General Conference
Here I am for another weekly edition of “Elder Hardy; A look inside the life of a missionary in the North Carolina Raleigh Mission”. Things are going good, as always. We learned last night, that the end of suit season is over! Which means, we don’t have to wear our suit coat outside anymore. During the winter, we have to wear full-suits unless it reached 80 degrees (which is pretty hot), then we could take suits off. Well, now until next October, we don’t have to wear suit coats. It has started to get hot again, in the 80’s over the weekend. And and pollan is really back, it’s good I don’t have bad allergies to that stuff. When we walk to our car in the morning, it is covered with pollan from the trees. Today, we also had a pretty bad rain/thunderstorm in the morning. I got some pretty excellent footage of the storm, putting my own-life in danger, but it was worth it. It was raining pretty hard.
Can’t believe I’ve already been in Raleigh for 3 weeks now, in just 3 more weeks, Elder Monforte is going back to Mexico and I’ll be recieving another new companion. He will be my 4th out here in the field…wow, time goes by fast. I’m sure lucky to have had sweet companions so far. Elder Monforte is a stud, and he hardly speaks english, so I get to practice my spanish alot.
Wow, General Conference was pretty sweet. Especially as a missionary, we look forward to this all year. We spend 24/7 testifying that we have a prophet and apostles, and we finally get to see them in action!! I hope everyone had a chance to listen to all 4 sessions, they were definately power and I was spiritually uplifting. The sessions on Saturday were good, I especially liked Robert D. Hales talk about Free Agency and how we can use our free agency to the affect that Satan doesn’t have power over our lifes. There were a few other ones I really like, including President Monson’s talk in the Priesthood Session, that was really classic President Monson. President Hinckley finally spoke on Saturday to close out the Priesthood session and he laid the law down on racial slurs. That is something some people down here have trouble with, including some members. It’s important to know that we are really all iqual, all sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. But, the highlight of the conference, at least for me, was the Prophets talk to close are the morning session Saturday. As most of you, I started having strong emotions in the thought that we might lose this great prophet. As I listened to him recount his life and then bear powerful profetic testimony of the living reality of Christ and the thruthfulness of Joseph Smith, I started to break down emotionally. Especially during the closing prayer. It just added to my testimony of the living prophet on the earth, that he really is a prophet of God.
The work in Raleigh is going alright. I have some pretty interesting experiences as a missionary. We were downtown one night with some members, trying to find the home of a recent convert, who we were going to teach. We went down this narrow street, the ghettos, where a member lived. There were a bunch of cars and a bunch of black people trafficing drugs. They were all out sitting on their porches. I was scared for my life! But we got out of there alright…Mom, you don’t have to worry though, the part of Raleigh that we live in is really safe.
The work is going along good, we had a lot of new people at the conference yesterday that we are going to start teaching. Our best investigator, Ester, was there. We are going to try to get her baptized so Elder Monforte can have one more baptism before leaving…we’ll see how it goes though. On Saturday, hardly any one was at the sessions except the Priesthood. Sunday morning, I was watching in english and I guess there were tons of people, they had to open another room, so that all the spanish people could be acomadated. I decided to listen to the last session in Spanish, it was alright, Richard G. Scotts and M. Russell Ballard’s talks were especially sweet. Anything else?? Nope.
Hasta Luego
Elder Hardy