The 4-Man Crusade

Probably the biggest highlight of the week was hands down General Conference. Any opportunity to hear from the living prophets and apostles of God is always a good day in my book. Talks and talks about modern revelation pertinent to our day comes in super handy sometimes. This week we also had MLC (where we have a spiritual party with our mission president) and we discussed rescuing people and members of the church who may have strayed from the straight and narrow. Since conference was that weekend, and there is so much that can be learned and applied to bolster people up when times are rough, we started a four man crusade in our Spanish ward to get everyone back. Us and the other set of Elders here in Othello divided up the list of all the members in our two areas - covering the entirety of Othello - and armed with an inspiring Easter Message, went to work. Since the idea came with such short notice and a very tight time frame, we asked our ward mission leader and another member to help us divide and conquer so after fueling our Mexican spirits with some taco-truck type food Friday night, we split off and for three hours went through the country roads of Othello, finding everyone we could to show them the "Because He Lives" video. If you haven't already, I invite you to check it out at: http://www.mormon.org/easter. It’s a short video that talks about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and what is possible because of his Resurrection, which we celebrated yesterday with Easter. If you've already seen it, watch it again, ‘cause it’s worth it. But after 3 hours of crusading, we met back up for the night and between sessions of conference the following Saturday continued on our quest to get people to watch conference with us in celebration of Easter and in search of answers to questions the following morning. Lamentably, not as many people showed up as we had hoped but regardless, our crusade will continue on in helping everyone come to the fold of Christ.

Speaking of conference itself, I was inspired by all the talks upholding the family. It seems hardly a talk went by without a mention to the family in one way, shape, or form. Especially inspiring was the talk about the colloquium held at the Vatican in Rome in which various religious organizations from around the world came together in support of the family, ours being one of the ones represented. Interestingly enough, another church made reference to The Family: A Proclamation to the World which is definitely worth a read through. All in all, I am excited to go out and apply the principles I learned this weekend (except on the family; for obvious reasons that will have to wait a bit).

Other than that it was a relatively uneventful week of attending district meetings and teaching the gospel. The “Because He Lives” DVD definitely saw some intense usage this week and I'm excited to see where it goes.

If possible, the quote of the week would be the entirety of conference but since that is rather unpractical I'll revert to a conversation we had on P-day. Currently in our zone of 24 missionaries, we have 5 native speaking Latinos who all played soccer growing up. My companion thought it would be a funny idea to play soccer with them vs. all of us white people. Mistakenly thinking it would be fun, I agreed and as we were starting I mentioned to one of the missionaries (this was in Spanish) "Well let’s see what happens." Walking away he retorted under his breath:

"A massacre is going to happen."

I think a massacre is an apt description of the slaughter that happened. I didn't know if I was spending more time on my knees trying fruitlessly to stop the ball from going in or praying for mercy once the score reached 15-0. Needless to say, I think we will be playing basketball today.

And with that I hope you all had a fantastic Easter and wish you all a warmer day than ours!

Elder Kupferer