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
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