General Conference was Amazing!

Good morning everybody!
It is finally Fall in Utah! Temperatures today are only supposed to get to the low 70's and stay that way for the rest of the week with lots of rain and thunderstorms. All the leaves on the mountains have started to change colors, the mountainsides are now pretty colors of orange, red, and yellow. The communities that live up the mountain are expected to get snow starting this week too. I bet it snows sometime before Halloween, it always seems too. I simply loved General Conference this time around. It was full of inspiring messages and things that got me thinking as always. Probably the talk that stuck out to me the most was President Monson's talk about gratitude. I am really trying to shift my views from focusing on what I lack to focusing on giving thanks for all the great and wonderful things that God has given to me. Having an attitude of gratitue. Time to stop taking things for granted and giving sincere thanks for each and every thing that we have. Plus what he said about having regrets when we lose track or people or they pass away and we were not able to give them our proper thanks hit me hard too, always giving thanks to our families, friends, and strangers for all that they do for me is my goal. That way there will be no regrets. I think that sounds like a much better life to live than continually thinking of what else we need or want from life or how everything is turning out. The rest of the talks were superb as well and each hit the people that I am teaching or working with as appropriate for their time and cirumstance. All the talking about Holy Ghost and baptism hit Raymond Martinez really hard and helped him to prepare for that this upcoming month. He also had been thinking about pride earlier on Saturday and had been listing out in his head all the things that Elder Uchtdorf mentioned in his talk, every single point that he had. He considered it a miracle and it reconfirmed his testimony. Also the talk on addiction was by Elder Ballard was perfect! It was just what almost all the people that I teach needed to hear!!! From pornography to smoking to pain pills to everything else, most the people that we are working with have some problem with addiction and it helped them so much. Plus it helped all the spouses and family members that have felt betrayed by the addiction of their spouse to find some healing and peace and to want to move toward forgiveness. It was very powerful. Heavenly Father truly inspired all those who spoke to meet the needs of each and every member of the church and for each and every person that was willing to watch and listen with an open heart. Ok, so new announcements just came in! P-day is now going to be on Wednesdays from now on starting next week. So my next email will not be until October 13 so don't freak out when it doesn't show up on Monday. Also, all of our days have now moved around, Tuesday is now service day, Thursday is now district meeting, Monday is a regular proselyting day, Wednesday is now temple day (in the morning, we have to attend the 5:30 AM session). Kind of crazy but it will be interesting to see how everything works out. I don't think the changes have stopped yet either, I think changes are going to keep coming down the line as fast as President Miller prays about them. I am fine with all the changes though, they are helping to make the mission better.

So something that really touched my heart yesterday and really got my faith going again was said by Sister Gonzalez. We stopped by last night to let them know the good news that Bishop Boshard wants Erik to get the Melchezedik priesthood soon and was good to interview both Sister and Brother Gonzalez for patriarchal blessings. Plus Claudia if she feels ready for one. The whole family was so excited, then Sister Gonzalez asked how the work was going for us. The answer was not very well, we only have 3 lessons the past week and everyone was kind of way up and way down depeding on the day. Sister Gonzalez then said that their whole family needed to start praying really hard for us and to find people for us to teach because everyone deserves that chance to belong to this fantastic church. Her face was so happy and she was so confident that everyone would want to join the church as her family has just done that it really built my faith and gave me the confidence to get out there this week and talk to everybody! That there are people truly prepared to receive the gospel and that they are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. It was a huge boost for me after two really slow weeks and it really helped me out a lot. Plus with the Gonzalez family praying now for us too, we have to succeed. Their faith is too strong not to. It was a very awesome experience!

Not too much went on this week other than those things. Tina Reese has been getting hit really hard by the adversary lately and it has really been pulling her down. But there isn't much we can do to help because she isn't letting anyone help. We all keep praying for her though and we ran over a whole thing of pumpkin cookies and a card to let her know that we were thinking about her. I hope it helped. Raymond Martinez is excited for baptism and is handing out invitations right and left for people to attend, he is so excited and despite the fact that his entire family is angry about it, he is going to move forward. Deylon Falkner has kind of fallen by the wayside, sadly. His dad got home from Alaksa and has turned out to be very anti and against the church. So that is not working out like we planned. There is still hope though if things will work out and we can get the right people to visit with the dad and to calm him down. We are picking up quite a few new investigators this week and we are excited for that. Way excited. We are hoping that everything will work out. Praying for it too!

Well I love you all and really do pray for you all!
Elder Hughes