My Time is Now

Missionary Leadership Council/ Zone Conference; 

We did a mission tour in the CDNM with Elder Gifford Nielson. We were asked to do a lot to prepare for our conference with him, and it was really useful to come so ready. I also brought a lot of questions with me. Elder and Sister Nielson spoke super profoundly, boldly, and intellectually. I was really impressed by them. One of the questions that I took with me was, "How can I build a closer relationship with my family?" I feel like there's a slight disconnection with my family recently, and I want to get to grow a better connection with them. On February 15th, at about 11am, Elder Nielson was going to give us a training. Before he did so, he told us about a new change that was happening. I seriously thought he was joking for the longest time, and that what he was saying was all part of his training. It turns out he was serious. Elder Nielson is on the board of missionary work. At 10am that day, they came out with an announcement that we can now communicate with or families on or weekly preparation day. I looked at my phone, and to my surprise, my mom emailed me less than an hour after the new change came out. Originally, the board presented the idea to the first presidency about having a 30 min limit on taking to our families. President Nelson said, "Why would we put a time limit on our missionaries? Don't we trust them?" Although one of Elder Nielson's training was replaces by a while hour of us talking about this new change, I'm grateful for the chance we had to hear about this new thing straight from him. I know my time for being our here is counting down, but I think this new change is pretty neat.

MTM;

Was going to write something, but then I just got super busy with mtm. Lovey'all!

Contacting home; 

I think I'm ahead of the game on this. On Tuesday, some other missionaries contacted our mission president for me to email home. Don't worry, nothing bad happened, they just really wanted a picture of me to go on a PowerPoint that literally thousands of people will see. I'm famous, but telling you. Anyways, like I said, Elder Nielson was there and gave us a lot of insight on the background of all of this. It's something that has been a long process for it to make or to the light where our was released. I'm grateful that the brethren out so much trust in us. Lots of missionaries will abuse it, but a lot will use it to lift their families and grow closer to them. Regardless of this announcement, I would've found a way to talk to my family anyways, I've always found different ways in the past through the Lord's help (went home, had a concussion, needed a photo, members sending pictures home, people finding my family through Facebook, etc).

Shout-outs;

-Happy B-day Dad!!

-Happy B-day Elder Barker!