Brandon's Mission: General Conference Week

Apr 4, 2016
Hello everyone,

General conference was amazing for the few who don't know what it is,
it's a semiannual event where the prophets of our day speak to us by
broadcasting from Utah to all over the world. They give us counsel on
how to better ourselves and to give us revelation for our days from
God. I loved Elder Patrick Kearon's talk on helping refugees, I may
want to come back from my mission and participate in this kind of
work. It felt so strangely good when they gave the number of
missionaries out in the field, about 75,000, and to think I was one
of those thousands.

The rest of the week was good. We had a zone activity which was good
because I got to interact with missionaries I don't usually get to
talk too. While looking for someone we found this young man who wanted
us to help him find girls he could date. He was super excited to hear
that we had a ward with just young single adults. He also wanted us to
meet up with him later and to bring girls with us. Interesting but I
don't think we will be seeing much of him.

We were at the church building and there was a riot across the street.
We found out more about it apparently there was no school that day
because students and teachers were protesting against the governor for
taking money away from schools and into banks. We found out later on
Facebook that one of the members of our ward was there. She is a
school teacher for special needs kids, her and her family calls me
Keith because I remind them of a student of hers named that. They say
it's because our personalities are similar, both of us are laid-back
and chill, but I wonder.

This week has been rough for biking. It has been raining a lot this
past week so the roads are always wet. One time I tried to brake but I
only have front brakes so I was bucked off the bike, flew over my
handle bars and landed on the road. I was ok but later that day we
were riding to appointment then the chain fell off my bike then it
started to rain extremely hard and hailed too so I had to treat my
bike like a skateboard and arrived at the appointment soaking wet.
Luckily I have three bikes to use in this area; one a missionary left
here, one the mission president gave me (it's huge and pretty slow),
and one I got from an investigator named Marco (easily the fastest
bike I have but it's also the bike without the chain now).

Speaking of Marco, he's going to get baptized at the end of May he's
been meeting missionaries for almost a year and now he finally has a
date when we get baptized, at this point he is already a member. Also
we will be having transfers and I will have a new companion tomorrow,
Elder Rojas, I know nothing about so he will be a complete surprise.

Wow, a lot happened this week, I will just finish it up with this
spiritual thought. I was reading Alma 15:6-10, this is when Alma was
talking to Zeezrom who at this point is very sorry for the things he
had done to Alma and is suffering from a fever. He asks Alma to
forgive and to heal him. Alma says that it is through your faith in
Jesus Christ that you will be healed. Then something clicked in my
brain, those words just seem to hold so much power despite me hearing
them probably a thousand times. Through your faith in Jesus Christ you
will be; healed, and not only that you can find truth, you can find
peace, you can find strength, basically without faith in Him nothing
works even ordinances found in the church needs to be coupled with
faith in Christ. Baptism, temple sealings, priesthood blessings, even
praying about the Book of Mormon needs faith directed towards Christ.
It seems now the gospel to me is so clear but I know I will find
something new that will continually increase my understanding of
gospel and clear it up some more, I just hope it happens soon.

That was my week, I hope yours was and will be great.
Love, Elder Agre