It doesn't get much better than general conference weekend! Best believe that I bought myself some chocolate milk in keeping with tradition (Although with nobody to stop me, I had it for EVERY session instead of just Sunday morning!)
The October weather here in Las Vegas has been feeling mighty fine. The low 90s and upper 80s have felt downright cool, which is odd.
You certainly get a mix of everyone in Las Vegas! When we went to Walmart, one guy marched up to us and accused us of teaching the devil's first lie. The other missionaries in our district told us that he came up to us right after he had gotten done with them, and then we saw the same guy walk up to another pair of missionaries in the parking lot! Haha, that poor, confused man on his solo crusade against the "mormon menace." Then there's the people you wave to and they flip you off. But there are so many more nice people! Just today we talked to this sweet old Swedish lady in the store, who joked around with us and said we made her day. There was another guy with dreadlocks we talked to as we crossed the street, that said, "You brightened up my day a little bit!" Then there is the lady that is our apartment manager that we made cookies for, who unrolled her window and waved to us as she saw us out and about today. We also talked to a big Polynesian security guard on a little golf cart who was a member and wanted to refer some friends. All the good just makes it easy to laugh off the bad.
This week I discovered the answer to a long-time mystery. One dark night in El Salvador we were walking on a little path to visit a family that lived a good 10 minute trek into the jungle with no other houses in sight. We looked up into the sky to see a light come out from behind a cloud. It looked like a satellite or something, but then there was another . . . and another . . . and another all spaced 3 or 5 seconds apart moving in a perfect line and perfectly distanced from each other. Soon there was a line of almost 20 of the dots silently stalking across the sky. It was kind of eerie, and even more so as seen from the pitch black jungle. The other day Elder Parker and I were talking about space launches and stuff, and somehow it came up that that line was the Sky Link. A bunch of satellites that circle the globe. Kind of cool.
The other day we were biking to church and came to an intersection. We could go either straight or left. Straight is faster and the way we always go, but for some reason we stopped and decided to go left. Not 10 seconds later, a truck pulled up and unrolled the window. The man said he was a member but hasn't gone to church in 10 years. He had moved to Las Vegas the day before, and had been praying. He said when he saw us, he thought it was a sign. We were so happy to talk to him, and if we hadn't taken that left turn, we never would have met him.
Our mission president and his wife always do a little mission-wide zoom call every Sunday night, and it is a lot of fun. It feels a little like family.
As we were biking home one day, we pulled up to a stop sign at the same time as another car. The guy inside it said hi and just seemed friendly. When we got back home, he was outside, and we realized that he is our next door neighbor! Apparently we had arrived pretty quickly on our bikes, because he greeted us with, "What, you guys doin a hunn-ned (hundred)?" He then asked, "What message do you have for me today?" We shared a quick scripture and gave him a Book of Mormon. Then, yesterday, we went and visited him. They are just a beautiful young family with the mom and dad and four kids that we met, but I think one or two that we didn't. They gathered around and we read the story of Enos. The spirit was very strong as we talked about prayer, and they seemed to really enjoy it. At one point, the mom was just fervently nodding her head in deep agreement, and the teenage son told us that he has lots of friends that are members of the church. They were so grateful and so cool. When we finished the lesson, the dad got up to let us out the door, and he said to himself, "Man, I feel good!"
I think if you can make someone say that after talking about God, there is perhaps nothing better.
Elder Harris
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