Oh. My. Conferenceness

What’s up!
Well here we are, already in spring time! Can you believe it!? Things are going great here! Weathers perfect, work’s going great, that’s all you can pretty much ask for right? It seems like a lot of things have went on this past week… part of it probably for me is because it’s all the same everyday; preach, teach, and reach out to peeps so if it doesn’t seem like a whole lot of news it’s probably just me then… let’s see um transfers were last wed…not much change… I’m still down in tamale-town with my same companion, Elder Hernandez, he’s a really good guy... I asked president in my president’s letter if we could stay together because we’re getting a lot of work done here and I only seeing the work picking up for us…we’ve got 3 with a baptismal date and we’ll have a few more hopefully getting baptized here in the near future…so we’re doin big things and I think that it’s only gonna get on getting bigger..the only change from transfers was that President switched me back to District Leader…Don’t really know why he’s switchin back and forth but he but me back as the district leader so whatev…when in rome… other than that transfers for the missionaries in my district were uneventful..which is a good thing…our district’s pretty sweet and there’s a lot of good things happening for each of the companionships so I’m glad President kept us all together to keep the ball rolling…
Um second round of news… I felt an earthquake for the first time in my life!!! 4 of em actually! The first one hit Sunday afternoon, while we were at a members house eating dinner…it was before dinner and I started rocking back and forth and I was like hmmm… I must be really hungry… then I look at everyone else and they’re rocking too so I thought hmmm… they must be really hungry too.... but then all the cabinets were shaking and stuff so we darted until it was over… It was a whimpy one here though… I think when it hit here in San Diego it fizzed out to only a 1.2 or something like that but then Sunday night and last night too there were a few more little dinkers only strong enough to wake you up and rattle the cabinets a little bit…but still..the massage was good… I think it was a lot bigger like a 7.2 in Mexico or something… I don’t know… I don’t know a lot of the details or anything if it was real bad but I’m pretty sure a 7.2 size earthquake can take out its fair share of taco stands.
Ok 3rd round… CONFERENCE! OH. MY. CONFERENCENESS. It was amazing! To sit there apostle after apostle, sweet talk after sweet. It was kind of like after I got out of the meeting with Elder Holland, I was just spirit drained and tired… Conference just took it out of me…and my hand too…I wrote like a book of notes over conference…I don’t have time to write everything down but from the vibe that I got from the Brethren is that now’s the time to start preparing our families and make sure that they are truly rooted in the Gospel… things are happening…earthquakes (just like here), tsunamis, wars, diseases….and that’s just the physical side…families are being attacked by the world, sex, drugs, violence, cheating, lying… It’s no lie that the adversary is taking his last breath and unleashing his final blow before Christ comes again… So it’s now more than ever that we need to protect our families from these both ever present physical and spiritual dangers that are occurring on every corner, every commercial, every movie….it’s everywhere and we all see but when the storms rage it’s “upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” It’s Christ that needs to be our rock, our foundation, our place of comfort and security. That’s the foundation that we need to have our families on and if they are built upon the foundation of our Lord, it’s like Helaman says…we will not and cannot fall. President Uchtdorf (whoops I almost called him Uchtdork…that wouldn’t have been good haha) but it’s just like President Uchtdorf said “The Lord does not need us…but oh how we need Him.” And how true it is…. He knows. He knows what’s happened, what is happening, and what will happen…. I think that He knows the direction that we need to go and if we listen to Him, His prophets’, and His writings in the scriptures…. I think that we’ll be just fine and our spiritual and physical foundation will never crumble or fall.
I want you all to know that I love you, I care about you all, and I pray for you every day and night…. It’s a wild world and it’s hard to get by just upon a smile girl… but if we are firm in our foundation… we’ll be solid in all the things that are yet ahead.
Have a great week, be safe, and I’ll talk at cha next week!
Peace!
Elder Ryan Lawter