This conference was amazing! I mean I don't know if it is because I am a missionary or whatever but this conference was super good and I learned so much from it! I Wish I could show you guys all the notes I took but it was so amazing and I don't know if I have ever felt the spirit more in conference than this past weekend.
Okay so really I have about 12 different favorite talks but I only want to focus on two of them! The first one is the very first talk given by President Uchtdorf. That talk was soo powerful and gave me a chance to really evaluate my life. If you didn't get a chance to hear that one I HIGHLY recommend looking it up and reading it. He talked about a lot of things but one of the main things is he talked about taking things for granted. He talked about how when he was first dealing with computers he was hopeless. This new technology and he had to learn how to type and he was hopeless. But now he owns a smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc. And he said that he realized that he totally takes all of them for granted. Then he compared it to the gospel.
Do we sometimes take the gospel for granted? Do we sometimes forget the magnitude and amazingness that is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ? One thing I thought about was do we sometimes take for granted the fact that twice a year we get to hear from the living prophet of God and all of his Apostles and other church leaders? We legit get to hear revelation that they recieved for us directly from the Lord which is something I have definitely taken for granted and and kind of sad about all the times where I was bored during conference or doodling or anything. Because all of this stuff is super awesome!! It is something I invite everyone to do is read or reread that talk and then evaluate your lives and think about this amazing gospel and all the blessings it brings in your life.
And once you do that.....
Reread the talk by Elder Oaks. So yes this one is probably because I am a missionary but holy moly this talk was amazing! Especially because Elder M**** and I want to focus on how we can involve the members more in our work! I don't even know if I have a ton to say about it because he says everything so perfectly. But I think a lot of missionaries (Including myself at the beginning of my mission) think that the missionary work in this area is for the missionaries, and them alone. Sure the members can help us but we are in charge of the work. And boy was I and every single missionary who thought that super wrong. As Elder Anderson said there was once a time where the missionary work belonged to the full time missionaries! But now members play a huge role! When members and the missionaries work together, amazing things in this work can happen. I can personally testify that the absolute best way for people to become interested and more importantly stay intersted and active after they get baptized is for those people to be introduced to the church by members.
I want to leave you guys with two challenges. One is to really think about how the church has blessed your life and think of who would want to hear the message the missionaries have to offer. And the other is something I have been thinking about personally. We have about 60 active members in my ward right now, but when I got my ward list from the bishop I about cried. We have 400 members in our ward. That means in my area there are 340 members who are inactive. That is rediculous!! And I don't have time to try to reactivate all of them! Not unless I want to put a stop on finding and teaching investigators.
So I was thinking that probably the best way to reactivate all of these less actives are through the members in the ward. If each family agrees to take two or three families and tries to be their friends I am convinced that we could get every inactive member back to church. So my other challenge is work with the bishop or the missionaries and get a list of the inactive people in the ward and as a family or individual try to bring these souls back to the truth. If they are members it means they accepted and have felt the love of the Savior before, we just have to remind them of what they once felt.
The last thing is something at the end of Elder Oaks talk. Now I heard this part in Spanish so this is a rough translation but he said something along the lines of,
"How we feel about the gospel is reflected by our willingness and desire to share it."
I love you all so much and miss you guys. I love hearing about your lives and all of your adventures! Go have an amazing week!!
Elder Robertson
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| We got to watch the 2nd day of conference in the high council room at the church. |
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| We finally moved to a new house and we have running water again! When we were moving, we had to use our little mission truck. |
