April 2, 2012

Howdy,

Today something cool happened.  We were in Best Buy getting Elder Christensen a camera, and while we were inside, it started raining. It didn't just start raining, but it started POURING!  On our way home, Elder Christensen hit a puddle that basically fully immersed the car. 

General Conference was the highlight of the week.  I have a powerful testimony that the leaders of the church are inspired of God.  The things they said answered questions that I had and questions that every one of our investigators had. The best part about conference is just that we spend so much time devoted to sharing with people that there is a living prophet and 12 apostles on the earth.  We get to hear what they have to say.  They declare modern scripture to the world and uplift and edify us.  I love being a member of this church. 

This whole week was fairly eventful.  On Tuesday was transfers, Elder McOmber and I are sticking around…thankfully.  Thursday we drove into Dallas for a meeting with President Durrant.  On the way back out to Tyler we pulled over at a gas station to wait for the Elders from Longview.  Shortly after parking at the side of the gas station we felt the car jerk forward.  There was a guy in a big truck on his way out to east Texas to do some off-roading, and as he was turning into the gas pump, his trailer clipped our back light.  It isn't too bad, but every time you see it, just makes you kind of wince.  The funny thing was, after the priesthood session of General Conference, Brother Cook saw the damage as Elder McOmber was backing me out of our parking spot.  I heard him shout "holy cow!  Who did NOT do their backing job?!"  It was pretty comical. 

(Note from Larett:  For those who are not aware of missionary rules, when the missionaries are lucky enough to  drive a car, the hard fast rule is that they always have to have one of the two behind the car watching the driver back up guiding the driver as he/she is backing the car.  Sometimes it seems a bit extreem but you can see why the church has this rule)

We started teaching Connie Nguyen last week, she is somebody we tracted into.  She grew up catholic, but hasn't been attending recently.  Yesterday we taught her the restoration lesson.  When we were teaching her about dispensations and apostasy, she started crying.  When we taught her about Joseph Smith, she instantly told us that she wants it to be true, and asked "but what proof could I have that he did see God and Jesus?"  I liked that question.  It led nicely into the Book of Mormon.  The great thing was that we taught her about a living prophet, and we were able to tell her that "twice a year the living prophet speaks to the whole world.  It just so happens that one of those times is TODAY!  If there was a living prophet, would you want to hear what he had to say?"  She couldn't turn that down, and because conference had just started five minutes before, and we were at the home of the Hard family, they just turned it on and started watching it with her.  What a miracle and blessing it is to have living oracles on the earth today.  That is proof to me that God loves us.

Elder Riley Layton