Friday, January 5, 2018

How to Invite Someone to General Conference

[from September 30, 2017]

Hey family. Pretty crazy week. It was changes this week. Crazy things happened. My second companion was being all crazy in our house the night before he left. [Editors Note: Elders spend the last night of their mission in the large house where the elders who staff the mission office live. Christian and his companion then take them to the airport in the morning.] It was kinda fun to remember some stuff with him before he went home. Even though our time as companions was kinda tough for me, we have always been pretty good friends. 

But the thing was that one of the office elders lost the car keys so it was kinda hard because Elder Reyes and I were driving all over the place in buses and taxis. We were also opening and closing areas, and all of that was super hard to do without the truck. 

So on top of that when the first group of people who were going home were passing through the migracion in the airport, there was a problem (the security guys made a mistake) and 5 people missed their flights. So my companion and I got way more stressed out than anyone should be a 5 oclock in the morning. What ended up happeneing though was that Elder Reyes just called a member who works in the government to come and they got it all straightened out. They actually got free tickets, the only thing was their families had to wait an extra 3 hours at the airport. Not too bad, just some crazy stuff. 

Then the next day my companion and I were super tired cause we were at the airport all day the day before, but we had to wake up early and leave again to deliver an important package. We had to take a bus cause we still didn´t have the car keys. 

One of the cool things this week was bringing investigators to conference. We had a lot of people come from our area. Some people we never though would end up coming came because conference is split up into 5 sessions. The converation went like this a lot of times... 

Us: Are you able to come with us to conference? 
Investigator: No I´m busy at that time. 
Us: It´s ok theres one in the afternoon. 
Investigator: Still can´t 
Us: And tomorrow morning? 
Investigator: Still no 
Us: How about tomorrow afternoon? 
Investigator: OK I give up. Lets go! 

It didn´t happen exactly like that, but a lot of times, people were able to go to one of the four sessions, so it was actually pretty cool to go. I watched it in Spanish again this time. I felt weird going into the gringo room where all the US missionaries were watching it in english. But it was a really good conference.

I forgot all my notes at the house, but there was one about the plan of salvation at the beginning of the first session. It was really good for Nicole´s mom.  There was also one from one of the newer apostles (renlund/rasband) that I really liked where he talked about the solar eclipse.

I think it was a little weird for me at first to talk about religion all the time, but its something you get used to really fast. It really does come into every aspect of your life. The one thing I try not to do is talk about the gospel in a way that doesn´t apply to people. I basically teach lessons just talking to people and seeing what it is they need and answering questions. I don´t teach like a 100% lesson very much anymore. 

There are lots of people here that I really like. I´m gonna be sad to go. Its been an awesome time being here. I think it might be my favorite area if I wasn´t here as a secretary. 

Would you believe that my companion knows how to break dance? And my other companion named Elder Reyes knew how to box?

We´re actually having a good amount of success. I think there will be some baptisms in the near future. We are trying hard to distribute our time to the area and the office. We´ve left the office pretty early every day this week.

Love you guys!
-Elder Stoddard

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