Dear Family, Wow I can't believe you all got to listen to President Uchtdorf and Elder Holland - they are two of my favorite speakers! I heard President Uchtdorf told people it was ok to fall asleep in church...is that true? I can't wait to hear about what Elder Holland through down on too, hopefully it was missionary work haha Elder N and I were talking this morning about how when President Hinckley said we could double the amount of baptisms with unified effort from the members and missionaries if everyone just worked together and actually did missionary work. We were talking about how we haven't even got back to that number that we had that one year, kind of sad. While I've been out here I’ve really began to understand the meaning of our covenants and the importance of members. I mean we all make that covenant when we are baptized to share the gospel. "To stand as a witness of God at all times, in all things, in all places even until death." Just think if every member really did that and really focused on sharing the Gospel, it would be amazing how many people would join the church. I wish I would have done a lot better when I was back home.
Anyway our week went pretty good. Nothing really happened the first two days of the week we were just going about teaching lessons and what not, except for on Tuesday we were doing service for this man named Don Joyce. He was someone Elder N and Elder R tracted into and asked if they could help in anyway and he said yeah paint my house so they said ok. I don’t think people think we are serious when we ask that, but we are! So we came back on Tuesday and started painting the trimming of his house green and he was very happy. He is an older black man that has a lot of health issues so can't really do a whole lot. After painting he went and bought us lunch and we taught him the restoration while we were there and he was really interested and said he would read the Book of Mormon and now we are winning his wife's heart too so hopefully we can nudge are way in there.
On Wednesday we made our way down to Jacksonville for our 2 day leadership training conference. However I got sick in the middle of the night and had a fever the whole day so I didn't get much out of the first day, plus I was asked to give a training but luckily it was on Thursday that I was going to give the training. I felt a lot better on Thursday and was ready to learn, I got a lot more out of it. However out of the 4 people that were asked to train I was the last one to go and we were all given a similar topic to train on. I was asked to train on being bold with our commitments but not pushy or manipulative. Well the first Elder trained on why we commit people to do things and he also talked about being bold. So I started scrampling through my notes and realized I could still talk about not being pushy or manipulative. Then the last guy right before me gets up and yep, he trained on not being pushy or manipulative. I hate being last, this happened to me at Zone Conference last month too and I just had to wing it. Well I was sweating bullets trying to think of something I could add to what had already been added. So I got up there and stood before all the missionaries and asked the Assistants how much time I had and they just shrugged, so I said a little prayer inside my heart and started talking. It's amazing how if you are prepared, that no matter what happens the spirit will tell you what to say and this is what happened this time. I basically ended up giving a training about charity, that we cannot be bold unless we have charity. Because we could be straightforward and say the most bold things in the world but if those people don't see that we care about them then it is going to mean nothing and they will feel nothing. So everything ended up working out really well and the spirit was really strong.
The rest of the week went alright, we weren't able to find any new investigators this week unfortunately, that is something we have been struggling with this week, is finding elect investigators so we have been praying mightily for some miracles. The highlight of the week is that our new convert, K, got to go to the temple this weekend with the youth and she absolutely loved it! She said it was incredible and that she wishes she could live there haha. I was so jealous; I haven't been to the temple now for 15 months! I want to go so badly but it will have to wait. Well I'm getting kicked off the computer so I got to get going. Have a great day love you all! Love, Elder Bushman
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