4-8-13

Hello blog readers! Hope you are all doing well, and that you got good things out of Conference. :)

We had a really good Conference. We got to watch the Saturday morning session live at 6-8(pm) and then on sunday we watched Priesthood session (11-1) Saturday afternoon (2-4) and Sunday morning (6-8). We still have not seen the Sunday afternoon. We plan to pull that off the church website and watch it at home at some point. :) (To watch the afternoon sessions live, it would have been 10-12 at night and Priesthood would have been 2-4 am. :P )

The ward was going to watch a lot of it together in the Church, but on Saturday when they went to watch the live session, they were having technical problems with it not coming in smooth and catching a lot, so they all went home. Elder Myrabo and I had already gotten ourselves set up in a sepparate room with a computer running it in English. (We probably could have understood pretty much all of it, but Conference was too important for us to risk not knowing the words the translator uses. And you can get more meaning out of it in your native language.) The members let us know that they were leaving, and we had the church to ourselves. On the following day, the ward decided not to even try anymore with watching it at the church and we were pretty much in the church all day by ourselves watching Conference. It was nice. We had desks to write on, and to strew our snacks across. :P

Random Germany Thing(s):

They have entire stores dedicated to meat. Little shops where you go in and pick out a meat, specify an amount (in grams), they weigh it out, and you buy it.

The cities here were originally designed long ago before the use of cars, and so most cities have a 'market place'. This space was probably orignially used as town square and an actual market place. Now-a-days these spaces have been converted into a wide road with no cars where one can walk along. The sides are lined with shops, and there are often little stands set up here and there, and street performers and such. There are sometimes even entire streets in the main part of the city that are used as areas like this. Paved with cobble-stone and not driven on by cars, but reserved for pedestrians.

Spiritual Things:

This week, I would like to encrouage you to do something. As I was sitting thinking last night, I realized that as much as I loved Conference, and had taken plentious notes, and recognized some themes that stuck out to me, I coudln't name many specific things I had learned. I then determined that later I am going to sit down, go over my notes, and possibly the talks again, and really define what I learned from it, how it touched me, what God was really saying directly to me in the Words. The preaching is all good and fine, but unless we pull out the meaning and apply it, what good does it do us in the long run? I encourage you all to pick up this wonderful resource we have and really search the good out of it. :)

I also bear testimony of our Church Leadership. I know that they are called of God and functioning in a God-given manner in a God-given Organization. I know that God choses His people carefully, and that we can trust them (anyone with stewardship over us) as long as they are living up to their covenants. I testify that Thomas S. Monson is God's Prophet on the earth today, and that when he speaks to us at General Conference, it is not simply his own ideas and observations, but inspired words through with God can truly speak to us. It is living scripture. And I testify of these things in the Sacred name of Jesus Christ amen. :)

Love you guys! Keep standing up for what you know is right! :) Have a wonderful week.

- Elder Michael Miles