Seven in One Blow: Faith Generating

French fact: Bordeaux, literally translated, means the edge of the ocean. Truth be told, it's about an hour away. Close enough to be hot and humid. Change your shirt during lunch hot and humid, as Elder Taylor would say. Lovely.

I feel like as a missionary I get a broader view of things so that I can see a lot more parallels and types. Somehow, things I'm thinking about and studying are always exactly what our Zone Conferences are on. And I realized just how drole it is that my home stake gets to listen to an apostle roughly the same time as myself. I was reading dad's letters today on the aftermath, as I myself am in the aftermath of listening to a different apostle. With the time lapse called the postal service, it's like the same thing. 

concert flute-ist

Brief notes from past half a week- I am now a concert flutest. Mom, I hope you kept that flute you had. I did an exchange with my daughter after arriving back from Nice Wednesday afternoon. AKA Soeur Koyle. And I left again to go to Toulouse for another exchange where I felt like I was breathing expired air. Then, after some train difficulties, due to a grève, we are finally back in our sector and ready to work. 

Last Sunday, the saga began with twelve sisters sleeping in our tiny apartment. There was no place to lay your head. Or stand or sit or move. But I was impressed at the level of maturity and the solemn spirit of reverence that was brought into our apartment. We've been calling and assuring that each of them was preparing spiritually for this conference and you could tell by the atmosphere, by the air of expectancy, that prepare they did. Wowzers. Even more impressive was their ability to maintain this atmosphere during the thirteen hour bus ride. I was the worst one! We didn't stop for the first five hours and that last hour was rough. After sitting in the same position studying all the things I'd always wanted to, but never had time to study is draining! We made it, sanity in tact, trying hard NOT to eat the snacks we bought  in order to maintain our current body weight. (Because our leg muscles were rapidly atrophying and I wasn't sure they would be able to support much more weight than what they were used to...)

Tuesday morning, same ambiance of reverence still in tact, shirts freshly pressed and shoes shined, all 274 missionaries headed over to the Acropolis, the Nicean venue for the conference. It was amazing. Elder Andersen walks in and touches the flowers on the stage and says, These flowers are beautiful. It's like a funeral. Then we all got to shake hands quickly-taking under ten minutes. Not bad. I imagine it being a lot harder to organize a Stake Conference if only because the missionaries here were so dedicated to exact obedience and order that it was like we had role played it or we were a military drill team, I'm not sure which. BTW-I got to sit in the second row due to my connections with the special choir. 

Conference Notes: 

Soeur Roney talked about hands. We are supposed to be doing the same things that the Savior's hands would do. Our two hands are constant reminders of who we are and what we have. 

President Roney spoke on spiritual whirlwinds and the importance of trusting Jesus Christ over ourselves and our own logic. He related the beautiful story of his old mission comp turned Catholic that he was able to visit and love. 

Nice Odessy

The Kearons (sp?) then spoke. They were later voted power couple by our ZLs. Soeur Kearons spent a powerful four minutes speaking about the importance of becoming true messangers of Jesus Christ. 

Then Elder Kearons, charming Englishman that he is, spoke about a variety of subjects. My favorite quote was that "faith has a short shelf-life'. His point being that we always need to be preparing like we had and having spiritual, faith-building experiences in order to maintain our faith. 

After that, we sung our mission song. I have never heard it sung so beautifully. Like a literal choir of angels. We started off with a bit of Les Mis' Let Him Live on piano and violin, which turned into Va, Ne Crains Pas sung by a quartet. Soeur Buenanotte then started singing the chorus of our song over it. And then we all joined in with Les Anges Dans Nos Compagnons. Soeur Carter and I were singing the special tenor part. The most beautiful music I've ever heard. That's what heaven will sound like. 

Elder Andersen, prophet seer and revelateur, then spoke. IT is powerful stuff, that. Here are some highlights: Missions are a preparatory experience for life-you are meant to be changed. When people understand the Savior and the Atonement they will join the church. They need to have a faith-building institution, which is what we have. All missions are different, this mission makes you develop faith. We can baptize more. The opposite of faith is laziness and not wanting to labor, case in point, Laman and Lemuel. We need to learn how to generate faith. Fill your hearts with scriptures of miracles. Point out more miracles. Choose to have faith. Testify of Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Plan of Salvation. He then left upon us an Apostolic blessing not to be forgotten. My biggest message from it was the necessity to be faith-generators. I have started researching in the BOM/NT how faith is generated so I can do it better. We've narrowed down our focuses to those three points and church attendance. And we are planning for, recognizing, and accomplishing more miracles. I testify that God lives, that He is a God of miracles, and that Jesus Christ is His Son, the Savior and Redeemer of the World.