We had a multi-zone conference, general conference and then a baptism!!

 10/3/11    

Hey Ethan (and the rest of the family as well because i dont have time to write two different emails)

 So im not going to lie i have no idea who jake heaps is or riley nelson, that stinks i have no idea who is on the BYU football team!!! Oh well i will found out soon. 

 The past weekend was really cool we had a multi zone conference on friday and then we had conference on saturday and sunday and then after the conference on sunday we had a baptism!!! Omar got baptized. so it was a pretty cool weekend and we had 4 investigators that came to the conference as well.   But i realized a whole bunch of stuff that i have been doing wrong and i dont have a whole lot of time to fix it. The way that my companion and i have been planning has been really bad because we come up with really good stuff but then after we come up with the idea it just sits there and we dont do anything about it. So we talked alot about this with president Cordón in the zone conference, and what i learned was really helpful. If we are going to plan something we have to be make daily plans as well so that we dont forget about whatever it is that we had planned. So now we are like super busy.

 But this week we had a really cool experience with one of the inlvestigators that came sunday morning to general conference. his name is Luis Alfraedo. And we found him last monday. We were walking down the street (dirt road going toward some corn and coffee feilds) and he was sitting on the side of the road waitng for this lady making his tortillas. (By the way the tortillas here are SUPER thick! like three times the thickness of the normal ones that we use for tacos) Anyway so he says "Elders!" and so we just said hi because we saw that he was super drunk, and we were going to keep on walking. But i felt like we should go talk to him. So we went back and started talking to him and he started telling us that we wants to change and get married in our church with his wife even though he is allready married to his wife. (Here in El Salvador everyone has to get a civil marraige that is only available by a lawyer, then they generally get married afterward in the church that they go to "casarse por la iglesia") We took him back to his house and asked us to "pray for him" right there in his house and so we quickly explained to him about getting a priesthood blessing. Im not sure how much of it he understood. We gave him a blessing and we told him that we would come by the next day in the evening. I wasnt really sure that he was going to be there. But we show up the next day at his house, and he hadnt left the house he had been sitting in his house waiting for several hours for us. That was really cool....but he was still drunk he had gone out and drank again. But he was there and really showed a desire to change his life. But this time his wife and his two year old daughter were there also. So we shared a quick message on the atonement of Jesus Christ, and said that we would come back the next day. The next day (wednesday) my companion went on divisions to anotyher area but i came with Elder Zapata (from panama) and we get to the house and we was sober there waiting for us!! it was like a little miracle! We started teaching about the importance of the family and the wife and his daughter were there again (the wifes name is Marina and the daughter is Karen). We found out that the mom goes to a crazy evangelical church and Luis doesnt like it at all so we invited them both to come to watch general conference in the stake center with us (by the way the stake center is the building where our ward meets and its two stories i´ll take a picture of it this week). But only Luis came but he came and he got all dressed up in a fromal dress shirt and slacks and everything. Then Marina showed up at the very end but didnt get to see very much of the conference. So that was a really cool expereince that we had this weekend. 

 Nobody can judge anybody whether or not they will accept the gospel we never know who are the people that the lord is preparing to hear the restored gospel. It can be our neighbor a freind from school, or some drunk guy in the street. The worth of every soul is great in the sight of God (D&C 18 Read it its good stuff).

 I love you guys. And im sorry that i didnt get to send any pictures this week i forgot my camera in the house :( But next week dont worry!

 Love

Elder Bever

 On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 10:28 PM, Ethan Bever <e-bever@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hey Thomas!

Hope your week’s gone well.

Weekly BYU Football Update: We beat Utah State in the last minute of the game scoring an amazing touchdown off of our own tip in the end zone. Jake Heaps isn’t playing because he’s done so poorly, so now Riley Nelson is stepping up a little and winning some games for us by running the ball instead of throwing interceptions like Heaps keeps doing.

                Anyway, now that you’re up to date, I hope conference was nice for you! I went today with my roommate and his sister to Salt Lake to watch it in the conference center for the afternoon session. It was super nice and I liked what everyone kept saying about the missionaries and how you are making such an important sacrifice and how I need to do all that I can so that I’m as good of a missionary as I can be! I thought Elder Holland gave another excellent talk in priesthood session about just that. When you’re here for winter semester, we’ll have to go to conference, it was awesome, and it felt like forever since I had been there.

                I also went to the Provo Temple this week on Thursday for baptisms and that was really nice too! I’m really excited for there to be another temple in Provo at the Tabernacle! We drove past it when Mom and Dad were here and saw how it was burned down and we were wondering what their plans were for it, but now everyone’s so excited for it to be a temple! I guess I never realized how amazingly beautiful the Portland Temple really is until I visited the Provo one. I mean their all wonderful, but the Portland Temple is so peaceful, large, immaculate, and quiet. We’ll have to go there when you’re home also! And we’ll go to the Provo one too!

                School is going well, I just took my first midterm in the testing center and it was crazy! There were so many people there, I had to wait in line for like 1 hr. clear over by the JSB, and once I got in there it was packed! I did okay on the multiple choice, (%80), so we’ll see how it comes together with the long response after it’s been graded. (that was for Math by the way). I have two more midterms this week for Econ and American Heritage, so I’m studying tonight and every spare second I have up until I take these tests later this week! Wish me Luck!

                Anyway, school’s keeping me plenty busy and I always have had something to do, so now I think I’m really in college and this is what it is normally like. I haven’t gotten homesick really just because there’s always soooo much to keep my mind on and there’s always something I have/want to do. This week, Bro. Bott (you remember him from Mission Prep.) talked about worthiness to serve a mission and read us the “raising the bar” letter, and I’m so glad that I’m worthy to go and I have my first missionary interview with my bishop this Wednesday!

                Sorry, I think this e-mail was a little too long, but hopefully your week is fantastic and you don’t slow down despite coming near to the end! We all love and appreciate all that you do.

                Love,

                -Ethan

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