Monday, March 16, 2015

An Application in Finding

This was a pretty long week but rather rewarding at the same time. Tuesday we had a zone conference down in Pasco so we had to get up at way-too-early in the morning to drive down for the car inspections at 8 that preceded the conference itself at 9. As per the norm, the conference itself went rather long but it was all great stuff. We received some great instruction of a few new things to try to help take us to the next level of missionary work. I feel as though our mission president is extremely pleased with where the mission is at right now and so he is able to help lift us up out of the basics of missionary work and start showing us what the next step is to continue increasing in our abilities as missionaries and become even more fruitful. We also had a break in the middle for a 30-minute rebuke fest from the mission president's wife essentially telling us all we are getting too fat and need to start eating healthier. I'm sure that’s a bit over exaggerated from what she intended but that’s what I got from it. Maybe I need to lay back on the tacos and start running more....

Anyways afterwards I went on an exchange with one of the assistants and stayed down in his area and since they live with the Kennewick zone leaders I was able to see a lot of my friends from last transfer. That was nice being able to see them all again and reminisce about the fun memories together coupled with how investigators are doing. But the next day we left and went on our way back to Othello for a week of almost solid finding. Since we have had a lot of success with baptisms recently we were busy teaching and not too busy finding so we put our shoulder to the wheel as it were and went to work. We were able to apply the principles we learned the day before and saw tons of small miracles the entire week. We found more investigators than ever before in my entire mission and saw lots of cool miracles in other areas as we were blessed for our diligence. Notably the greatest miracle from that was the lessons with our recent converts. All three of them have taken hold of the gospel and truly begun to apply it in their lives. Their understanding of gospel concepts and principles is astounding. Sweet is the peace the gospel brings into families lives. The most marked difference was found in the family of the 10 year old child baptized a few weeks prior. About 2.5 months ago when the teaching process began, the parents had no testimony whatsoever of the gospel (hence why they weren't going to church and their son didn't get baptized at 8). But as we continued on with the teaching process, the Spirit worked on them like none other. Friday night in a lesson with them, we started off with a scripture about prayer and by the end of the lesson, the mom was talking about how the home felt so much different (in a good way) now and how she is going to fast next week and get sealed as a family one day. It was a great experience for us to see first-hand the amount the restored gospel of Jesus Christ can help families and individuals not only grow closer to each other but with our Heavenly Father as well.

The quote of the week doesn't make any sense to me so I want to toss it out there and see if anyone has any sliver of an idea about what it’s trying to teach. It was on a billboard in town and says this:

"He who throws dirt loses ground."

Still trying to wrap my head around it. I think I might be overthinking it. But anyways here is an actual quote for you from zone conference this week. We were coming back (feeling rather fat might I add) from the lesson from the President's wife about nutrition and regrouping with some other groups that had gone out in breakout sessions and as we were making small talk about it our President said:

"This morning we taught you how to have faith, and she just taught you to feel guilty."

We were able to apply the faith principles, now we just have to get around to throwing away the box of Cap'n Crunch sitting above our fridge and apply those principles....

And with that, I sign off for another week. Hopefully when I write to you again, I will be a few pounds lighter. Until then,

Elder Kupferer

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