The last Pday of every transfer, President lets all the missionaries serving in Lyon come over to the mission home, which has a big ol' back yard, and play all kinds of sports and stuff after eating a lunch together, it was a lot of fun! After Monday however, life got hectic really fast. We had to plan for it, and then finally, the massive mission conference was there. Friday we helped transport tons of food out the chapel, and then buy and transport 200 pizzas for the missionaries that night for dinner. After a crazy night with quite a few phone calls for random situations with the hotels, we finally got everybody off the big buses, done with the pizzas and socializing, and in their hotel rooms, and got home and to bed at about 12:30. The next morning, we woke up at 5, and went and picked up a massive order of breakfast pastries, and transported it all out the chapel.
Then, the conference happened. It was absolutely amazing. We had Elder Nielson, who spoke at the last General Conference, and his wife, plus Elder Kearon of the 70 with his wife there. It really surprised me, I thought that the conference would be all about the little rules and details about the iPads, however, far from that; it was a very spiritually uplifting experience, something I guess I should have expected with General Authorities coming. They talked about and emphasized throughout the conference the power of agency. They testified that these tools can be used for tremendous good if we use them wisely, and can really help us in our missionary work if we let them. It truly was a great conference, they testified about the power we have and the light we can bring to the world with these tools, and really helped us all get excited and ready for them. I hope everyone had a great week, and I want to invite everyone to think about how maybe, without being offensive, we can share the church through the u
se of social media, and subject that was brought up again and again in the conference. I hope everyone stays safe, and keep the faith!
This weekend we'll be really busy driving in and around Switzerland, delivering some supplies and replacing a bed and a refrigerator, so we won't have time at all tomorrow for Pday activities, so we're doing our emails today! This week wasn't the most thrilling or exciting week, we spent some very long days completely at the office keeping up with all the workloads, and making sure everything stays ok in the mission. This week, for whatever reason, we had a couple of sticky situations rise up, the reason we spent almost two full days not leaving the office, but we got them all figured out eventually. We had first year legality appointments for all the new missionaries who just came in this week, which was fine, but the best part of the week was Leadership Council on Tuesday, where we spent the whole time discussing the best ways to help our mission adapt to the usage of iPads, which will be arriving in about 2 weeks for all the missionaries.
The thing that I most remarked on, and studied later, was the comparison President Roney made to our iPads and the vision of the tree of life. He reminded us about how in the vision of the tree of the life, the iron rod that leads to the tree is right next to the dark ravine, the river of filthiness. He told us about how with this new iPad, we are walking right alongside a cliff and dropoff very much like what is described in the vision, how much potential the iPad has for evil, while at the same time for good. He asked why we thought the Lord would put us right alongside this river of filthiness, why in our lives we are always so close to evil, why would the Prophet, First Presidency, and the Twelve Apostles give us the iPads when there is so much potential for bad? The answer is because the Lord, and his representatives on this earth, trust us. He has given us the way to stay pure and to keep pressing forward, He has given us the iron rod, in all aspects of our lives. He knows that although we have such a terrible ravine next to us, we can have a firm grip on the iron rod, and always stay true to Him, despite the temptations that may arrive in our lives. It was a comforting thought to think about, that despite this danger, we truly are safe if we follow His teachings and help ourselves be safer on the road to salvation.
200 Pizzas |
In charge of ordering a truckload of pizza |
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