Week 25: Zone Conference

This week wasn't too shabby! Haha it was actually a pretty awesome week!

Last Wednesday I got a birthday package in the mail! What a start to the week! :) Yeah, maybe it was a little late, but it's all good! Now I've had a birthday month instead of just a single day! I'm definitely not complaining about that! The boss I used to have used to celebrate her birthday like that...now I can see why! haha

On Thursday we finally had our Missionary Conference in Paris!

This is inside the trains I ride here, not too rough of a life haha

The conference was with Elder Kent F. Richards of the Seventy. It was awesome! I learned so much, saw a lot of old friends, and my testimony was strengthened so much! Here's a picture from the conference of me with some of my old friends!

Me with my friends

One of the things that struck me at the conference was a comment that Elder Richards made that is scarily true. He said "Satan's best plan is to make us hold back just a bit, and not realize our full potential." Wow! How true is that?! I know that there are a lot of times when I feel like I could do something, but then I let discouragement or doubt win me over. Forget that! We should all just give everything our very best effort! We should make goals, and do everything we can to achieve them! Even if it looks like we won't achieve them (and sometimes we don't), if we still put in our best effort, we'll come out way better than we would if we quit!

In Preach My Gospel (The missionary book for the Church) there is a quote by Elder M. Russell Ballard that says:

"I am so thouroughly convinced that if we don't set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to laster the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life."

How powerful is that?! And how true! I can already see how much more I could have accomplished in life if I had worked harder towards my goals! So sheesh, I'm gonna do my best to work harder!

That's my little motivational tip haha

I also recommend reading Elder Kent F. Richards' last General Conference talk titled "The Atonement Covers All Pain", it's really good!

On Friday, we taught Prince-Davy again, and he's still preparing to be baptized on April 20th. After we taught the lesson, our branch president said "You guys can't leave Poitiers before his baptism! I'll call Président Poznanski myself!" and it was a really nice thing to say, but sadly, I might be. I'll find out this Saturday if I'm leaving, and if I am, I'll be leaving 4 days after that. So, we'll see what happens! So until I find out, send any letters to the mission home address haha.

We also set another baptismal date for April 20th with our investigator Thomas! He's a 22 year old guy who is super nice and super excited about the Gospel!

While home teaching with a member this week, the member who was teaching with us said something (to the recent convert we were teaching) that I thought was pretty profound. He told her to "Do your maximum." It's simple, but so right! We are all expected to do all that we can, but that doesn't mean that we can do everything. We just have to be honest with ourselves and put in our very best effort!

Well, I'm gonna try to go to Belgium again this week haha so hopefully that works out! Don't worry, I'll still try to take pictures so that I'll have better ones to share than I have the last few weeks haha.

Keep being awesome and working hard! And have some fun while you're at it!

Elder Daniel Anderson