What a Weekend

We started last weekend with a Temple zone conference on Friday, we arrived at the Temple 8:00 am. We did an endowment session and then we had a meeting with the Temple president. President Bradshaw talked to us about the importance of Elijah bringing the sealing power back to the earth.

We then went to lunch and met at 1:20 at a nearby Stake Center for our zone conference. President and Sister Saylin talked to us and then we had training on talking about baptism during the first lesson.

We were invited to have dinner at Brother and Sister Mario and Dalilah Perez home, since we had the Bay City Elders with us and it was on the way home, al l six of us went to dinner. Sister Perez had made a taco feast. We all ate until we were stuffed and then we visited for a few minutes and Elder Schwarz gave a gospel message.

Saturday at 1:00 pm we had two more baptisms; Oscar and Aricili Calderon. They are a young couple that the Elders have been teaching all the time we have been here. They have been ready for baptism for a while but they both worked on Sundays, so they could not come to church. While Elder Cameron was here, he and Elder Schwarz did a role play with them to show them how to ask their bosses for Sunday off, and it worked.

Saturday night we had Stake Conference, so we picked up Johnny Garcia and Carrie Benavidez and a new member that had just moved to El Campo, Ray Brown ,and took them to Conference in Bay City with us. They had a dinner at 5:30pm because most members have to drive so far to get there and the Preisthood leaders had a session at 4:00 pm.

The 7:00 pm adult session started with a wonderful talk by President Saylin (Our mission President). He talked about how he is a " California Boy" so he doesn't know alot about farming. But "it looks like you Texans know quite a bit"....laughter!! Anyway, he talked about the parable of the 'yoke' and the 'sheaves and the tares and the garner', and how, after he had studied up on the meanings of all those farming terms, he understood the parable better. It was a good talk!! We were reorganizing the Stake Presidency so we had two General Authorities with us. Pres. Snow of the Presidency of the Seventy, and Elder Villlereal. Both were wonderful speakers. Anyway, again on Sunday we had another meeting where the new Stake Presidency was announced. We were invited to dinner at the Mission Home. So, at 4pm we arrived at the Mission Home and had the most fun time!!! Sometimes, the President seems sort of stern...and I haven't figured out if he has a funny side or not!! Well, he does!!! And his 6 children are amazing!! They were acting just like regular, wild, kids on a Sunday afternoon!! It was a wonderful afternoon...in fact, we didn't go home until 7:30pm.

Our time here has been so full of changes!! We've had the change of (1) the mission president, and (2) the branch president and (3) the Stake president!! Everyone has changed!! But, it's all good!! We've changed, too! We are more 'full of the spirit', and, of course, we hope we can keep those same, great feelings when we go home. We're smarter on the gospel, because we have studied so much. And, we seem to be more 'mellow'...because we live in such close quarters, and we are TOGETHER all the time...it seems a good idea to be 'mellow'!!

Yesterday, we helped a man "get rid of the devil" ./...the devil was telling him to hurt himself, and to leave his family....his wife was worried. Her husband wouldn't listen to any family member, so she called us. We talked and talked, and listened and encouraged. Earl gave him a blessing and his house a blessing. He seemed much better when we left. We're going over today to check on him.

Never a dull moment!!!
Till next time....Elder and Sister Carter