04/08/2019 Conferences

We had quite a few this week. We had a Zone Conference and obviously General Conference. Zone Conference was really good. We are implementing a new way to teach people when we first meet them. People in the south pray, but a lot of them pray to Jesus Christ, which as the Bible says (John 16:23), we should pray to the father in the name of Christ, our advocate with the father. By relating Heavenly Father to one's actual father, it adds a lot of meaning to prayer. 

Also, General Conference. It was really great! No big announcements, which I'm sure a lot of people were let down about, but General Conference is not about announcements. The Priesthood session was super good. Kortavious came to that session. It was a great first session for him. I really liked Elder Stevenson's talk about making a playbook. As far as general sessions, we missed the last session but we've watched a few of the talks. Elder McKay, the seventy who toured the mission, gave a talk. We haven't watched it yet, but that's cool. I also really liked Elder Holland comparing the sacrament to an animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifices were treated with much reverence. As should the sacrament and the sacrament meeting. And the ox and the more analogy was hilarious. 

So also the Memphis temple is opening up soon, which is pretty cool. After zone conference we got to see the inside. The old floorplan I think was identical to the St. Paul temple. For the most part that's unchanged, the waiting room area is super different (and super better) though. Temple Tours are coming up the next two weeks. We will be helping out with tours tomorrow. It'll be for an exclusive tour for the neighborhoods surrounding the temple. It should be sweet. 

Because of the conferences, we had less time to work on other things, but we kept busy. We helped a man move. He has been in contact with members of the church for a long time, but is not a member. He was super cool. We also taught a few lessons to the people who came to church last Sunday. They went pretty well. We are hoping to start a Bible Study at a members house this week and bring some of the people we have been teaching.

Pics:

1) the temple. They added a lot of stained glass windows. I hope the St. Paul temple gets renovated. It could use an upgrade.

2) we helped out with Jacob's Ladder this week. We lifted a ~600lb slide up to a tree house. It took a lot of slight adjustments to make it level, high enough, and plumb. Here we are using a level system to lift it up to place bricks underneath to counteract some settling that happened

3) last P day a member from the Memphis 1st Ward drove us around Memphis and we looked at different sites. We're here at Graceland. Tickets are expensive so we didnt go inside or anything. 

4) it rained a tonne this weekend. After priesthood session, we needed a ride home, but Elder Steele's car was still at his apartment. Luckily the Steeles live very close to the church, so we didnt need to walk super far.