Hola Familia!!!!

July 21, 2014

Hola Familia!!!!!!!

Thank you all for your emails. I'm so glad to hear that the family reunion went well and spending time at Kassi's cabin. I'm very grateful to hear that Cannon is okay. I almost had a heart attack! You all look so good in the pictures mom sent me. Cannon is so cute. I'm so glad that he and all of you had a good time in the mountains. Wow, Emily and Matthew are on the run again! You guys just can´t stop the party! I hope that EFY goes awesome for you both. I know it will. EFY is the best! I am seriously considering being an EFY counselor the summer after I get home if I can. I hope the talent show goes great! You both are superstars. I'm pretty sure Abby Holman is also. I wish I could watch you perform. 

Things are going well here in Jazmines! On wednesday night my companion and I were not getting along well at all. It was really hard at first because he was giving me the silent treatment which didn't help at all to get things worked out. We finally got things worked out though. We both understand each other better now and our relationship is getting a lot better. 

Things are going alright with our investigators. Henry's sister Lilian who we have been teaching and helping a ton is not progressing at all now and doesn't want to listen anymore. So that's rough. We do not understand or know all of the reasons why but hopefully we will get a chance to talk to her again and help her with her doubts and concerns. Henry's cousin Irma has recieved a witness of the Holy Ghost that all we are teaching is true. She is progressing a lot as she continues to read the Book of Mormon and she came to Church with Henry yesterday. She is awesome but she is not married and is living with someone... Visente maybe will be baptised this week but for now we are not sure. He has completely stopped smoking which is so good but he is not willing to completley commit to the Law of Chastity. He thinks we are making a contract with him that he never has relations in his life but we are just telling him he can't before he gets married! We are going to teach the Law of Chastity again with him tonight and hopefully we can teach powerfully and clearly so he can understand and commit. Maria, the mom of Jose and Oscar (two of the three boys we baptised at the end of March) has seperated from her husband and has now given up coffee! She has a baptism date for August 2nd. Apart from these we have other investigators of which almost all are couples who are not married!!! Why can´t I just pay to get all these people married! haha That's how I feel sometimes. I know they need to sacrifice to make it more meaningful though and we aren´t even alowed. The hardest part is that they all need to get 3 different papers and they need to go to the part of Honduras where they were born. It is quite the process. We are teaching one man named Antonio and he isn't even registered! It's like he doesn't exist. Before he can even start the process he needs to get registered. All these people do not have sufficient funds so it's really rough. We are hopefully going to do another activity soon to try and raise some funds. Sorry for rambling on about all of this but this is how things are going right now. Two really awesome things are that Miriam finished the Book of Mormon a few weeks ago and Hermana Josepha wakes up before 6 in the morning and walks to church on her own, she then sits on the sidewalk and waits 2 hours until someone opens the fence door. She is amazing. We always tell her she doesn't need to go so early but she just tells us ¨it's because I can't go on the run, I walk slow.¨ She is one of my heros. I love her a lot. 

The past few days I had no clue what I was going to teach in District Meeting this Tuesday but last night and this morning I prayed to recieve revelation to know and as I started to write the agenda for the meeting everything just started flowing into my mind. Who, What and How this week's district meeting should be. It was awesome!

I love you all so much. I set a goal to finish reading the New Testemant in 30 days. I just finished Mark. Who´s up for the challenge? You guys are the best family in the world! Are you guys studying Preach my Gospel? How's family history going? Please tell the Armstrongs that I have recieved the dearelders they have sent and I have loved reading them. Tell them I love them and think they are great. What's their email adress? I miss you all but love being here on the mission. I hope you all have another fantastic summer week! I was reading the talk given by Elder Perry this last general conference and I like what he says a lot. ¨Obedience is an emblem of our faith in the wisdom and power of the highest authority, even God.¨ When we obey it shouldn't be just a passive obedience. Obey just to obey. Our obedience should be based on our faith in the reality of our Heavenly Father and the blessings He is willing to give us if we obey. I know God is our loving Heavenly Father. I know He wants more than anything that we make it home to Him and live with our families forever and that we grow to become like Him. I know we can do it.

Love Elder Conover

July 28th, 2014

Hola!!! Hello family!

Thank you all for your great emails. I have been thinking a lot lately of how blessed and grateful I am to be a Conover. I am so happy and grateful I have the Mom, Dad, brothers, and sisters I do. I love you all so much. The greatest blessing and promise we have is that our family can be forever. We have the potential to live eternally as a family with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This as well as helping others recieve this will bring us never ending happiness. We can all do better to remember who we are, where we come from, our purpose here on Earth, and our ultimate goal and potential. Our knowledge of the Plan of Salvation is a huge blessing that should determine all we think, act and do. Keep enduring to the end! :)

We had a kind of crazy but great week! Last Monday, right after emailing we found out that Elder Pernillo in our district needed to have surgery done. It was safer to have the doctor who helped him the first time do the surgery so sadly friday night he left us and headed back to Guatamala to have the surgery done. He may return if all goes well. I hope he will be able to. Keep him in your prayers. So starting Friday night Elder Nelson joined our companionship and for now we are in a trio. We don't know for how many days we will be in this situation. Gratefully he has members that will be able to go on splits with him this week so that we can keep things going strong still in both our areas. On Elder Pernillo's last day here they had a baptism so that was sweet! The chapel didn't have any water so we filled the font with buckets again. Luckily it was a small girl so we didn't have to fill it very deep. It still took a while though. 

Miriam's Mom moved in with Miriam and we are teaching her. Hopefully things go well with her and that she will progress. Yesterday was an excellent day! Our investigator Visente who we have been working with for months now committed to be baptised this Saturday. He has been so close to being baptised earlier but has not been willing to commit to live the law of Chastity. Yesterday he told us he´s ready to "put himself in the water" and be baptised and he is committed to obey the commandments! It's a miracle! I can't explain how happy I felt when he told us this. When we talked to him on Tuesday he told us that he was willing to obey everything other than the Law of Chastity. We had a huge discussion with him and he just wasn't willing to commit. As we were walking away from his house we decided we would have to start visiting him only once or twice a week and wait until he was willing to commit. On friday he went to the baptism. He has now gone to two. He goes to Church every week and is almost finished reading Alma. The Law of Chastity was his greatest weakness and now he has conquered it! (1 Cor 10:13) As he talked to us yesterday my companion and I looked at each other and I said under my breath "this saturday". We proposed the date and he happily accepted. Hermana Maria also has a baptism date for this Saturday. We have also been finding many great new people lately. The Mom of one of our investigators before ever teaching her started reading all the pamphlets and the Book of Mormon. She told us that she has been having some problems in her church and that she has decided to go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She loves all that she is reading and accepted a baptism date when we taught her for the first time yesterday. Another miracle! I am learning a great lesson: If we wait patiently doing all we can, the blessings will come. 

I wish I could keep writing and writing all the great experiences we are having. Sadly we need to go. I am so appreciative of your love and prayers. It means more than you can imagine. I think I forgot to tell you that we have cell phones now. It's nice to be able to call from wherever. Thank you all for everything! Keep going strong!

Love Elder Conover