It was About Thursday and I was getting kind of discouraged and I wanted to be a little bit lazy. I'll admit it. I was just homesick and I just wanted a day to relax... That same morning, our zone leaders called us and gave us some scriptures which were ether 12:6, 12 and it reads, "6 And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith... 12 For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith." And then he left us the scripture alma 48:17 which reads, "17 Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men." I love this scripture and I immediately wrote it down in my journal! Above the heading I wrote, "what am I doing today to be a modern day captain Moroni?" After hearing my zone leaders testimony on the trials of faith and about how we can gain greater faith and a greater testimony I was so excited to go and do work!

This general conference was amazing! The talks were spectacular! They hit hard on 2 main points. Keep the sabbath day holy, and families. A huge thing that some elders and I discussed was that they are no longer saying, "don't do this, don't do that" they're now saying, follow the spirit. One of my favorite talks was by Larry R. Lawrence and his talk was on following the spirit. There was a spiritual exercise that he had everyone commit to doing on their own. When we pray, we need to ask, "what is keeping me from progressing?" The spirit gives customized answers and is direct with us. Another talk was on ponderizing this is 80% pondering and 20% memorizing. How it works is we get a scripture and we put it on our phone or fridge or anywhere for a week. During that week we ponder and try to memorize that scripture. We can learn so much more and how to live our lives by this simple thing. It is truly amazing how during this time where the world is being thrown into chaos and becomes more and more liberal and accepting of incorrect beliefs, the church is getting rid of those gray areas and they are focusing on following the spirit. I  loved general conference and it seemed like it went by so quickly! My trainer kept falling asleep and so some other elders kept messing with him! It was pretty funny! 

I probably had the most interesting experience teaching this week. We were going to teach a family from Zimbabwe about the restoration. After we got done teaching we invited them to read the Book of Mormon. They told us that they didn't fully understand the bible and after some compromising we are getting them to read 3rd nephi 11 and we will discuss how it relates to Jesus's earthly ministry in Mathew, mark, Luke, and John. But they want us to teach more from the bible right now so I am going to be learning a lot more from the bible. Once I can find some scriptures to point them to the Book of Mormon, in the bible, then they'll read the Book of Mormon. They're an amazing family though!

I found another really funny video spoof some elders in my mission made about the online training! I'll send that when I am done emailing. I hope everyone is having such an amazing time in Hawaii! I can't believe that you're finally there! That sounds like so much fun!

I love you all and I'll try to email more next week it's so hard because we didn't have much time this week with no car and we had to carpool and people wanted to go home early... It's been a great week though and I miss you all and love you all so much!