I missed my family this conference weekend. However, I am SO grateful to have a family who loves hearing the prophet speak. And even though I've missed you, I'm also incredibly grateful to be serving the Lord out here. It's been a crazy week; EVERYONE in western NY it seems has been sick, including me. We had a TON of great appointments this week, and a whole day cancelled on us because of sickness. Of course I got sick the day after anyway, but we still had a full week of appointments and conference so I have been on lots of pseudaphed and ibuprofen and I'm on the mend by now :) It has been awesome to see the blessings in our area this week. We had the opportunity to teach a lot of investigators for either the first time or one of the first and it has been a huge blessing for me to be able to testify of the atonement and the restoration of Jesus Christ's gospel over and over again. Being a missionary really is the coolest <3 General conference was awesome; we actually had a new investigator named Jack at the first session with us which was sweet, especially with Elder Nelson's talk and also the talk by the 70 member that was on the Holy Ghost. We literally haven't even taught Jack the restoration yet (he was a sick cancellation last week), but he'd been taught years ago. He used to be a JW and has some confusions about the Godhead, and had asked about the Holy Ghost right before conference started. Whether or not he realized, I'm confident that talk was for him. My personal favorite talk I think was given in the Sunday afternoon session about faith... the one where he talked about Ann Jewel Rowley. Wasn't that cool? It reminded me how much faith she had... faith enough to perform a miracle! We wouldn't be here if her whole family had starved, but she had the simple faith that allowed Heavenly Father to feed her family, and I know that we can too. :) We also started teaching a woman named Lakesha this Saturday between conference sessions, and she is really searching and is excited to come to church with her little family next week! (She has a 4-year-old named Malachi and then Malachi's dad.) I never realized until maybe a month or two ago how many people have honestly never even thought about the fact that there could be a religion on Earth that contained 100% of the truth. She hasn't been attending any church for about 4 years because she moved and there isn't a big Baptist congregation right now... they are in between preachers or something like that. I'm so grateful that this church is true no matter where you are! Running out of time, but the last person we taught this week that was new is named Scott... he knows about a lot of religions but doesn't have much real faith of his own, and is looking to make amends for some wrong he has done. We had a beautiful lesson last night with a couple from the ward about the healing that comes through the atonement of Jesus Christ. i am so excited for him to come to understand and apply that doctrine in his own life. He just turned 30 and this would make such a difference for his future.
I love you all so much and hope to hear from you often. Have an excellent week!
Love,
Sister Schank
