Conference! Notes from October 6, 2014

What an eventful week!!

To start off, General Conference was this past weekend, and it was such a great weekend. It is the weirdest thing to think that this is my last conference on the mission! Sometimes as a missionary, you feel like you will be doing the same things forever. You don't realize missionary life has an end to it!

But any who, we talked with many incredible people. David was a member that we talked to. He was listening to a session of conference when we walked up and started talking to him. We found out that he lost his wife a few years ago, while only in his 50s, and hasn't been able to recover since then. He has lost his purpose for being here on Earth. We gave him some spiritual advice and told him he was in the right place. He told us that he needed to hear that and we so glad that we walked up to him and started talking with him. I truly felt God's love for him and I hope he knows that as well.
I saw Jeremy, Aubrey, and Danny. What a surprise! I also saw the Hickmans, the Uldroyds, Sister Bowerman, and the Norens (all from Katy, TX). So much conference fun.

We got 2 new investigators from General Conference. They are both originally from India. One walked into the North Visitor's Center while we were at the desk, and he asked, "What is going on here??" OH we got 'im.....(: I told him all about General Conference and how it is such a blessing to listen to a living prophet that we have on the Earth today. We also talked about a main difference that occurs between our religion and others--The Book of Mormon. I gave him a copy and he decided to read it. We will teach him this week! We also met a man that was in the stand-by line to get into the Sunday Morning Session. He wasn't a member and we were quite intrigued that he was at Conference all by himself. "What made you want to come to General Conference?" "I love the music." Well we found out he already had a copy of the Book of Mormon and we committed him to read Alma 32, the section on faith. He believes in a higher power and also does a lot of meditation, so we are excited to teach him more about the nature of God and faith.

I was able to attend the Sunday Afternoon session. It was awesome; loved the talk that was given in Portuguese! It was fun being in the Conference Center to hear it in Portuguese, but it was also a little challenging taking notes while trying to watch the subtitles. I really loved the insight that he provided. Are we all living in a way that we will be able to obtain ALL of the blessings God has in store for us? If we keep doing what we are doing right now, will we be able to become the person God knows that we can become?? I love this quote and I have shared it many times in my emails, but "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always had."

Oh man, so there was just an hour left of contacting last night after the Sunday Session of Conference. Imagine all of the sisters having walked 10 hours straight the day before and 8 hours that day. Well we see a huge group of Danish people walk by us on the square, and they didn't have a tour guide! Well apparently Danish and Swedish are pretty similar, so Sister Stigsson and I, along with another companionship that had a Swede, were conveniently placed where we were that we just started taking 37 Danish people on a tour during conference!! We need to be pretty spontaneous here. The joys of temple square!

We watched Meet the Mormons after General Conference was over last night. That was my second time seeing it, and man is it such a great movie! I am so excited for it to come out in Theaters across America. I encourage all of you to go see it and take friends to see it as well. It touches on many main points of what we believe in a members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Pday is the most stressful day of the week. Enough said. But we were at Walmart today when we met a man in the food section. He mentioned how he got out of jail just a little while ago but that he is trying his best to be a faithful church goer. He goes to the homeless ward here in SLC and has been to Temple Square before. He expressed to us that he is so happy for second chances and how he is making a come back. The gospel is the best!

Oh, my companion is the best. I just love how sincere and positive she is about everything. What a sweetheart.

Love you all! Don't forget to write me(:

Sister Steenhoek

PS - my roommates and I did Chinese face masks. My roommates are the cutest and they are from Hong Kong(: Fun fact: they are cousins!