Word of Wisdom

Wow this week has gone by so fast! Of course, I think I say that every
week. So I guess it would be safe to say that my mission is going by way
too fast. It's so crazy. I only get one more General Conference before I
come home. That is not very long because I feel like we just had the April
Conference! In fact, at the top of my notes I accidentally titled it April
2014. haha I just noticed that this morning when I was looking back over
them! Crazy.

Anyway, this week was really good and filled with teaching appointments and
meetings. First of all, we got to meet one of our investigators in the
singles branch. It is a young woman and she is so solid. She is pretty much
ready for baptism, but she has never taken the missionary discussions. She
goes to institute and also went to seminary a little bit in high school. She
loves the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price. She is amazing
and she is only 19. We had dinner with her and our Branch Mission Leader
(who is super awesome by the way. He takes such good care of us and is
willing to do anything for us basically). She basically asked us if she
could be baptized mid-October! So she is now on date for the 25th. We just
have to teach her everything, but I'm pretty sure she already knows it all.
She even stopped drinking tea by herself about a month ago. She was just
drinking it one day and thought, ya I'm not supposed to be drinking this.
So she gave it up! I'm telling you, she is amazing.

So we taught the Word of Wisdom a lot this week. We first taught it to our
soon to be married couple. I thought they smoked, but they don't! So that made it a lot
easier. They do drink tea and coffee but they were so willing to give it
up. They gave us a huge can of unopened coffee to get rid of for them. It
is so awesome to see how willing people are to give up things for God. For
some, it is really easy, and for others, it takes a while for them to see
the importance. But I do not doubt that those who keep the commandments are
always much happier. We also discussed a few more wedding details so we can
get that all set up! I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but they are
getting married on November 1st. We will have the wedding, a small lunch,
and then the baptism :) It is going to be an awesome day! They also watched
Conference and really enjoyed it. They came to watch it at the
church with us one of the days so that was awesome.

We also taught our mother/daughter investigators the Word of Wisdom. It is going to be a
little bit harder for them to stop, but they are willing to work towards
quitting. The mom smokes and the daughter loves sweet tea, but she was really
willing to give it up. We made sure that they understand they have to be
living the Word of Wisdom in order to be baptized. They didn't get to come
to Conference because they had a funeral to go to this weekend so that was
a bummer. There were so many talks that I felt would have benefited them so
much. Good thing they can go back and watch it :)

We also retaught the Word of Wisdom to M and T (recent converts). M has been
struggling with smoking and she admitted it this time that she was having a
hard time. She gave us her cigarettes to dispose of so hopefully she
doesn't get more. It's going to be really hard for her though because
T's husband smokes so it is always going to be a temptation. Hopefully
we can help her out though.

So we had a lot of fun lessons about keeping our bodies clean like temples!
Which reminds me, I really liked the talk at the General Women's Meeting
about how our bodies are all different on the outside but that we all have
the same spirit as daughters of God on the inside. It was really good.

We also had a really good talk with one of the guys who attends the singles branch.
He comes to church pretty faithfully. He walks like two miles to get to
church every Sunday! I wish everyone was as dedicated as he is. He has been
struggling to get on date for baptism. He knows he needs to, but he doesn't
feel worthy and he is scared that he won't be good enough after his
baptism. So we had a really good lesson with him about that and helped him
feel more assured. He prayed at the end to know if he needed to be baptized
and we all sat there in silence at the end. His first words were, "Dang,
it's like a slap in the face! Come on guy, the Elders have been telling
you! The Sisters have been telling you." haha he is really funny. So he
decided he wants to be baptized in December since that is the month that we
celebrate Christ's birth. We told him we will make sure he is ready by then
:) He is awesome too and he thinks about things differently than anyone I
have ever met. He gets the most interesting things out of the scriptures or
thinks about things completely opposite of what I would have ever noticed
in a scripture. It's really cool.

This Saturday was super awesome because it was #latterdaysaturday! haha we
planned to go to the visitors center this weekend with our singles ward super solid investigator
to watch the Joseph Smith movie. She created the hashtag for the day because we had
General Conference all morning and then left to the temple! So we were
really excited all week for #latterdaysaturday. haha we get to use all the
hip lingo now that we are in the singles branch ;) So our branch
mission leader took all of us. We got permission to go out to eat prior
since it would be night and during our dinner hours by the time we drove
up there and such. So we got to go to the Cheesecake Factory! Yum. The
funniest thing happened too....Joseph Smith was our waiter. No joke! His
name was Joseph Smith but he wasn't a member. So our investigator whipped out a Word
of Wisdom pamphlet that had a picture of Joseph Smith and held it up next
to him and said, "oh ya, I can see it." In the end, she ended up giving the
pamphlet to him! haha so then she had this huge joke that she gave the Word
of Wisdom to Joseph Smith. It was pretty fun. Then we watched the movie at
the temple and she really liked it! She had never seen it before so she
enjoyed seeing more about his life and the life of the saints. We walked
around the temple grounds too. This young woman doesn't open up much, but you can tell
she really likes things and is taking it all in. She jokes around a lot so I
think she has a hard time talking about really serious, spiritual things.
Anyway we hit some traffic on the way home because they were doing
construction so we didn't get home until about 10:30. We had to call
President Toone and tell him of course. So we went straight to bed when we got home.
We were so tired and drained from all the spiritual stuff we did!

Anyway last week was really awesome and we have a lot of good things set up
for this week as well. My favorite part about this week was General
Conference though. We always look so forward to it! It's better than
Christmas pretty much :) We go to the Stake Center to watch Conference. I
really like watching it at the church because everyone pays so much more
attention and I feel like I receive a lot more answers when I'm in the
church, dressed up, and being reverent. I might do that when I get home
too. The Saturday sessions were my favorite even though they were all super
good. Some of the talks that touched me the most right now were Elder
Christofferson's and Elder Klebingat. They talked a lot about taking
responsibility for our actions and being responsible for our own
spirituality. It went a long really well with some things I have been
focusing on in myself lately. I really liked that Elder Klebingat's was all
about how we can have more spiritual confidence. One of my favorite quotes
by Elder Christofferson was, "Divine aid can be ours, no matter where we
are on the path of obedience." We can have help from God as long as we do
our part and work towards becoming better. My favorite part about
conference is coming with a question in mind and always receiving answers.
What an amazing blessing we have to have the restored gospel on the earth
today and to have living prophets and apostles to lead and guide us. I am
so grateful for that.