Makin' Memories in Monterrey México: Week 69: "we will never lead you astray"

Abby...a girl who likes to go teach with us and is preparing to serve a mission in the spring

Having only an hour to write all of you each week is the most stressful process because my mind is just overflowing wirh all these life changing experiences i ahve on a daily basis.... i try to recap the best i can, but i can't wait to return and just read you all my daily journal entries hahah. Such a great conference weekend we have had-- i'll start off by mentioning that i had my LAST zone conference with Pres Bird this past friday!! We talked a lot about how we can truly keep the sabbath day holy... the church as a whole is really putting strong emphasis on this commandment and as the apostles have put it-- it has become a concern for them that families are not valuing this day. Being a missionary i have truly seen that the families who honor the sabbath day recieve more blessings and are more happy / unified / spiritually stronger. More than anything, we need to take the sacrament each week to nourish our spiritual needs.

elder wilcox and elder turner-- we eat with them every day.

This saturday / sunday we had general conference which is a world-wide conference we have in the church every 6 months. This live broadcast changes lives as we have the honor of listening to our beloved prophet, apostles, and other church leaders. In october 2013 I had the opportunity to go to this conference in salt lake and recieve the surprising confirmation in my heart that i needed to serve a mission. These leaders that speak are called of God and will never lead us astray. I will never deny the overwhelming peace i feel to know that God continues to guide us through his prophets, and that this is a church run by Christ, not by man. This conference was especially special because we got to sustain 3 new apostles!! I watched all 4 sessions of Conference in our new chapel in spanish, and i took a ton of notes on the inspired messages. Here are a few that i loved (all my notes are in spanish so here they are translated back into english)

If you are having difficulties living the gospel, take a step back and you can see that really the gospel is quite simple

The Lord has ALWAYS organized his church with a prophet and apostles....us as leaders make mistakes, but this does not influence the revelation we recieve

Our ways are much more limited than the Lord's ways

We always have to ask the Lord....How can I improve?

we need humility to change

Suffering accompanies sin, but joy accompanies true repentance

Right now in the world people are trying to change the moral laws God has established

auto control is like a muscle-- when we use it more, it becomes stronger

we are the pilots of our lives

put your trust in that spirit that leads you to do good

for you young adults-- pray for a man / woman who is spiritually interested in you

no other type of love is stronger than the love our Savior has for each of us

There is a difference between HEARING and UNDERSTANDING

parents are fully responsible for guiding / teaching their children

faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind

we need strong women who make their own decisions, voice their opinions, who can teach and lead without fear. The women of this church have a long-lasting impact.

the commandments are proof of God's love for us, and our obedience to these commandments are proof of our love to God

What the atonement heals STAYS healed

the trials in life are part of His glorious plan

we must give heed to our living prophets BEFORE the ancient prophets

These are only SOME of the notes i took but honestly you all need to go to lds.org and read / listen to these inspired words. These talks answer questions of the soul, and i am grateful that we are forever guided by these men called of God.

On a side note, i hit a world record of eating 11 homemade flour tortillas all in one day-- i think i'm losing it haha good thing we walk a ton here in my huge area. It is helping the waistline ;) 9 WEEKS AND COUNTING!! we also ate catfish and cactus this week-- not a huge fan. All of september has been burning hot! i think this week rains will come.

my new friends here

We've got great progressing investigadores with incredible stories that i will share next week. We go to the temple next thursday so i'll write you all october 15thwith the report on how my 21st bday fiesta went :)