Airports, Stake Conference, and Daylight Savings Time

Daylight savings went smoothly. It was really, really nice to be able to have an extra hour of sleep! That was much needed. Daylight savings still doesn't make much sense to me, though. It is dark outside around 530 now. It's pretty crazy! 

This week was really crazy for us. It was sad to say goodbye to Elder Oswald! But the week went really well. It was a super busy week. It was weird to see some of the missionaries who went home. My first Zone Leader, Elder Christensen, went home with this transfer! That was really weird to me. We got another big group of missionaries coming in. There were 22 of them. The Lord continues to put a lot of missionaries in this mission because there is a lot of people who are being prepared to hear the gospel and there are a lot of obedient, diligent missionaries in the mission. It is really cool to see.

We had a really cool experience at the airport. Sister Tateoka met a woman who had the same first name as her, so they started to talk and this lady asked Sister Tateoka about God and why He keeps redirecting her path. Sister Tateoka asked us to come over and start talking with this woman. This woman was supposed to be on an earlier flight, but because of circumstances, her plane was delayed. We told her that it was because He wanted us to talk to her. We were able to help answer her questions through the Spirit and the Book of Mormon. We read Alma 37:35-37 and talked about prayer. This Spirit led us to 2 Nephi 32:3 also about the Holy Ghost. And then we felt prompted to use technology and share a video with her about the current bush and God's will. It was a really cool experience! Just another testimony builder that God is aware of each of His children. It is truly amazing the tool of technology as well. It is here for the purpose of furthering the work of the Lord, and being able to pull out a video on the spot in the airport was really cool. 

Our stake had Stake Conference this week. President and Sister Tateoka spoke and they gave awesome talks. It is amazing to hear President talk. He is a very humble man. But when he talks he speaks "as one having authority". He taught all about the the Spirit and the importance of the Spirit in missionary work and in life in general. It was a great talk! Another talk that I really enjoyed was by the first counselor in the Stake Presidency. He spoke on the enabling power of Jesus Christ that we can access because of the Atonement that He paid for us. He read in Mosiah 3:19 about how the natural man is an enemy to God and that the enabling power of Christ helps us to put off the natural man (go from bad to good) and become a saint (go from good to better) through Jesus Christ. I really enjoyed that talk. I thought it tied in great to what President Tateoka said because the Spirit is the agent that will help us receive that power and become sanctified. President Tateoka mentioned that same scripture during the trainers meeting this week, so I thought that was really cool. 

It is really interesting how much the apostles have been stressing reading the Book of Mormon ever since President Monson talked about it.And it is amazing to think about the faith of people like Nephi and Peter. They were willing to do whatever they needed to because their faith was so strong. We are promised that if we build upon the Rock of our Redeemer, then nothing will be able to push us around with the winds and hails of life. It is a constant battle to grow your faith. It requires going out of the way to set ourselves apart from the world and doing everything that the Savior has asked us to do. But as we do it, we will be blessed. Our faith in Him will grow. And, ultimately, we will be able to find peace in this life and our confidence will wax strong in the presence of God. But it is definitely a long process! 

So originally to start this transfer, we had four elders living in our apartment again. Elder Greenwood stayed in Newberg, but he and his new companion moved to a different apartment. Elder Ludwig and Smith came in to live with us. But because of things happening, on Saturday they were transferred to Amity where they would be taking over that area. It was fun to have them with us for the couple of days. But now the apartment is just Elder Patterson and I. It is a huge apartment and is really quiet now! But it will be fun. 

We had a funny/weird/tender mercy yesterday. A few days ago, we met a guy named Jake and we set up a lesson with him for yesterday at 2pm. Well, because of Stake Conference and other lessons that we had planned, we didn't end getting to Jake's until about 3. The tender mercy is that he was just walking up as we pulled up! We hopped out and asked if he remembered that we were coming. He said no... but then he immediately started to look around frantically for a way to leave. He told us that it was a coincidence that he actually needed to meet a friend on the other side of town. He looked around and saw a bike in his front yard, squeezed the tires to make sure they were pumped up (they were 100% flat... ), and grabbed the bike. We asked if he had a phone that we could call him at and he pulled out his iPhone and then quickly put it back in his jacket and said no.. then he hopped on his flat-tired bike and started to peddle away.. It was crazy. We decided to follow him for a minute to see if he actually went to go see a friend, but he drove in a big circle back to his house... Crazy times!