Stake Conference this week and V-day

So this week transfers are coming up.  Super-excited.  There is a missionary who has been in our area for 7½ months.  Most likely I'll stay in my area, but just in case if you’re planning on writing me (and thanks for all the letters they are awesome), please send it to the mission office.  Thanks.  Well this week has been a strange one.  For some reason nothing seemed to get done.

Lucky enough I went on an amazing exchange with Sister Richardson.  She is a fantastic Sister and an awesome missionary.  We started the exchange with a less-active (who I happen to know)! Her name is Candice. She spent a semester in Paris where she decided to change her life around and come back to church. She loves reading the Book of Mormon in French and is heading back to a better life.  Next we went with the Cruz family to a Philippine restaurant buffet.  I stayed away from the squid, but the liver was quite good.  They had an amazing dessert that looked like an egg roll, but had sweet banana-ish things in it.  We also had the opportunity to meet Tom, their recent convert.  He had an amazing spirit and is so excited to be able to bless the sacrament.  It was a great exchange.  

Stake Conference

So we had one of the area seventies come, Elder Smith, who was a senator of the state of Oregon.  He told a story about how he received a call from Elder Uchtdorf asking if he could do something about the religious persecution in Italy which wasn't allowing the saints to build chapels or temples.  He told Elder Uchtdorf that he wasn't in the Parliament of Rome, but he would see what he could do.  It ended up that they both went to Rome to petition for religious freedom while speaking to the Secretary and her assistant.  She then asked her assistant what he thought of it.  He said that he had been to temple square in Salt Lake where there was this beautiful building (the temple). He asked Elder Uchtdorf if the Parliament helped them, could they build one here? Elder Uchtdorf said "We’ll start tomorrow." The assistant then finished with the tour he received from 2 Italian sisters. He remarked "I had never been so proud of the Italian youth in my life. If they can produce people like that lets help them."  A few years later they announced the building of the temple in Rome.  That story was unbelievably incredible and I just wanted to share it with you.

Sister Rogers