Pictures

Aug 15 2015 - Strangest month of the misson

Hello Family!

 

I hadnt even realized that Bradly has already finished the MTC and is now out in North Dakota. Elder D'Vaz (who will be my comp for the rest of the week until I get my new comp) has a sister who will be going to the North Dakota mission in October so that would be pretty cool if they somehow met.

And Emily is just finishing her short stay in the MTC and will be in the field quite soon. They will both be going through the same things that I went through in Florida experiencing the ups and downs of the mission. The ups far outwaying the bad. 

 

This is going to be a veryshort email since this week has been a strange week due to the fact that I was not in my area much at all. I think I said last week that one of the Zone leaders had to go to Bangalore to get surgery so we were stuck with him this entire week as he recovers. So, we split the days we would work in each others area since Elder Johannson will not be in his area next week leaving his area without missionaries for awhile. The whole zone is kind of being affected with this but we are surviving.

His area is quite far away so we spent a lot of time traveling on bus and walking around visiting those in his branch. We had lots of fun together with the three of us. We were able to visit most of our investigators the few times we worked in our area and had some great lessons with them. Charles is doing awesome and is geting ready fast for his baptism. And we also started to teach a part member family, working with their daughter to be baptized. 

 

Today finally came when I had to send of Elder Monk away as he left for the Philippines this afternoon. He, along with the Elder Johannson and Elder Aldridge. It was a very fun 2 transfers I had with Elder Monk and the All-American Zone. I'm grateful for the time we had and the improvements we have seen with the branch. Now I'm with Elder D'vaz and the 2 of us will be together taking care of 3 branches/areas... so this will also be a strange and interesting experience as we await our new companions sometime next week. I don't know who he will be btw.

 

Something that I loved and have learned this week is the scripture Alma 31: 31-33.

31 O Lord, my heart is exceedingly sorrowful, wilt thou comfort my soul in Christ. O Lord, wilt thou grant unto me that I may have strength, that I may suffer with patience these afflictions which shall come upon me, because of the iniquity of this people.

32 O Lord, wilt thou comfort my soul, and give unto me success, and alm=so my fellow laborers who are with me, yea, Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and also Amulek and Zeezrom, and also my two sons, yea, even all these wilt thou comfort their souls in Christ.

33 Wilt thou grant unto them that they may have strength, that they may bear their afflictions which shall come upon them because of the iniquities of this people.

 

Now notice that Alma in verse 31 is praying not to take his burdens away but to grant him strength that he might overcome them. As I was thinking I agree that through prayer, God will not take our burdens away but will CHANGE us to be able to overcome them. We will receive the necessary change in our hearts that give us the strength to become more like Him.

 

Thank you everyone for you love and support, have a great week!

-Elder Conrad

Aug 3 2015 - An exciting week for the Conrad Family

Hello Family!!!

 

Well hello my awesome family! Today was another awesome P-Day and a pretty good week! Even though there wasn't that much missionary work that went on.

First of all, Ill give a shout out to my sister Emily who is leaving on her mission in 2 days! Man i am super excited and cant keep thinking of the wonderful experience she is about to partake in her life. 

 

And also I was super pumped to get the 2 packages this week! Let me say everyone kind of hates me right now but dont worry mom, I have been sharing ;) I was pretty stoked about the strawberry and Chocolate Nesquik! And yes I did get the Debit card but I havent tried it yet. I got to talk to Daniel for a small moment so hopefully I can talk more next week at church. He did give me an embarrassing hug thanks to you mom :)

 

This week has been pretty good because of the training that we recieved in Bangalore. So, we left Tuesday night on train which again was fun and a little sketchy. I just love watching what I think are mice running around in the train. When we arrived in Bangalore, all the zones that attended met up at the church. We had the Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore and the 4 Sri Lanka missionaries with us so we had a huge group.

Basically the 3 day training consisted of 8 hours a day and learning the principals/fundamentals of Preach My Gospel. So that included many things and kept us busy. We did lots of teaching practices to help us improve and apply the things we were learning. They were long hours but it was important for us to learn. Hopefully we will all go back to our areas and apply the things we learned.

