Hola, Happy Easter!

Your week sounds wondrous, and so does your food. Geez… I am gonna need to bajar some peso here pretty rapidito. You guys are going to think my Spanglish is so weird. And someone pointed out to me recently that I’m starting to sound like the locals when I talk in English. No all the time, but man… My language skills have really descended.

I hope Jensen gets into the animation program! She’s got such talent and skill. I’ll hire her. Missy’s new business enterprise sounds exciting! I’m sure she’ll do awesome. I’m sad I never got to meet either of our little rats… But it sounds like they were well loved in our home.

True or false, California is really going to legalize it? Holy bad-idea Batman. Who is in charge right now? And who do I have to bribe, beat and betray to put myself in a position of power so I can fire all these idiots?

Ashley’s mad. She’s also decided to reenlist in the Army. I’m pretty sure she’ll be in charge of the Army pretty fast here. Then she’ll institute nationwide Marshall Law and start shooting.

We got the chance to go to Zone Leaders council this last week. I have not been made a Zone Leader, last I checked, but I still got to go, which was very, very good for me, because the meeting was incredibly good. It was a nice little preparation on studying repentance and the Atonement that got me prepared for Conference.

Can I just gush about conference for a little while? I LOVE prophets, I decided. I am so glad we are not living in a time of apostasy, because, that would really be awful. I’ve now got a renewed appreciation for living in the dispensation of the fullness of times. The whole weekend was very inspiring and very fun. We started it off by going to Ashley’s to colour Easter eggs. I was so excited as conference started I took some great notes. Or, at least I hope they’re great, I was writing so fast that I think there are some parts that don’t make sense. But wow, that was exactly what I needed to hear, exactly what my investigator’s needed to hear, the members… everyone. It was so amazing. I can’t decide what my favorite talk on Saturday was. Elder Bednar is just so straight-up with everything he says, and Christofferson’s talk about William Tindell was fascinating. Really—they were all incredible. I don’t know that I have a favorite. It was so interesting on Sunday when Elder Andersen made a point to say that there are no assignments/collaborations for talks. They all just speak on whatever they feel the Lord wants them to speak on, and they prepare talks with no real knowledge about what everyone else is going to speak about. It was an answer to an unasked question I had concerning the program. There was a strong emphasis on The Atonement and the Savoir, which isn’t unusual at all, but they were also hitting the issue of the family and preparing for the future/teaching children A LOT, whereas I remember last conference I felt like there was a lot of missionary work in the talks, and last April there were a number of Temple talks.

But, as with the Lord, it all operates on inspiration. Even if they were assigned topics, they would be inspired topics and we could be confident that it was exactly what we needed to heard about.

When Elder Holland started to speak on Pornography, I’ll admit I was a little disappointed for about a half second, just because I always look forward to his talks and enjoy listening/re-listening to them and wasn’t sure there would be much of a need for me to have a talk on pornography permanently on my Ipod, the way his other talks will be. (When I have an Ipod, obviously) But man. That was awesome. He’s just so cool. The man has a gift from God to just lay it on the table and stand for truth and beauty and all that’s good, and it could be my favorite talk.

Possibly. There were too many to make a sure judgment.

President Monson was in rare form Saturday, making us all laugh. Then he talked about Death.

SOOOO touching. Nobody noticed me getting a little emotional here and there, I hid it well. This one was a hard hitter…

I actually heard Elder Rasband’s WONDERFUL talk at the same time dad did. And wasn’t Elder Uchtdorf’s talk on patience wonderful as well, daddy?

.

Wow, except that would be apostasy, so I’m going to backspace over that madness and just leave this line up here so you can wonder what I said…

I do NOT have the priesthood. But…

My companion and I decided to attend the Priesthood session of conference as well. We didn’t want to alarm the brethren with our feminine presence, so we slipped unnoticed into the mother’s lounge at the chapel and enjoyed two extra hours of conference a little early! We hadn’t gotten the chance to do personal study/eat dinner, so we did that by listening to conference and eating Wendy’s in the mother’s lounge.

The elders found it pretty amusing. They didn’t know we were there, but we told them the next day.

Don’t worry though, I’ll attend the semi-annual Mormon woman shopping extravaganza from here on out. Although I LOVED going to the priesthood session, I am not, as such, invited. It’s true.

I think they should probably have everybody watch that talk right after they open their mission call. That’s probably what I’ll do with all future missionaries within my influence for the rest of my life. It was such a powerful, perfect explanation of just HOW important our specific, inspired calls are. Also, there’s a CD I procured a copy of out here called “Conversion of a Catholic Priest” which shares some pretty powerful stuff on the same subject. So cool. I’d send it to you, but I might end up with one last companion who hasn’t heard it and didn’t hide in the Mother’s Lounge to eaves-drop on the Priesthood session. Everyone needs to know how important their calls are, and that their decision to serve or not to serve doesn’t just affect their own lives.

Also, I love Elder Uchtdorf. He’s so very German and charming.

I’m going to try to send that package off today. If I can’t manage it, then I’m sorry—hopefully next week. I was going to send home my journal that I just finished this weekend, since I deemed it acceptable for others to read besides myself, unlike all the other journals I’ve ever kept, but I took all my conference notes in the last couple of pages, so I will probably have to do some ‘gleaning of therefores’ for my personal study over the next few weeks before I send you that. I love you all so very much, I pray for you and miss you terribly, and yes, I too, cannot wait to talk to ya’ll on mother’s day, which is, as you said, just around the corner.

Don’t fret, I’m not trunky, nor am I ‘anti-trunky’. I’m happy. I’m happy with my mission so far, I’m happy today and tomorrow looks pretty keen and in a few months when I see you all again, I will be so happy! My life is amazing, I’ve got nothing to complain about really, and I don’t see the point in being too terribly anxious for the future, or for dreading it. I’m at one with my situation. It’s a good situation. But… I do miss you and think of you often, and I’ll be so excited when I can give you all great big hugs again!

BesitosYAbrasotes, Hermana Lillywhite