Service, "Meet the Mormons" and Conference - a good week!

Hi everyone!!!

This week was a weird week but a good one.  Right after I stopped emailing last week, we got a call from the mom in the Familia S_____ telling us that she was in the hospital about to enter surgery to have her appendix removed.  We had a member drive us over to the hospital she was in so we could see her and bring her some things she had forgotten at home.  By the time we got there, she had already gone into surgery so we waited a little while with her friend, Julian, for it to be over.  We've spent some time this week just doing service for her around the home like cleaning and what not because she can barely walk.  She's really obsessed, though, with showing us the incisions every time we go over, like undoing the bandages and gauze and saying "mira" which means "look".  Every time she does it makes me feel like I'm going to pass out.  I've definitely realized I'm not good with that kind of stuff.  HOWEVER, she's also been throwing up a lot and I can watch her throw up and it doesn't bother me at all so I'm not totally hopeless. 

We got to watch "Meet the Mormons" this past Friday!!!  I absolutely loved it.  I would definitely recommend that, if it comes to a theater near you guys, you go check it out. It basically just told a little bit about the lives of six different members from very different backgrounds.  It really demonstrated the fact that this is a worldwide church with a lot of diversity within its membership.  It was funny and touching; I just loved it. 

 

For those who haven't seen it already, here's the trailer:  

 

 

It's also supposed to come out on Netflix at some point

Another highlight from the week was obviously the fact that this was conference weekend!  How good was conference?  I loved so much of it, but my favorite session has to be the Saturday morning one.  I felt like that was one of the most intellectually enlightening conference sessions I've ever seen.  Everything was just so good.  Here's some of my favorite talks:

1. Lynn G. Robbins- Which way do you face? I loved what he said about how the general authorities represent the prophet to the people, not the people to the prophet. I was thinking about how different that is from the ways of the world. In government, you have these senators and congressmen whose job it is to represent their constituencies to the higher authorities but in God's church, it isn't like that. The reason is because God's ways, as revealed through His prophets, aren't dependent on the opinions of the people. They are eternal. 

2. D. Todd Christofferson- I loved the quote "God will not act to make us something we do not choose to become." In this life, we are expected to make choices that move us towards reaching the potential God sees in us. In order to facilitate this, God gives us commandments. While God does love each and every one of His children, He does want us to follow the guidelines He sets because He wants our happiness.  Refusal to believe in God doesn't change the reality of His existence just like "resenting the law of gravity doesn't keep someone from falling off a cliff". 

3. Jorg Klebingat- I loved loved LOVED the six steps he listed and it is absolutely something I'm going to implement into my life. Often I wonder how I can develop the kind of faith that will bring miracles and so I loved how he said the faith that brings miracles goes hand in hand with the personal confidence of righteousness. 

Conference is amazing! I'm so grateful that our church is led by a living prophet under the direction of God. 

We used our dinner hour one night this week to go watch two of the S______ boys play soccer.  Here's a picture! They all turned out kind of blurry because we were far away.  Also, my sunflowers bloomed! 

 

Love,

 

Hayley

 

 

 We're not really sure what kind of sunflower this is...Hayley says the seeds came from Sis. Manso's birdseed.