Elder Christian Joshua Roberts in Honduras: Week 14: General Conference Weekend

Watching Conference (The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Singing)

SO this week was a milestone that a lot of the teachers in the CCM told me to look forward to. It was General Conference. They said that you just get to relax a little after you have been working so hard hastening in the work. I was kind of bummed that it was in Spanish (not because I don´t like Spanish, it´s just that there aren´t very many describing words). I noticed that in Elder Hollands talk in the Saturday afternoon session, that I unfortunately missed most of, but caught his talk. I rewatched it in English and most of what was interpreted in Spanish is no where near the feeling I got when I watched in English later that day. This really made me sad, but really happy as the Spirit was totally intensified when I watched it again. He talks about us being like a choir. He says that every voice is needed and loved by the director; but some singers feel as though they don´t have a voice one could love and want to have a similar voice and sing like another member. He says with this the choir it will sound like a muggy monotone choir of one voice. This is so true in missionary work. We see the missionaries who teach, are successful and get baptisms. So we want to teach as they do so we can have success. But we’ve got to remember that our (different) voice is just as important to the choir. During conference I even found myself when the MOTAB choir was singing that I was picking out certain voices I liked to listen to. This is similar to our investigators and less active members ...we all hear the choir but certain voices stick out, a certain testimony sticks out, the way in which the doctrine is taught, and the feeling of love, genuine love of the person. I know there are people who will have more success than me, but I´m going to be a voice that is genuine, and I hope this for all of you as well. There are people in our time here on earth who need to hear our voice. I hope that we are the ones to help them along, to help them hear the melody and join in singing praises to our Lord and God. That was my favorite talk so NOW, I can talk about my week!

Here we are watching conference on Saturday with the Branch President

We didn´t do the best we could have, It was definitely a week we will learn from and try forget real quick. We only had 8 new investigators. This made me pretty sad and I felt really down as a missionary walking into the church to watch conference on Saturday, but the words of Elder Holland definitely helped raise my spirits! So I´m all good.

Our church building

Campamento LDS church

This week we did find one young woman and her brother that have almost no spiritual background. This is really rare in Honduras. Everyone here has at least heard of Jesus Christ, some even don´t know who he is as a person but do know of His name. Can you believe it? Just a name?! SO we taught them the restoration of His gospel and who He was as the Son of God and Savior of the world. I teared up in my testimony of Him and what He has done for me. His sacrifice and love, that he has for all of us. That He knew he had to go through the pain of the atonement, and how excruciating it was, but He loves us, He loves his father so He went through it, and now we can all be saved from the second and by far the worst death. We finished the lesson and went back on Sunday and started to teach them again. This time about the gospel of Jesus Christ and low and behold they had forgotten who He was, and all we had talked about. Only the younger brother had read the pamphlet we left. My heart was sincerely broken. I thought after bearing that testimony and the Spirit I felt that we would have had them wanting to be baptized in the next three weeks. So we gave them a brief overview of the lesson we taught the time before and then taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope they pray and something sticks. I once again bore testimony of the atonement and the Holy Ghost. Their mom even came in during the lesson and participated. She seemed more than interested, she just doesnt have time. I hope they pray. I know without a doubt that we have a Savior and to know Him we must pray. We have to ask. You´ve got to knock before you can expect the door to open. Knock and it will open. If any of you have any questions you can ask a person here on earth and get an answer from man, OR you can turn to god, who knows all things perfectly, ask Him and you will receive a perfect answer from HIM.

I love you guys, I hope you all enjoyed conference and have picked a favorite talk from this past weekend. We are so blessed to have a latter-day prophet and apostles, revelators for our days!

Keep truckin through the hard times and the good times will come!

Love, Elder Roberts