Week 32 - Miraculous Uno Game
Hey guys! This week has been pretty cool! We had zone conference on Tuesday, and we had the global General Conference on Saturday and Sunday!
Zone Conference was super awesome! Shane Littlefield came again, and had a lot of really insightful instruction! Something really interesting is that he urged us to put people on date for baptism faster. Previously, a lot of missionaries here (including myself) would wait till the 5th or 6th lesson with someone before considering putting them on date. Shane Littlefield told us that we should aim to do it in the first 2 lessons! He explained that people like conviction. Being bold and straightforward is much more convincing than waiting for the last lessons. Also, most people already know that when we teach, we have baptism in mind as a future goal. So when we wait before making that clear, it almost seems deceitful! Plus, talking about baptism and setting a date early on gives the people we're teaching a goal to work towards.
There was a lot of other stuff he talked about, but I'll spare you the details. In short, it was very inspiring! Naturally, so was General Conference! We did get to have General Conference with other missionaries in the city this time, but we did get to have it with a couple families here in Steinbach! We watched the Saturday session with the Weirs and the Sunday Session with the Andersons! Both are very nice families and it was fun spending extra time with them! I'm very grateful they invited us over.
General Conference itself was really good! There was a few talks that talked about doing away with contention, and being more patient and loving even when you disagree with someone. As well as maintaining composure, and never acting out of anger. President Nelson's story about a surgeon having a fit and throwing a scalpel at him was super funny!!
Also, today we're going to the Zoo!! I'm currently writing this on the way there, I'll finish writing after we've gone and I'll add pictures :)
Time skip! We're on the way back to Steinbach now, and we didn't end up going to the zoo lol. We realized we didn't have a ton of time, and would prefer to go to the zoo on a day we had more time to be there. So instead we decorated eggs! My parents sent an Easter care package that came with egg decorating kits! It was super fun 😄
Lastly, something really cool happened today! We were hanging out with other missionaries playing Uno, and someone none of us had met before walked into the church out of nowhere. He approached us and said something along the lines of "hey, I noticed the door was unlocked. I hope you don't mind me coming in.. you guys are missionaries right? I have some questions." We greeted him warmly, and had a great discussion with him! He had a lot of questions like "if God loves us, why is there so much suffering?", "what happens to people after they die?","if someone experiences extreme trials, loses their faith, and ends up dying, do they go to hell?" We talked with him for a good hour about these things, and talked about the Plan of Salvation. We know that God loves all his children perfectly, so naturally everyone will be cared for in the best way possible. I think he received a lot of comfort from what we had to share! And he told us he'd probably stop by again next Monday to join us in Uno 😂.
Anyway, that's all for now!
It's a great day to be a missionary!
-Elder Hays