Spiritually Fed

Today we were spiritually fed by Elder L. Tom Perry and President Whitney Clayton (in the presidency of the 70). Wow, these men can speak! They were very inspiring. Elder Perry spoke about the characters of the Book of Mormon. He expounded upon Joseph Smith, Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and Oliver Cowdery. He talked about how they all contributed to the BOM. He told us we all need to KNOW the Book of Mormon. He spoke about how the church is being exposed to the world more than ever before right now. He told us how there is supposedly a BOM play on Broadway which is causing a ton of news about the church. He then told us that there will be 2 members of the church running for president. A bunch of people here have already brought that up with us. Basically the church is being exposed through the media a ton lately and as a result, we missionaries really need to know our "stuff." Elder Perry challenged us to study the BOM harder than ever before. He wants us to read it, know it, and teach it. President Clayton spoke about how white the field is here in California. He talked about how we are in a very prosperous area. He told us a story about a mission in Spain in which had an area with a branch who had not seen a baptism in 10 years. Not one person was baptized in that area in over 10 years. As a result the mission president sent his best missionary, a former assistant, to that area. This missionary was the most obedient and diligent in all the mission and had one transfer left before he went home. The mission president told this elder that he needs to baptize someone into that branch in 6 weeks, before he goes home. Well, long story short is this elder baptized 5 people in his last week of his last transfer in the area that had not had a baptism in over 10 years. President Clayton's point was that we all need to have faith and be diligent in our finding efforts. He told us how he has visited every single stake, ward, and branch in our mission and knows for a fact that there is not an area even close to that area in Spain in terms of baptism success. He told us how every single area in our mission is more successful than that area in Spain. He said that there should not be a reason why we are not baptizing thousands. Orange County is one of the densest populations in the world. He instructed us how to go about finding, teaching, and baptizing by sharing D&C 42:6-8. He told us we need to find people who will actually be addition to the wards or branches we are serving in. He said we don’t want to baptize people who are just going to be another headache for the bishop, however, we want to find the next bishop, the next stake president, etc. He encouraged us to have faith and act by being diligent in our finding efforts. We need to be looking for the future leaders of the church.