After the trainings we would go with a set of elders and go to their area in Bangalore and try to visit and practice more. Which was kind of lame for us since the area took us an hour and a half to get their with all the traffic and being night. 

But an interesting experience that I got was to teach a person of the Muslim faith for the first time. We have to get special permission from President  in order to teach Muslims due to reasons. It was a pretty cool experience. I didnt really know how to go about teaching to well but I felt the lesson went well. He has a desire to learn how he can recieve an answer if Jesus Christ was actually our Savior and Redeemer.

We had lots of fun in Banglore, the area we got to stay in was loaded with nice restaurants. I was able to have Taco Bell, Burger King and Krespy Kreme! Oh man it was the best!

 

After the Training we went back to Coimbatore and everything is well. We set 2 new baptismal dates with A new investigator named Charles for the 22 of Aug! He is an awesome kid alot like Jebaraj. The Training took pretty much the whole week but it was good to have. 

Jebaraj was confirmed this week at church and gave a small testimony in fast and testimony meeting which made my day.

 

Today for P-Day we went to see Taj and his family since they are leaving next week and asked if we could go visit them one last time. haha So we went and hung out with them again :) This time we didnt play much bball but went on a cool hike in the forest. Which was pretty cool since Taj said no one is allowed where we went but since he has some pretty cool connections they allowed us in. We hiked up to a cool waterfall place and had fun watching everyone play in the water... :( but it was super cool. Very pretty. They didnt let us take pictures for some reason but im pretty sure we will get some.

 

Love you all and thank you all so much for the awesome letters you gave! Have a great week everyone!

-Elder Conrad

 

 

 

Aug 10 2015 - 8 months just flew by

Well hello family!!

 

As I have expressed to Emily/ Sister Conrad that it has been a very fun week as I have been checking the time and realizing all the important and exciting events happening back home. I get a kick when I check the time and realize Emily is probably waking up, studying, or teaching lessons in the MTC. Makes it fun to remember that not too long ago the same experiences were happening to me! It is a blessing to know the family is doing well and is happy. :)

 

This has been a pretty great week! We started off the week going on an exchange where I went to Elder Aldridge's area and spent the day with him. It went pretty well, we found a new investigator and taught him the first lesson. Even among the distractions of the setting he like totally told us he believed what we were saying was true and he would read the Book of Mormon. 

We also taught one of their investigators who has a baptismal date and really focused on him reading the Book of Mormon. Basically that is what we are focusing on, the power of the Book of Mormon in conversion and how it is the keystone of our religion. 

 

Later in the week we had our zone training and President Berrett came to Coimbatore to have his quarterly interviews with us. Which went really well. President Berrett really wants us to work on finding investigators since the whole mission is struggling right now. After this transfer I will be the senior missionary in the Coimbatore zone so that was weird to realize i need to the example.

 

We had a couple really good lessons, one was with Raja. We meet him in church and he has really been struggling with outside influences talking bad about our church. We expressed our love and concern for him and read a couple scriptures about trials and faith. I bore my testimony on us not understanding what God has in store for us but trusting in Him and His eternal plan for his children. The Spirit was probably the strongest I have felt so far on my mission. I was super glad and peaceful the rest of the day.

 

For Sunday we had district conference and had President Berrett Elder Wu from the Seventy come and talk to us on family history. We had 6 investigators at church! a big jump from last week! Pretty much most of our solid investigators came. 

 

Sorry this is so short, this next 2 weeks will be pretty strange. We are having many exchanges and switches with other elders due to our zone leader needing surgery in Bangalore so we will not be in our area as much as we would like. 

And then Elder Monk goes to the Philippines next Monday! crazy, a lot of things are going to change.

Love you family!! So many blessings are happening right now with our family. its awesome.

Have a great week! 

-Elder Conrad

 

The Dynamic duo are unleashed ;)