Hola mi familia!

Life’s great aqui en Lawrence! We committed someone for baptism this week and he’s doing great. He came to church last Sunday, he’s already in 2 Nephi and he stole the Gospel Principles book he borrowed from the church library and is reading that as well! Most importantly he recognizes the Spirit, so we’re really happy for him and just pretty happy in general at the moment.

We had Stake Conference the last couple of days and it was great. President Elliott is reading Preach My Gospel and has been to a lot of trainings. And so conference was very different yesterday. I didn’t realize it until I got to the MTC but out of the 3 fold mission of the church, wards and families have been promised that if missionary work is put as the priority, everything else will fall into place. And so most of the conference was people, mostly converts who were asked to bear their testimony on the Love of Christ. Wow. There were so many different people with so many different backgrounds and problems and it was so neat how one message, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, could be so . . . cure-all.

And everyone bore their testimony about missionary work. Whether thanking the missionaries who had found them or people they had affected through their example, or how prophets in the scriptures did it. It was a priority and everyone I talked to afterwards said that was one of the best, most different, stake conferences they’d had. Missionary work in the church solves everything. It’s like the best way to keep water clean is to keep it moving. Bring in new water to send it along, otherwise it gets stagnant and then all these problems pop up in our wards, like
inactivity, unpreparedness, discouragement…and something President Elliott talked a lot about at the mission meeting Saturday night was his mission in Chile, where less than 30% of members go to church. He said the most successful transfer of his mission was the only month of his entire mission he didn’t baptize anyone. He talked to the bishop and they split the ward list with the 3 other priesthood leaders and did home teaching for the 327 less actives all month and went from 28 people at
sacrament to opening the overflow in a few Sundays.

I thought that was a really neat story and so we taught 14 member lessons this past week and got a lot of referrals, instead of tracting. The high school seniors crack me up. They referred us to everyone they knew, since they’re leaving to college pretty soon anyway and don’t care what anyone thinks about them anymore. But their referrals are along the lines of: “So this girl named Mary was like, ‘so are you mormon?’ so you could go see her, she lives like by that one art building off campus. The street is wood, or forest something, like behind it and they have a funny
looking chimney and I think the house is blue, wait, maybe it’s white, I don’t know her last name….” I’m excited to see what will come of it. We’ll be working on getting more prayerfully considered referrals this next week.

I ate shrimp! And potato salad! I nearly died, but I didn’t want to insult the Somoan family in our ward so I took some. Then she said, “You only take two? Eat more.” Then I had to fess up that I’d never had shrimp before. I couldn’t bring myself to eat a third one. Sister Cameron has told me about some of the things she’s eaten in the Riverview Ward—Spanish-speaking, and I don’t know how I’d handle fish head and whole shrimp soup or brain taco. Bleh.

So it’s been an interesting week and a really weird fall. It’s 70 degrees outside today. It’s really nice, especially when you have to ride your bike in a skirt. Thanks for all the support and letters. It’s greatly appreciated and if there’s anything I can do in return let me know. Love you all.

Hermana Deb