Elder Henry taught in Portuguese this week!

Dear Mom,

Its true General Conference got me re-fired to go out and teach the gospel! I absolutely loved it, even the parts about raising children. There are always principles of the Gospel that you can pull out of any of the talks. I think my favorite talks right now are Elder Oaks on Sacrifice, Elder Anderson on What does Christ think of you, and President Monson's talk on Duty. Hopefully my investigators/less actives got just as much out of it as I did. My companion and I as well as the two missionaries I live with all have been talking non-stop about conference :P.

Are you kidding me, Spencer HAS to go to Brasil. Its destined to be, and then we can speak Portuguese all the time to one another. Besides where else in the world would you rather be? :P.

What Mormon's -aren't- fox news junkies? Its a fact of life, especially down here in Southern California.

This past week was pretty short (seeing as we had Conference, and the last time I wrote you was tuesday). We have a lot of exciting things happening in our area though.

Last week we started teaching 4 different families, probably the best week of finding I've ever had on my mission. They all have potential, not golden investigators, but lots of potential. The investigators we have we really didn't get to work with last week. That meant we did LOTS of finding. We tracted 3 full days last week of walking from door to door and trying to find people to teach. It all paid off though on Sunday when we finally saw some of the fruits of our labors :).

The first person we found is named Jo. He's Ana P's Dad (one of the recent converts in the ward), and he's a Brazilian. For the first time on my mission I was able to teach in Portuguese, and it was AWESOME! I can't wait to go to Brasil and teach like that all the time. We had dinner with Jo and his Daughter and gave him one of the copies of the Book of Mormon in Portuguese that Kelsey gave me before my mission. Ana and I also wrote our testimonies in the front in Portuguese and he agreed to read it and share it with his wife. We have a return appointment tomorrow, but we will have to turn him over to the Sisters because he lives out of our area.

We also met a guy named Kevin this week. We were in the alleyway trying to find Chris and Frank, but they weren't home and were walking back to our car and asked him if we could give him a pass-along card. We then talked about the restoration and agreed to meet with us on Sunday. When we came back on Sunday we were able to sit down with him and share a lesson about the restoration, and he agreed to read and pray, but was about 50% on coming to church and didn't want to set a date for baptism yet. Still he says he's been studying religions to try and find the truth.

Next up is Jon. Jon is a high school teacher who loves WWII history. I may have mentioned him before because we first talked with him in January and finally got to teach him yesterday. We had a great lesson with him and he was asking lots of good questions. Today he's arranged for us to meet one of the surviving members of the Band of Brothers, so I'm looking forward to meeting Ed Pickering today. He was one of the medics that Parachuted into Normandie, France not long before D-day.

We also received a media referral last week for a family. The Mom and Dad's names are Pati and Alex. We met with them for the first time yesterday and brought one of the members, Sis. Doing, with us. The lesson went luke-warm and we probably wouldn't have gotten a return visit if it weren't for Sis. Doing there. She's a convert of a little over 20 years now and she bore powerful testimony of the good the church has done for her family. She also organized a play date for her grandson and the oldest boy. I'm so glad that she came with us because she is going to be a much more powerful tool than we can be as missionaries. Something I realized in that lesson is that members have been missionaries for many years and have much more experience than we do with introducing people to the gospel. The best thing I can hope for as a missionary is that a member has the courage to come with us to a lesson and help us to teach. They provide instant fellowship, and powerful witness of how the church has helped them with years of experience I don't have.

Nicole was too busy to meet with us, as well as Steve and Steve, but they are progressing slowly but surely. We need to try something new to help each of them overcome their bumps.

I'm glad you had a very happy birthday Mom :)!

I love you all very much, thank you for writing to me faithfully.

Love,

Elder Henry

Dear Dad,

Thanks for the Lineage, I wrote it down in my White Handbook, so so long as I don't loose that I will have that with me.

I'll tell you the thing I missed most this general conference was Waffles with Strawberries for Sunday Morning Session.  All morning long I was starving and all I could thing about was sitting on the couch listening to conference, and eating waffles...  Not really my companion made some Pillsburry cinnamon rolls which were pretty tasty, but I missed those waffles.

Of course General Conference was a HUGE boost that I needed in my missionary work.  Having the words of the Prophets and Apostles in my head I was able to help some of the Less-Actives we've been working with.  We have one less-active named Randy that was ordained to be a teacher at 14, and he's been less-active since (he's 48 now).  Really friendly guy, and after listening to the talk on duty from President Monson, I shot over to his house to share some of the things I learned from President Monson.  I was able to articulate to him his authority and duty, and it actually got him really interested.  We talked about some long term goals of temple attendance and Melchezidek Priesthood and he was very interested to hear and understand the wonderful things Heavenly Father has in store for him.

I can't believe you made Spencer ditch seminary so you could play basketball!  Of course I can understand getting grumpy at things getting in the way of basketball, but still that makes me laugh :P.

Thanks Dad for being an awesome parent.  Whenever the General Authorities talk about raising kids I'm never surprised to hear that everything you and Mom did for us kids is perfectly in line with their counsel.  I hope I can be just like you one day.
Love,
Elder Henry