Three Days of Conference

Hello Fellow Missionaries, Most of Which Are On the Member Missionary Side of Things!

I really wish the shift bar on this thing worked a little better, that last sentence was painfully (literally) dumb. But I got halfway through it and realized that for all the work it was taking I might as well finish it.

I really don't have much to update on. Or so it feels.

This week we had, as the title states, three days of conference, starting with zone conference on friday and going through general conference the next two days. So it was about three days of spirituality with very little work done. We even had easter dinner yesterday at a member's home. Problem. "Dinner," in most places in the United States, means "That Meal That Takes Place Late in the Day." In Iowa it means "Lunch," and "Supper" means "Dinner." Even after 8 months I still can't keep track of it, since sometimes dinner means supper and other times it means lunch. Ugh. Anyway. Not quite sure if this is where things went wrong in this instance, but I like to think so. It's nicer than believing that it was our poor planning. We showed up after the second session of conference to find out that we had missed our meal altogether. They're a very sweet family and they still fed us leftovers and it was basically a dinner appointment...just we were the only ones eating.... They had also apparently had over a nonmember friend that we totally could have taught and had accepted a Book of Mormon from them. Double lame. Oh well, it was probably better that we stayed in Knoxville (They're house is in a nearby town named Pleasantville, which, sadly, is not in black and white) anyway, since the satellite was down. We found that out the day before when we showed up at church just to find out we were unable to watch it there. Not so bad, since there was only one other person who showed up. Most apparently watch conference at home or not at all. She went off to watch it online and we went to a member's home to watch it on his satellite. Priesthood session, however, might just be the most interesting session I've ever been to. For about forty-five minutes before it started until forty-five minutes into it, the group of priesthood holders that came were trying to fix the problem. None really had any more of an idea on what to do than us missionaries had, so it was kind of fun to see them run over the same things we had done already and lovingly bicker (A good portion of them are military guys because there was a VA Hospital here. A good portion of Knoxville is made up of military people) over how to fix it. It never got fixed, since after getting on the phone with the satellite people and busting open the box to the satellite boxes, we discovered the giant, unprotected satellite dish outside was not alligned. They even tried online through the family history library, just to discover they had no speakers and then even the web went down. SO, at about 7:45, Central Time, they decided to just go ahead and eat ice cream. I, however, was not about to miss any conference, and since I had already gotten permission to do so, we drove thirty minutes to Oskaloosa to watch the last forty minutes or so of it. Totally worth it.

And zone conference was all about becoming a consecrated missionary, laying everything down that would withhold us from giving our all as missionaries. So now we're committed to do that. We're even having a fast today to make ourselves consecrated. Works, since we missed, along with most of the branch, fast sunday last sunday. We just didn't know about it.... Anyway, I've never regretted having easter candy around so much....

I love it when people whisper-sing in libraries while listening to music, thinking they're the only ones that can hear themselves.

So, yep, that's about it. Love you all!
--
Your Favorite Missionary,
Elder Charlie Gates