Week #51 - Catnip & Playdough

HI!
It's been quite the week. Lots of pretty amazing things are happening in the Santa Rosa Zone. This is definitely a totally different mission than when I first came out- I can't believe how much it's changed over the last year. President Bunker has played a huge role in getting everyone refocused on where our minds need to be and where our efforts should be put forth. In the past two weeks we had four baptisms in our zone, we have two more this Saturday, and seven scheduled for August 1st. Life's been awesome!

Last week we had zone conference which was definitely the best one I've ever been to. President gave and amazing talk/discussion about being Abinadis in the mission and pretty well threw down when it came to being obedient and working hard. Very inspiring. I reread the account of Abinadi about four times after his talk and I couldn't believe I never noticed how incredible those chapters were (Mosiah 12 through...17? Wherever he says his final words before they kill him). I was asked to sing an arrangement that Elder Chaichana and I put together of I Need Thee Every Hour and it went really well, so altogether it was quite the conference.

This Saturday I get to go to Jim P.'s baptism in Benicia so I'm way excited about that. He asked me to sing for it so hopefully I can work up something delightful. I was pretty pumped to hear he's finally going to do it. I had set a date with him while I was there for July 11 but he kept putting it off because his son in South Carolina was trying to work out a time to fly out and do it and couldn't. So, ol' Jim decided he's going get baptized regardless because he's ready. Thattakid.

I just finished listening to a series of eight lectures that Truman G. Madsen gave on Joseph Smith and everything about him from his birth to his death. He goes all the way through and bears a WAY powerful testimony at the end. Needless to say, I'm still firm in my testimony that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. No one can tear that one down. Sidenote- one thing he mentioned was that in the dead sea scrolls they recently found a huge portion that talks about a second "messiah" (messiah just means annointed one) after Christ that would be a descendant of Joseph. This messiah it referred to was also given the title of being a "restorer" and there were all these prophesies talking about how he'll bring back the truth and stuff. I guess that sort of thing is why I'm impatient with people who tell me flat out that Joseph Smith was a conman.

Anyway, life's amazing in California. The gospel's true and it always will be. Have a good week!
Elder B