jakemcgrathmission: Conferences out the Wazoo (Week двадцять чотири)

Wow, what an amazing week, probably one of the craziest and most busy, but also one of the most rewarding. I learned so much, and I'm so grateful for all that happened so let's get to sharing some of it. Let's hit the highlights in chronological order, so first of all, Thursday we had exchanges! The AP's this transfer are doing something called a "road show" where basically they go to every city and have an exchange with all the Elders in the city. I'd say that this is one of the perks of having a small mission, and on Thursday, it was our opportunity to learn from the APs. The exchange went very well, we had some very good lessons, contacted some, ate some good food, and had an hour long training session prepared by Elder Christensen. The training session was probably my favorite part of the exchange because he focused on exactly what I needed in order to become the best missionary that I can be. One thing that really stood out to me were the importance of goals and setting incremental goals in order to achieve the bigger, better goals that helps us come closer to our Heavenly Father. All in all, a really good day!!

Now let's jump towards Saturday and Sunday. This weekend, we had two conferences, a district conference on Sunday, and a zone conference on a Monday. One reason that both the conferences were so close to one another was that we had a General Authority come. President Martino came this week and joined us for both the conferences. And on Saturday, something amazing happened. President Martino, President and Sister Rizley all wanted to join us for lessons with our investigators. So we all had thirty minutes to teach one of our progressing investigators with probably some of the best members present that you could probably get haha. The lesson with our investigator went super duper well, we taught about baptism and he accepted a soft baptismal date. The best part was that he came to conference the next day! He hadn't been to church before this, but with the help of President Martino and his testimony, he came and stayed for the entire conference, it was quite amazing!!

On Sunday, we had our district conference, which was split up into two different parts. One where it was like any other conference with a bunch of amazing talks, and the second where we split up into groups, men, women, and YSAs. And guess what, Elder Hill and I along with a few more missionaries had the opportunity to lead the discussion with the YSAs. It went pretty good, the most crazy part though was that we expected maybe 20-30 people in the class but there ended up being over 50!! That was quite an awesome surprise, we did some good scripture reading and had a real fun object lesson about the atonement and coming to Christ. All in all, on Sunday with language informant at night, we were at the church from seven (shoveling snow for the first time in my life) to seven thirty at night. A full 12 hours there, doing amazing things. Learned so much and stayed super busy!

Finally, on Monday we had our Carpathian Zone conference. President Martino pretty much led the whole thing though. He went and answered some of our questions and helped us to become better missionaries. President Martino just has such a strong spirit and you can feel it when he just walks in the room, makes me want to become a better person and a better missionary. Honestly one of the best weeks of my life, wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, the mission life is for sure the best life. I love you all and hope you all have a wicked week.

Старійшина McGrath

Moroni 10: 32 Read and Ponder it, Moroni's last words to us, this is what he things is most important!!