General Authorities!

This week has been great.  We should still have some baptisms in November, how many is still up in the air.  We are supposed to have a baptismal interview for one of our investigators this week.

Our ward had a Halloween activity last Saturday. Also that same day two General Authorities Elder Zwick and Elder Pino and their wives came to our mission and we had a meeting with them in Fayetteville. It was a short meeting, but they talked about studying effectively, and praised us and the mission president a lot too. Elder Pino was from Venezuela so him and his wife had to have a translator, and Elder Pino is very funny. Elder Zwick is from Utah but has had a lot of church assignments down in South America. We have another General Authority vising our mission next month. General Authority visits are really rare and three visiting us in the space of 2 months is almost unheard of.

The weather is cooling down here too, on Saturday there was frost on the ground! Trees here are weird, some trees have normal leaves that change color and fall down, but many of them look like normal trees until you get close to them and realize they have pine needles instead of leaves. They look nothing like the pine trees back home. Pine needles are everywhere people, even make gardens with them. People will drop cigarettes into piles of pine needles without even caring!  One day this whole State will go up into flames!

I did not receive any more cookies lately, I am assuming you are sending more.  For Halloween the day will be normal, but will we be stuck inside our apartment at night unless with get some teaching appointments for that night. We will not be allowed to be outside talking to people or knocking on doors at that time. Sounds like things are going good back home. Tell Jonathan he needs to be a whoopee cushion instead this year, a kid in my ward dressed up as one for the ward Halloween party.

That's great the Connerleys got to have a baptism while they were on trek. There are some interesting conversions stories out there. I have not personally seen any conversions like that but I heard a lot of stories of interesting conversions since I have gotten here.

The Atonement is extremely important, to put it simply the official purpose of missionaries is to invite people to come unto Christ and use his Atonement. While many people in the South believe in the Atonement, none of them really know or understand how it works.  Elder Mickleson has a book that a preacher gave to him once with the New Testament and the book of Psalms in it and on the cover it says that if you signed this book you are saved and there is a place to sign your name on it. There is a talk by Elder Bednar called "The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality" that  has help me understand the Atonement and grace much better. We cannot fully receive the Atonement for ourselves if we do not help others receive it.

Thanks for the email, I will try to email you some experiences next week for your lesson,and I hope you will have a good week.
Love,
Elder Lakey