The Zachtastic Movie Blog

Elder Hopper and I sure love Halo , can't you tell? I often find it interesting how the events of a week can be much different than you expected them to be. I am going to be honest, I thought that this week was going to be one of a ton of proselyting in our area, but it wasn't. Sure, we did do a reasonable amount of finding, following-up and teaching, but otherwise we had service projects to do on almost every single day of the week - most of them being unexpected assignments from branch members. Such opportunities included clearing out the south elder's apartment, delivering food, moving/setting up a bed, moving in a family, giving a Priesthood blessing, so on and so forth. I was very grateful that Elder Hopper received such opportunities to serve other people though, mainly for the fact that it is through charitable service that we are to let people know that we are disciples of Jesus Christ. The Son of God is remembered as the most perfect, loving and charitable Ma...

BOOM, baby. This week was pretty good for Elder Hopper and I, for a number of reasons. Earlier on in the week we did not have much success with getting in with anyone to teach, mainly because people weren't home, potential investigators were "too busy" to meet with us, so on and so forth. However, if there's one thing I've learned from my mission it's that one should not be discouraged if things don't go your way at first: remain diligent, have faith, and be obedient, in which all of those things guarantee success. As Elder Hopper and I continued on with our week, we were very blessed to find new potentials basically every single day of the week,   one of whom we invited to be baptized   on Saturday   (thus making him a new investigator)!   His name is Bryce, and then the next morning he came to Church with his copy of   The Book of Mormon  in hand!  That was one of the best miracles I've witnessed ever since I have been here in Fort Madison, an...

Well, it turns out that I actually am the new District Leader here in Fort Madison, so no more need to speculate on that. I am humbled, honored and somewhat nervous to serve in this capacity here, but at least there will be a lot of great work to do. And as always, when one works diligently with faith, hope and charity, miracles occur, so I am excited for what sorts of miracles we will witness here. The interesting thing is that after the changes that have been made in our district - the Fort Madison South and Burlington North areas have been closed - my companion and I, the Hermanas in the Mount Pleasant Branch and then the Zone Leaders in the Burlington Ward are the only missionaries in the district. All six of us are very new to the areas that we are serving in as well, so each of us have great workloads to fill. Despite these things however, as long as we remain faithful and united there will be great success here. Anyway, I am sure you all are wondering who my new companion is, a...

Frisbee Golf with our branch mission leader on Easter (I'm at the left)!  Easter has once again come and gone, and I am very grateful for the messages that were shared at General Conference this weekend, because they helped me to understand more of Christ's love for us all. Sure, one could certainly note that the sanctity of family relationships and pride were some of the central themes of the meeting's proceedings this weekend - which they were - but how about the talks that were given on the topics of the Atonement? For my summary of what I loved most about General Conference, I shall highlight three talks that all stood out to me: the first of these was given by   Elder Dale G. Renlund   (the General Authority that came to the Nauvoo Stake Conference last month), in which I was especially struck by his statement that "a Saint is a sinner who keeps on trying." The other principles of endurance, faith, patience and charity which we discussed were di...