October 5th letter

Dear Family, CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING!!!!! And I am soooooooooooooooooooooo happy about the temple in Concepción, Chile!!!!!! We were in a room watching the conference in English with the missionaries and we all jumped up and screamed. I was so excited! We went into the sacrament room to see everyone else´s reaction and there was a reverent silence. It was a neat experience, especially because that has been a goal of the mission, to get a temple announced within 3years and it was completed in half the time. I cannot think of a better blessing for the Chilean people. I know so many people who´s lives will be blessed for being able to have the temple so close, many people who won´t have to wait so long to be sealed as an eternal family….i´m on cloud 9!Yesterday the ward took a bus to Conference and you could hear all the whispers of people telling each other about the temple being built. I will def have to come back when they have it built. Another crazy thing about conference (thanks for reminding me bekah….) is that it was my last one as a missionary. But I couldn´t think of a better way to have my last general conference as a missionary.

My favorite talks were by Elder Scott (he gave it in Spanish by the way…)about being guided by the spirit. The story he gave about how he listened to the spirit during a class and wrote down his impressions really touched me.I´ve been thinking a lot about how really, the Spirit of God is what teaches us of all things (John 14:26-27) and how that is how we should seek to be taught, through the Holy Ghost. I recently taught that to a lady who hasn´t gone to church in a while and had the complaint that she didn´t like how some people taught in the church. Really, if we are in tuned with the spirit, we can be taught directly from God, how amazing that is! I also loved the talk about the Book of Mormon by Elder Holland. Holy Cow, that talk was SO POWERFUL. I hope to have a testimony that strong and powerful.Honestly, it gave me chills. I wish I could replay that on youtube! I think that in the battle of Conference Talks, Elder Holland has taken the grand prize 2 conferences in a row. I just reread his last talk about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and it left me speechless. I really want to better understand the Atonement and how I can apply it in my life, i´ve found that literally everything comes back to that! Whenever I talk to people about their problems, what they believe, their goals, I always find myself going back to the Atonement. It truly is the center to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.Thanks to what Jesus accomplished in this life, we never have to walk alone.

This week has been good but short. We worked extra hard to get people to go to Conference so that they could listen to a prophet speak. Not as many people came as I would have liked, but we did the best that we could. It´s sometimes frustrating because we have such great news and want to help the people so much, but many times they would rather continue with their carnal filled lives. For example, we taught a young single mother who hasn´t gone to church in along time about the inspiration she would receive by going to church and she informed us that she didn´t want to because on Saturday night she likes gong to the club and dancing and didn´t want to give that up. I honestly wanted to drag her to church on Sunday, it would help her so much!But she looks at it as something boring….she doesn´t listen to the Spirit of God. That´s about it this week. General Conference was the highlight. My companions and I are doing well, we get along great. I actually think now it´s more fun with 3…it´ll be weird in a couple weeks to go back to just 2.I hope that you all are doing well. I love you all and you are always in my prayers.

Love,Hna Richardson