14.6--A positively grand epoch!

Dearest people of the Internet,

 Whew this week was a really good week! :) It started off with a whole bunch of hurrying around to make sure that we got everything set for the baptism! And even though we had short notice for it, we were able to receive a lot of help, and it went off without a hitch!  As you can probably guess by this previous statement, the boy got baptised this past Thursday!! Whoooh! It was quite mahvelous! His dad did the baptism, and then his grandpa confirmed  him as a member of the church. At the baptismal service we had 64 people who came and of those 64 people, eleven of them were non-members :)

 And then after the baptism, we worked as per usual. Recently our mission has resurrected the practice known as "tracting".... but it's actually been working fairly well for us. It's kind of a different change of pace from street-contacting, and there has been quite a bit of success from it in our area. This past week we actually tract-ed into a lady from Turkey, I am not entirely sure what she was doing in Albuquerque, but it was good all of the same. 

Oh and this past week the temperatures have taken a dive.... +___+  bleh... but that's ok because that means we get to dress warm :) In fact, Elder Summers and I had a "man contest" where we rolled the windows down and turned the A/C up full blast, and the first one to admit they were cold lost. And after a painful half-hour I lost... :)

And last but not least, we had a super star cast from church headquarters speak to us! We had our local area 70, Elder Villa Real, Bishop Causse of the Presiding bishopric, Elder Christiansen of the Presidency of the 70, and Elder Holland!! :) All of which gave incredible talks.  Bishop Causse talked about the Atonement, Elder Christiansen talked about finding joy in the journey, and Elder Villa Real talked about Parables.

 Elder Holland gave an awesome talk about a few different principles:

1) The importance of what we are doing and how we need to be converted to the gospel.
2) Once we've felt the truth we can never turn away. He compared missionaries to shepherds who are helping to guide people to the truth and how its sad when one of the sheep leaves, but it's even worse when one of the shepherds leaves. 
3) Adversity-- Christ's life was never easy, His sacrifice wasn't easy for Him, then why should life be easy for us? We have to go through trials because " Salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation has never been easy" and as we face trials and persecution, we are coming in step with a long line of disciples who've had it hard and if not harder.

And I think one of my favorite quotes from Zone conference from him was " On the road to exaltation, every road runs through the Garden of Gethsemane . In order to be a disciple of Christ. Each one of us has to suffer a token of what He had to. Now I'm not talking about atoning or suffering for others, but I am saying that we must give our lives as a token to Him."

Well folks, I hope you enjoyed these little blurps from my week! Enjoy

Elder Jacob Guymon