4-8-13

Hey Mom,

Yeah you missed out on General Conference. It was crazy crazy good. It is always one of the best weekends in the mission. We had to go up to Toto to watch it so we just kind of hung out there the whole time. President Monson's talk for me was by far one of the best. His oratory skills are just on another level. I guess that comes with years and years of giving public talks and discourses but even still. He always just has the perfect facial expressions and jokes and stories and stuff. I loved it when he said the great test of this life is obedience. That was probably my favorite one liner from the whole conference. Other things I really liked were Elder Uchtdorf's talk on light and darkness. I have seen a lot of that here too, lots of darkness in peoples lives here, but at the same time you can see members that even though they are completely surrounded by darkness, they can still be a beacon to the world. Jesus himself said that he didn’t come to the world to offer the world, world peace. He came into the world to offer in the individual self-peace. We went and visited a single parent mother last night that lives in our branch and we were talking about that talk. She joined the church because her ex husband was a member and she pretty much got baptized for him. But after they had their three daughters he started drinking and kept slipping until he was daily using hard drugs in front of his daughters and wasting all their money on getting high. They had a really ugly divorce and the guy keeps going on his spiral downwards, but she was still just saying about how if that’s what it took for her to be able to get to know the church, then that’s all right. She said having the church in her life made all of those things not matter as much, now she has the light she needed and the strength to move onward. It was interesting too because she was talking about how many of the talks were about how we should read, pray, have FHE, go to bed at the same time, etc as spouses, but that she and her husband had never ever done any of those things, and she attributed the lack of doing all of those things as the reason to why her ex husband tanked the way he did. It was sad thinking about it all, but at the same time amazing to see someone who through a strange path had received that individual peace, but definitely not world peace as she watched pretty much her marriage and world crash down around her. Definitely a good learning experience. Another talk was by Elder Falebella. How can I not love that talk? He is my Guatemalan hero. I’ve actually met him. He used to be the area president of Central America but not now. But even still his talk was really great I thought. He talked about all the things that his wife had taught him. My favorite one was the it takes two people to fight, and I will never be one of them. It also gave me a good chuckle when he was saying that everyone was giving him 20-dollar bills when he shook peoples hands when they went to Arizona so he told his wife to make sure and shake everyone’s hand. Twenty dollars might not be a lot to someone from the states but 20 dollars down here is good free money ha-ha. I am sure to a recently married Guatemalan couple in the States too that was like winning the lottery. It was all pretty good though. We watched it in Spanish again this time, and I almost think I like watching it more in Spanish then in English. I have to be a lot more attentive when I’m listening or things really slip by without realizing what’s being said, so it helps me focus. The only downside is you do not get the same emotions with a translator than with the original speaker. It's interesting sometimes too when the translators are saying something really powerful and you can hear in their voices they get choked up and start to get emotional, but the regular person isn’t emotional at all. I bet that is quite the hard task translating for all of those talks though. Here in the zone a place called Nahuala(the photo is with a guy from there), the people don’t speak Spanish, so they have people that watch it in Spanish and are talking over a microphone and translate it into quiche. That would be pretty wild too. Anyways, sorry I'm a little short on time this week. I love you guys have a good week.

Adam