Elder Bednar!!

So this week was super incredible, mostly because of Elder Bednar. Elder
Bednar came and spoke to three missions here in the Visitor's Center and
luckily I was in like the 5th row  Man, it was truly one of the most
incredible experiences of my life. The way he taught was extremely
different from anything I would've expected. He started out with kind of a
Question and Answer section, except he was asking us the questions. Then we
moved on and were able to ask him some questions. Man, it was just an
incredible experience to have an apostle of the Lord so close and speaking
on things that were so important to us as missionaries. It was also
interesting because we got to see his "normal" side, he says words like
"dopey, or stupid" and he's a very very humble man, but also very aware of
his position and responsibility. It was a power lesson on leadership to
even be around him. A lot of what he talked about was helping us learn how
to teach and how to learn. He spoke on learning and teaching by the spirit,
rather than playing the "guess what's in my head game" which we so often do
as missionaries or as teachers in general. It was a very inspiring and
humbling conference as I realized how poor of a teacher I really am, in the
sense of helping my investigators truly seek learning by faith. He further
focused on how we are not the light, just the conduits. He rebuked us
pretty hard by saying that if in our teaching we do anything to draw
attention to ourselves, whether that's in our personality or teaching
methods, if it draws attention towards us and away from the spirit it is a
form of priestcraft... A pretty intense statement but a needed one. It was
a theme that we'd felt the mission needed to hear as well. It was also
incredible to just hear his testimony. The testimonies of the apostles have
always just amazed me. There words are not eloquent, they are clear and to
the point, and they're full of power. It demonstrates the true reality that
testimony is really the best way to teach, and if we could all have
testimonies like the apostles the world would know, if not accept, that the
gospel is true. It was just an extremely powerful experience. And as usual
the most powerful lessons were not the ones that were learned by the words
he spoke but rather by what the spirit was telling me throughout the
meeting. Oh, one of the new presiding bishopric and a former seventy
presidency member also spoke, it was an extremely spirit packed meeting. So
of course that made this week yet another week of extreme self-evaluation
and a week of personal revelation. It's incredible how we can increase so
much in our ability to listen to and recognize the spirit. Oh, another
thing he mentioned was that if we ever feel comfortable in any calling that
we receive we are doing it wrong, because the longer we go the more we
should realize the true significance of what we're doing and how incredibly
inadequate we are. Someone asked him how he felt as an apostle, and he said
simply "Crushingly overwhelmed..." It was just an incredible experience.
Other cool things that are happening is that our zone is doing incredibly
well, though there are always little problems, as well as our area
continues to do well! Miracles still happen daily, even on those days where
we maybe have to spend a little more time planning than we would like for
meetings and such. Haha this week has been crazy, there's been piano
performances and like three meetings to plan for as well as another
workshop and role-play... So much to do and so little time, still the Lord
seems to make the time stretch to fit everything in! Still it's been a good
week!