#BERNIE and other blessings...

Hey Mom!

This week we had a couple of good meetings: a specialized zone training on Wednesday on the topic of planning as well as a fantastic MLC on Friday. The big take away is that there is going to be a mission fast on Sunday to find new investigators, because that is the biggest struggle in the mission right now.

Conference week for us here was great, highlighted by our investigator Jerry, who stayed at the church for 10 hours straight on Saturday and watched all five sessions of Conference! It just showed me the importance of Conference, that if a non-member can watch all five sessions, members of the Church should be able to take the time and watch all five sessions as well. We were able to teach Shannon twice this week and watch a session of Conference with her on Sunday. Her baptismal interview is tonight, and everything is looking pretty good for April 17th! Hope also watched most of Conference, and we had yet another incredible lesson with her--all three of the lessons we've had with her have been unbelievable. We put her on date for April 30th for her baptism, so keep her in your prayers, because she'll have to stand up to her family with this decision (her dad is the pastor of another church).

Something that really stuck out to me this Conference was the importance of the family, how we are all children of God and have been blessed to be living in families of our own. The Priesthood Session had a lot of references to strengthening family relations through temple worship. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Nauvoo Temple today, and was grateful for the knowledge that families can be together forever. I'd encourage you to read D&C 84:19-21, D&C 132:15-19, and D&C 130:2 and make it a priority to go to the temple so that you can enjoy the happiness that comes with strengthened family relationships.

Now a little background to set up a good story: it's a missionary rule not to discuss politics with people. Now with the campaigning in full swing, that's pretty much all anyone talks about, and boy, let me tell you, there are some people that are not afraid to express their feelings when it comes to telling us about presidential candidates... Anyways, here's where the title of the email comes in (SMH as I write this): so we had dinner with a less-active member this week (It was the first double-dinner of my mission, and S/O to Brockbank, because how he can do those all the time and not get fat is beyond me.), and we were sharing a lesson with her (this is the first time we've met with her), and the first half of the lesson was really well--she was telling us her conversion story, we were teaching, that good stuff. But then she started talking about the Book of Revelations, and how God has a role in politics. At this point in the lesson, Elder Bennett and I aren't really sure what to do. I'm thinking to myself, "Buckle up, because this could go anywhere..." And anywhere it went: she proceeded to tell us that Revelations says that Bernie Sanders will be the next president. *Dallas fights to stop himself from banging his head on the table* But it gets better, she continues to tell us that Satan is going to raise Bernie up as the anti-Christ before the Second Coming, but how God is also voting for Bernie because he's going to bring good standards to the country (so God and Satan are now on the same team)... *Dallas has lost 100 IQ points at this point, none of which has been caused by physical trauma he wants to cause himself be putting his head through a brick wall* The lesson ended with pretty much a guarantee that Bernie will be the next president... Yeah, so that's the Bernie story... #Bernie4Prez

That was pretty much it for us here, it was a pretty awesome week! We taught some good lessons, were inspired by good speakers, visited the temple, and Dallas managed to maintain his sanity. Here's to another good week of missionary work! 

Love,
Elder Dallas Anderson

#BERNIE

P.S. My apologies to any Bernie supporters out there if I offended you. My intent was purely to humor, not to degrade Bernie's character or political position.

Reppin' the Red Birds!