I have really gained a great appreciation for other religions while serving my mission (April 6, 2015)

This week was awesome!! For one, because it was conference weekend but two we found quite a few miracles!

The week started off a little slow but built to a fantastic ending. We went on exchanges this week and I headed over to Red Square again (UW) with Elder Halliday. It was a fun time and we got to teach a group of Muslim girls that he had been regularly teaching. It was awesome! They had read the chapters in the Book Of Mormon that he had assigned and they brought questions. They love learning about what we believe although they don't always agree. I have really gained a great appreciation for other religions while serving my mission.

We had a really successful evening with our Bishop this week after our exchange. He comes out with us once a week to visit people and we found 2 part member families that are open to us coming back and having home teachers assigned! That is huge! We hope to work with them closely in the coming weeks and bring them to church.

On Friday, we had the big miracle. Backstory -- The previous Sunday we had texted 50 contacts in our phone whom we didn't know inviting them to church. We had all of like 2 responses saying thanking us for the invitation but they were "busy". No one attended. We thought it was worth a shot but kinda forgot about it. Friday rolls around and we get a text back from a good brother named Brian. He said "Thanks for the invitation but I wasn't able to come. I want to be baptized." We about jumped out of our ties at that! He expressed that he has some personal trials he is struggling with but we have an appointment with him this Tuesday. Please keep him in your prayers!

Saturday was Conference and I will cover conference below but we had another miracle on Saturday. Saturday night, as we were coming in, we got a call from President Wood (2nd Counselor in the Mission Presidency) and he told us that there was a teacher at a local middle school who wants to bring her students on a tour of our church and to learn a little about the church. He gave us her phone number and we ironed out the details this morning. We have a 1 hour tour scheduled for Wednesday with the teacher and 7 of her students! Please pray that this tour goes well because not only will this be a great finding opportunity but if it goes well, this may be something the teacher does with future students and it would build more awareness of our beliefs in the community. Plus President Wood is working closely with us and we get to follow up with him so we really can't mess up haha.

As for conference, I loved it! I preferred the Saturday sessions to the Sunday sessions myself. My favorite talks were both by President Eyring but the 70s in the Saturday Afternoon session really did a wonderful job as well. As always, I was highly impressed by every talk. Not only that but did you notice the new cameras they were using and the new shots the took while speaking? It was a clearer picture and brought some new variety to the speeches. Maybe I was the only one haha but welcome to film classes, I notice that sort of thing.

Anyway, it was truly a fantastic week!! I hope you've had a great week as well! I noticed you asked about my p-day activities -- I will attach last p-day's activities which consisted of taking pictures and sight seeing. Not much else to do ha.

I love you!!

Love,

Elder Connor Marshall Garriss

PS. No april fools on us, but we played one on a member in our district. We were on exchanges and I changed the contact ID fo us to be one of the Assistants to the president and Elder Griffiths called and told Elder Halliday he was being Emergency transferred. He was soooo mad. Then we told him. It was super funny.

PSS.   I was actually at one of the few older members homes (for Easter) We had tomato soup with popcorn and cheese sticks and apples. Sounds weird but it was awesome! ALSO!!!! They were from North Carolina and knew a guy with the last name Garris!! So I am having her look into it to see if we are related through Aunt Norma Gwen. Its crazY!!

Note from Mom:
So what was your favorite conference talk?   I think mine was from Saturday afternoon. It was by Wilford W. Anderson...I don't think I have
ever heard him talk before. It was the talk that referenced music & dance as an analogy. My favorite quote from that talk..
"I can teach you to dance but can you hear the music?"   The gospel is like that...you can know a lot about it but you must feel it too. I used to think I should "know" everything about our church but I have had many moments where I can feel the spirit and that helps me to go with
faith. Conference always helps me to "hear the music".