General Conference

General conference was pretty cool. It does really mean a ton more as a missionary. A lot more applies to a missionary and his/her day to day work. There was a ton of stuff about practicing the priesthood and the Book of Mormon. It also felt like they were warning us of somthing big about to happen. Or perhaps just being more bold about these being the last days. We should all live our lives the best we can to be prepared for trials, and for the Savior to come. These are the last days. I'm glad I'm on a mission.

  My companion had some meeting in the city last week, so I was on exchanges in El Reno with Elder Cobbley, a fellow MTC comrad. We are both still not very strong missionaries, but we were stuck together, alone in El Reno. We were together for two days. One day we tracted for seven hours because an appointment was canceled and so was dinner. That day was exhausting but satisfying because of the work we had done. I became much better at my door approach.

One thing that was super awesome was when we knocked on the door of a methodist preacher. He came out into the hot, sunny day and talked with us. He was very nice but disagreed with some of the things we tried to explain to him. We finally concluded with him not wanting a BOM or anything from us. We kept on tracting down the street and around the corner. As we were knocking on other doors, I saw him drive his truck by us but not seeing us. I also observed him driving around the neiborhood until he saw us. We were knocking other doorsso he parked on the the road by us. He called us over as we crossed the street and wanted to talk to us again. He tried to call us out for mentioning the BOM and Joseph Smith so quickly in our earlier conversation. He told us that we worship those things instead of Jesus because he didn't remember us mentioning Jesus.

We calmly listened and then pointed out that we had introduced ourselves as representitives of the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day-Saints and that the BOM is another testament of Jesus Christ. We explained some other things also but I don't remember exactly what they were. I just remember feeling so happy and confident when he started his truck with frustration and drove off. We didn't bible bash but we were close to it. That was the first time I have taught something as a team with a comp. and I was happpy that we, as greenies, were able to awnser all of his questions trying to prove him wrong. You had to be there to actually feel how I did. It was cool!

I love ya!

Elder Shumway