April 8th, 2013

General Conference was this weekend! I could end my letter right there as that in and of itself should explain how good of a week it was!

I loved Conference! I hope that all of you really appreciated the opportunity that we had this weekend. Think of how many billions of people have populated this earth since Adam and Eve. Now imagine how many prophets there were and that, up until around just a few years ago, to hear the voice of a prophet explaining the will of the Lord you would have to be in a place that you could see him or have a letter or an epistle directed to your area. If you add all of that up it is a small small percentage of choice individuals that have had the opportunity to listen to the voice of a modern prophet! We are a unique bunch! What is sad is that the majority of the earth does not even know that a prophet of the Lord spoke yesterday! The opportunity to listen is greater than ever before with the Internet and satellite broadcasting and yet there are millions upon millions of people that have no idea that there is a prophet on the earth today! Therefore it becomes our opportunity and duty to "warn every man his neighbor" and let them know the good news! These people are our friends! Our family! And our brothers and sisters! We have found the pearl of great price, the answers to the very questions that have plagued humanity since the beginning, questions such as "What is the purpose in life?" "Where did I come from?" "Where am I going?" "Is death the end?" and most importantly "How can I know?"! We have that! The answer to the last one was demonstrated this weekend in fact that we have a Prophet! Now it is our turn to share these answers with those that "are kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it." That, as President Monson stated in Priesthood session, is our watchword in this church! I encourage all of you to go and bring those you love back into the fold!

Conference really is the best thing ever on a mission! And what makes it even better is the opportunity to watch it with those you come to love! We were able to watch conference with those that we have been teaching and helping for the past 4 months! It was really cool to hear their takes on conference and what it means to them! I love the people here and appreciate their hospitality towards us! They do so much for us as missionaries and as friends! I love this area and all that implies! I am looking forward to finishing the semester here and hope that we will be able to meet and help many more people come back or join the fold! 

It was a good week for us! Transfer week is always crazy and then, on top of that, we had ZLC and conference so that our Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were filled. It was still fantastic! It was the best ZLC I have been to on Friday being that I learned more then I think I have before at one of those meetings. President Killpack trained on Priesthood keys and I learned so much that I have never thought of before! It was great! We were also able to start teaching a new investigator! His name is Will and he is also on the football team. He was at Nicole's baptism being that they are friends and he had a good experience there. He and Nicole were talking later and she invited him to come to her lessons with us! She is such a great missionary already! I wish that I was as good as her at it! Ha-ha But the lessons went well! There was a great feeling in the few lessons that we were able to have with him! Hopefully he will continue to progress as he finds the truthfulness of the things that he was taught and the spirit he felt! Some other good things are what are happening with the people we have been teaching! Tyler is going to receive her patriarchal blessing tonight!! We are so excited for her! Tashena will be receiving hers next week!! And Nicole will be getting hers before the month is finished!! It is so exciting! Larry and Nicole both were able to get their temple recommends this week and both will be attending this week for the first time! I am so excited for them! It is cool to see all of this that is happening right now! I love it! There is no greater joy then to see your friends find true happiness and fully embrace it!

That will be all for right now! We are looking forward to a good week ahead of us and hope it is the same for all of you!

Elder Banner

April 2nd, 2013

What a week!! This was one of the best weeks of my life! Oh I love this area! So this week is transfers (which are why this email is late) and...................Elder Clark and I are staying one more!! I am so excited!

That means that the two of us will finish the semester here! The other big news about transfers is that they are combining our zone with the Mount Graham Zone so our zone just became one of the biggest in the mission and we are the zone leaders over the entire Gila Valley!! It will be pretty crazy as we have some missionaries that we will probably need to work with a little bit. But it will be good! I am so excited!

It has been such a fantastic week! Again, I will not be able to talk about hardly anything because there was so much but I will talk about the most important things and the highlights of the week!

Larry and Nicole were baptized this week!!!!! They were such great experiences! Nicole's baptism was first on Saturday and was a great service! There were lots of people there and it was so cool! Salena gave a really good talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost using only her scriptures and one note card! She is practicing for when she goes on her mission. After that, Elder Clark had the opportunity to baptize Nicole and it was great! After that Elder Franzen and I spoke about the Book of Mormon while they changed! It was so cool because there were quite a few people there who are not yet on this great team, (our friends of other faiths)! It was a great experience to see how happy she was and how excited she is for everything to come! It is a really cool feeling to see someone who has become one of your best friends gets baptized! I have seen it a few times now and it is always amazing! Larry's baptism followed later on Saturday night! That was a good one as well and Cameron and Blaine gave some really good talks that really brought the spirit in! It was funny because Larry was so nervous and excited! It is not an emotion that we have seen with him all that often! Ha-ha It was good as he was baptized! The Spirit was so strong and it was really awesome! Afterword’s he told us, "I feel lighter and so much happier!" It is so cool!

Sunday was another good day! What an Easter! I love Easter but being out on a mission makes it so much better! The opportunity to go and teach about and remember Christ like we have the opportunity to will probably never happen again! It was so cool! We were able to have 4 Easter programs on Sunday! And we sang hymn 200 in every single one! 4 for 4! Ha-ha It was so cool! It was such a cool day! And what better time to be baptized and confirmed then on Easter weekend! It was really cool on Sunday because both Larry and Nicole were confirmed in the 4th sacrament into 1st ward! So we were able to sit through 3 sacraments and then have that opportunity! It was so cool! 

I was privileged to be able to confirm Nicole! That was such a cool experience! Being in the circle of a confirmation is really cool and really spiritual but actually being the voice was fantastic! It is funny because it was almost a year ago when I was able to confirm Danielle! This is a good time of year! Ha-ha It was a really cool feeling to give that blessing; and I don't remember anything that was said! I was hoping for that because that means that it wasn't me speaking! There was a really cool moment after church when Nicole came up to talk to me about the blessing and told me a really cool experience she had with it. I guess that she has been stressing about school recently and she was going to ask us to give her a blessing a week or so ago for help with school. She decided against it for whatever reason but was still worried about it! She said that it was a huge testimony boost to her as I was confirming her because I randomly, in the middle of the blessing, just started talking about school and how she will get help for school from the Spirit! it was so cool! I love this church! The Church is true!! I love it!

There was so much more this week; like learning the (white man) Haka from Adam, having some good lessons with Tyler, and tons of other cool stuff but that will be it for this letter!

Till after general conference!! Watch it this weekend!!

Elder Banner