General Conference ☔️🌷

Good morning everyone!!!!

I hope you all are having a wonderful Monday morning!! This week was so great because it was General Conference weekend!!! Which means that we Salt Lake City missionaries get to take some of the people we are teaching downtown to the conference center to hear the prophet and other General Authorities of the church speak in person!! We went to the Saturday afternoon session with Don and Connie! (Featured in picture) Don is getting baptized tomorrow and we couldn't be more excited!! It's been a long road for him. He has wanted to get baptized since December but we kept having to push it back for various reasons, and now it's finally happening!! Connie's son in law is going to be performing the baptismal ordinance, in fact lots of their family from all over the country will be in town for the baptism because... 🥁 🥁🥁 Don and Connie are getting married on Thursday!! Whoo!! Talk about an eventful week. We are so happy and excited for them. We had great time at Conference and Don especially loved Elder Holland's talk about how everyone has a part in the God's choir, and He needs all of us to contribute.

General Conference was so amazing. There is a huge power that comes from such a large number of believers in God being gathered together in one place, and the power of all of us singing together magnifies it by like, a million times. The Spirit and peace in the Conference Center *almost* mimics being inside the temple. It was so nice to be so spiritually filled to the brim. After huge spiritual feasts like that I always feel so exhausted that I wish I could take a nap to just absorb and process everything because after hearing all that council, you just need a moment! So I encourage everyone who watched Conference (and if you haven't, go to LDS.org to watch it!!!) to really take some time to think about what you learned this weekend and follow Elder Ballard's council of sitting down and making goals an plans for your life, with Heavenly Father. I'm so grateful for all of the inspired leaders of the church and that we have a living prophet on the earth today who can give us inspired council.

One of my favorite quotes was something that Elder Yoon Hwna Choi of the Seventy, who was an old mission president in the Seattle mission and something he use to tell his missionaries because of all our wonderful rain was "Look up! Open your mouth!" ☔️ He was talking about looking up to Jesus Christ and to the heavens, we shouldn't let our heads hang down just because we might be in a storm. ⛈ And to open our mouths and drink the rain! 💦💧- and share the gospel! One of my most favorite memories of my mission has been the day Sister Bravo and I were caught in a rain storm. We were drenched head to foot but were smiling ear to ear. Life is all about learning to dance in the rain ☔️ and as we do, we will be able to find and LOOK UP to those bits of sunshine poking through the clouds.  

☀️  I love this gospel and I love my mission. If the Book of Mormon and this church were not true I would not have come out here to spread his gospel and try to talk to as many people as possible about it. This has been the biggest blessing of my life to be able to help other people find the truth. I love this gospel so much and I know that God lives and that He loves us, His children with an infinite and perfect love, "for God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son." God is perfectly patient with us as we work to become more like our Savior Jesus Christ.

I love you  all so so much and I hope you have a wonderful week!!! Don't forget to go back and read/ watch General Conference!!

Love,

Sister Abby Martinez

Sister Garrow tried to do my eyebrows and kinda messed up... so then she gave me a unibrow.