacy. Thanks. What´s funny is that another Elder in our district just recieved "The Great Apostacy" by Elder Talmage for his birthday, and I´ve been reading it whenever we have intercambios. Really, really good.

The fact is that we find/are told about/get hit with anti-mormon stuff quite a lot. More than I thought. But I found a recurring theme in this conference that relates back to an awesome talk by Elder Holland hace a couple years titled "Lord, I believe". And my reaction is the same as yours - I´ve seen too much good and felt too many things to deny what I DO know. 

I was wondering if you had any thoughts about how the people yelled "No" during the sustaining of the Prophet. It kinda made me mad, which I know was not the correct reaction. Obviously its just something I should ignore, but I was curious. 

Elder Stew