2015 October General Conference!

Hello family!

Where to begin? Let's start with Tuesday. So, early Tuesday morning, Elder Calderwood and I got ready and headed on over to Eagle Mountain, UT (about 20 mins east) with our Zone Leaders to attend the mission tour with Elder Wilson of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. There we joined our zone, as well as two other zones (so basically half of the mission), and sat and chatted and waited patiently for President and Sister Killpack as well as Elder and Sister Wilson to arrive. It was an 8 hour conference. President, Sister Killpack, and Elder Wilson had a lot of great things to say. Much was taught, much was learned. Elder Wilson actually got in to it quite a bit! Towards the end, he actually had us make "movie trailers" for chapters 2-4 of the Book Of Mormon which was pretty sweet I'd say! Only 3 districts were chosen to share their trailers and sadly ours wasn't one of them. That's okay though. So at different portions throughout the conference, there would be folks sharing different musical numbers...well, right after lunch, it was my turn. After much practice and anticipation, it was my time to shine. I got up there and things went really well. I messed up a couple times so I got a little frustrated with myself. I don't think it was because I didn't know the song...more along the lines of stage fright. I've always hated performing in front of other people...but now I'm pretty sure I found my way on to Sister Killpack's radar for future gigs such as this.

So on Wednesday we met with our newest investigator.  She comes from a background where she had the church in her life, but had the choice of her own about getting baptized. She decided against it until she was more ready.  Elder Calderwood and I have been invited to visit with her and we are excited to work with her!

So over the past couple of weeks, Elder Calderwood and I have made it a point to meet with and get to know each Stake President, Bishop, and Ward Mission Leader on a personal level. By doing so, we hope to develop a relationship and trust with these men as we each move forward hastening the work in their respective stakes/wards. President McCune drilled in to our heads on countless occasions: "These leaders will NOT direct you to the folks in their wards if they don' trust you first!" By meeting with each of these leaders individually in a formal Missionary to Bishop/Stake President/WML meeting, we hope to accomplish that. That's kind of what this week has consisted of. Being that I didn't really have the opportunity to familiarize myself with the East and Cedar Hollow stakes in the short 6 weeks I've already been here, things should start to look up for us now that we know each of these wards.

Lee and Crystal Edwards took me back to PG so I could meet up with Elder Leavitt to attend a baptism of someone whom I worked with while I was there. It's this little 8 year old girl. It was nice to see people who I knew back there. The baptism was something special! That's for sure!

So yeah...that's this week! Getting to know people. Evidently, it will probably continue in to next week. We've got 20 wards! That's a lot of tracking to do! It's keeping us occupied since people we teach like to cancel on us -_-

Anyways, thank you all so much! Until next week!

-Elder Ahrens