4-4-11

Hey Mom,
Conference was so great. It's always been so amazing for me since I've come out on a mission. Sadly, we didn't have any investigators there. I didn't notice which one talked about shying away. Was it the one about being committed to act, I think by Elder Eyring? My favorite was probably in the last session by Lynn G. Robbins about being, more than just doing. And he said that baptism and taking the sacrament are what we need to do, but having faith in Christ and worthiness are what we need to be in order to do the other. Something like that. Anyway, he said the "be" we will never be able to check off, but always must work on. Priesthood Session was way good, about using the power of the Priesthood more.
We missed some of the Saturday afternoon session too, because we decided to go tracting between sessions and we ran into a Hawaiian couple who have had missionaries over before and she started making us lunch at 11:45 and it was almost 1 before we got out.
That was a way awesome April fools party. It seems like you guys have something fun every week. Somehow, we managed not to be pranked. And the only prank we were going to do got ruined. We were eating dinner with another set of missionaries, and on our way up to their area I started making a plan that we would call the elders and tell them if they still wanted us to come to dinner they would have to come pick us up because we just slid off the road into a ditch and hit a tree. Just as we made up our plan, we drove by the missionaries and they waved at us, and it totally ruined our plan.
Our dinner with the Baptist preacher went better than I thought. We were able to teach most of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a little of the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. It was pretty jumbled because they kept asking tons of different questions. When I was explaining the gift of the Holy Ghost and how he can be our constant companion, they got stuck on that the Spirit can leave you if you sin. They basically believe that once you believe and declare it than you are saved. And your not saved by works. They invited us over again for dinner tomorrow so that's pretty good. I like what you said about just bearing testimony, because they want proof in the Bible, but even if I can show them anything only the Spirit will let them know the truth of the Restoration through sincere prayer and reading the Book of Mormon.
So, this should be a good week. It's crazy it's the last week of the transfer. Hope you have a good week too and get to do something else exciting. Love
Elder Bryce Wainwright