Oh yea!! the last Tuesday in the MTC Elder David A Bednar gave a talk and it was so good!!! We only had an hour, but I could have listened for another 6! The last time they came they asked us to ask them questions and so they got thousands of questions! They, him and his wife, gave us answers to 6 of the questions and they were so good!!!!Oh man!!!!
One of the things he talked about is the priesthood and women. The priesthood is not only for males. We are all equal but that doesn't mean we are the same. Women and men compliment each other. The priesthood is like an umbrella, it's there for everyone and the man is holding it up.
SOO GOOD!
I have a lots of emails today that I haven't got to, so luckily I can email more on Monday.
This week has been interesting and good! We had our P-day moved to today (Wed Jan 29th) because we had the opportunity to go the the Oakland Temple! It is so huge! I really enjoyed it but it took like 4 hours in total with traffic jams along the way home. Unfortunately the computer here, at the Library, does not have any SD card slots and so I will need to send pictures next week.. or when I am able to buy something to transfer the pictures.
So I am serving in San Ramon and everyone is rich. We see loads of crazy cars here and last night, we cycled up this massive hill for dinner and we walked outside to the back yard and a massive RV was just parked there! I thought that was crazy, and the view was amazing! The members are great here and they also feed us a lot. We only cook a few nights in the week which is really nice!
Here are some google map pictures from around where I live now. This one is looking East from San Ramon. My apartment is just below the swimming pool you can see there.
The one below is looking north from San Ramon.
This one is looking south from San Ramon.
This one is looking west from San Ramon. Over the mountains is Oakland and the Bay Area.
Some of the things that we have done this past week are that we went tracting for the first time and it was ok. My companion Elder Brown and everyone else here has seen no success from tracting. I told him that I wanted the experience of someone slamming the door in our faces. So we went to the first door and a women answered, no luck. Then we talked about what we could do to improve and as we were doing this a man was walking his dog on the other side of the street so we started to talk to him. We found out that the last missionaries had talked to him before and he says that he is solid in his faith. Anyway, we had a 15 minute conversation and left him with a Book Of Mormon.
We have a goal to open our mouths to people where we have a conversation about the gospel and where we leave with a commitment, so far the mission as a whole is seeing lots of miracles. This is interesting, we were cycling around when we stopped at an intersection. A woman was carrying a few bags and they broke during the intersection right in front of us, so we helped her and we found out that she lives in the same apartment complex as us. We walked her home and talked about the Church, In fact she was the one who brought it up. The next day we went to the Hospital to see if we could do anything there and on our way back we saw the same woman! We talked to her and then left her with a pamphlet. Though she is not in our ward boundaries (because we live outside of the boundaries) we referred her to the sisters. We had no idea how this transition would work and then she needed help cleaning her apartment, so we did and now the sisters are able to teach her.
There is so much to write and just a few more minutes left! We were able to do a service project for an older woman in our ward, we pruned some rose bushes. It was fun but we were so exhausted afterward. Each day we are super exhausted at night. We cycle so much here and everything is on a hill - even when you think it is flat it's not.
Most people here are white, the first Sunday was good and lots of people are getting to know us. We were able to add 3 new investigators this week, a family of three, because one of the young men in the ward referred them to us. Hoping that it will go well. We also spoke to a man called Victor who is very strong in Christianity. We talked to him and asked about his religion. In the end we were about to leave when I just bore testimony to him that the Book of Mormon is true. We then set up an appointment which is in a week or so.
I know God loves us! I know for sure that the Book of Mormon is true and I know that this is a good work.
Love you all!
