GC #3 Down, 1 more to go...Weird.

General Conference with friends

Anziano Ridd and Anziano Bourne

Anziano Ridd, with the Rome LDS Temple in the background.
Note the Angel Moroni atop the temple, which was just added last week.

Good morning, Family! 

I hope all of you had a great General Conference and loved listening to the prophet of God speak. This week was pretty dang fun. We did a lot of finding, but also saw a lot of great success and potential in the work. 

So this week was pretty packed with conferences, but also with food. We started with our mission leadership council on Tuesday. The mission is very focused on the youth and young single adults. It makes complete sense, because they are the best to work with. We are going to be spending a lot more time in and around university campuses to meet as many smart guys as possible.

Later in the week, we shared these messages with the district leaders of the zone in our zone leadership council. Along with that, we trained on how to have the largest effect possible on our district members with district meetings. There is a super cool video we shared about leadership that you can find in gospel library. It is called "Building Leadership Capability." After we had those meetings, we ate an obscene amount of food...and Anziano Boscan and I were reunited after a long time of being apart. :)

As for the work, OS is ready to be baptized this Saturday!!!! Which means this week will be very full with zone conference coming up. We also had a cool opportunity to teach a family from Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were a referral from Mormon tourists who spoke Spanish with them at a restaurant. They seem pretty interested in the gospel, and we are excited to see them next week. 

General Conference is definitely one of my favorite weekends of the year. I love being able to kick back and get inspiration from the prophets of God on the earth. But as a missionary, it's a bit different - hahaha. I got to see one full session - Priesthood session. The others were broken up into pieces and/or skipped because of appointments. BUT GUYS, DID YOU SEE PRIESTHOOD SESSION? How sick (great) are our leaders?! They blow my mind every time with the power that comes through their words and specific inspiration I receive from it. It's hard to choose a favorite, but as normal, President Uchtdorf really can hit it out of the park. (Click here to listen to President Uchtdorf's talk in Priesthood session).

Anyways, this week I have focused a part of my studies on baptism. In a world that fears commitment, baptism sometimes is feared...but here in Italy I have often found that the beauty of baptism is forgotten. Baptism has many purposes: a show of faith and obedience, to cleanse us from our sins, to allow us to enter the Kingdom of God, to strengthen our relationship with our Heavenly Father, etc... but I feel that people often only focus on the "membership" part. Recently, my companion and I have been teaching the simple truth and joy of baptism with just about everyone we meet, and often we see that people desire this sacred ordinance in their lives. I just hope we all can remember how much joy baptism brings and not be afraid to tell others about it. I know how much closer it brings us to Christ.

Well anyways, I hope I didn't go over my word limit. You guys are amazing, keep doing great things like serving missions or helping the missionaries out by giving everyone you know to them to teach.

Love you tons,

Anziano Ridd

PS - This Pday we went to the Bone Church (Note from Mom ~ I believe this is referencing the Capuchin crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini; for more info, click here).

English (Google) translation: "The map of cheeses and salami."