What a Great Weekend!

Hello everybody!

Wow, the title completely speaks for itself.  It certainly was a great General Conference weekend.  It is always invigorating to listen to the words of the prophets and apostles.  What great counsel they gave to us!

This week has been yet another great week in the California Ventura Mission.  On Tuesday, we all drove to Santa Barbara to have our Mission President's interviews, as well as to watch the "Meet the Mormons" movie.  I think I mentioned this before, but as missionaries, we will not be allowed to be near the movie theater vicinity when it comes out in a few days, so President Felix allowed us to come to the stake center and view it.  On the way down, Elder Kingrey and I grabbed some food at McDonalds, and as we were driving, I spilled some of my vanilla shake ALL OVER my suit, shirt, and tie.  Yes, RIGHT before President Interviews!  I ran into the bathroom to try and clean things up, and in the end, I looked OK by the time the movie was over.

But anyways, the movie was AWESOME!!!!  I hope y'all have tickets to watch it!  President Felix said that they showed the movie to a group of non-members in SLC, and 75% of them said that they would recommend the movie to one of their friends.  My favorite one was about the "Candy Bomber", a 92-year old WWII Veteran that dropped candy on children near the Berlin Wall.  I won't spoil it, or any other part of the movie, but be sure to see it!

On Wednesday, we had our exchanges, and I went to the Spanish Elder's area and did Spanish work for the day.  The last lesson we had for the day was with a lady named Reyna.  They were teaching the Plan of Salvation lesson to them, and Elder Cavazos said that the "Terrestrial kingdom is a place where people who were not baptized go."  All of the sudden, the little 9-year old girl.  Looked up at us, and then her mother.  Her countenance was completely sunk.  She looked at her mom and then the mom said "Don't give me that look" and then she completely broke down.  I understood very little of what was going on and what was said that I nudged him and asked what was going on.  The mom told us that the girl had not yet been baptized and that she had been asking her mom to get her baptized for quite some time.  I whispered as firmly as I could to Elder Cavazos, "Set them with a date!!!"  He invited them to be baptized, but unfortunately the mom said that it was not time yet to do that.  I felt the Spirit so strongly that night, and I actually understood quite a bit of what they said!  Talk about the faith of that girl though...what other 9 year olds are concerned that strongly about baptism!?

Nancy came to General Conference and watched a session.  We haven't talked to her about it yet because she had to leave early, but we hoped she liked it.

We've been doing a lot of service lately.  (See Mormon Helping Hands vests)  We've been coming to this Library and doing basic custodial work.  It's really fun and relaxing.  It's nice to have a change in the routine as well.

We're emailing at the Library today and the rest of the transfer, and we have exactly a one hour session.  Don't have much time left, so I just want to say that I love you all so much and I know that this Gospel is true!  I loved Elder Bednar's talk about sharing the Gospel.  I loved the story that he shared and I hope that we can all be better beacons of light in this dark world.

I love you!  I'll talk to you next week!

Elder Harper

P.S. Mom I found some khaki's at a thrift store for really cheap and they fit wonderfully.  Thank you for your love and support everyone!  Here's also a picture of my district right after General Conference.