Letter #48: Conference Miracle

Last weekend was General Conference! Yesterday was the 182nd Birthday of the Church! Tomorrow we celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior- Easter! There's so many wonderful things going on. I'm grateful to be focused on the Lord, Jesus Christ, at this time. I feel so blessed to be altered and changed every day by His atonement. To think this weekend so many centuries ago, He suffered for us. He gave us every reason to have hope and joy! He died, but arose from the dead. He lives! He truly lives! and because He lives, we too will live again. Through our obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel- (faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) we will be given that opportunity to live forever in God's presence as families. What a blessing. Exaltation. I'm truly overwhelmed by the great love God has for each of His children. This scripture states how I truly feel- Alma 26:37- "Now my brethren (or family), we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen." Conference was amazing!! It was crazy and we worked so so hard. Saturday we were there at 7:30am and got home at 10pm. We got sunburned and the next day faced rain and snow! Haha we met so many INCREDIBLE members (I have endless stories... I'll try to share later!) and through the mercies of our Heavenly Father made our companionship goal for Saturday exactly! We couldn't believe it, but found out the next morning that the mission was only about 35% of the way to obtaining our goal, to help over 7000 souls hear about the gospel. We had much less time to work on Sunday and with the poor weather we worried whether we'd be able to meet our goal. We didn't know how, but we knew we had to somehow double or triple, or quadruple our efforts! I'll never forget Sister Bleyl and I hurrying across the empty square, so tired, our feet still hurting from the previous day, but just laughing so so hard!!! Despite the circumstances being so ridiculous, we just laughed!!! We were still SOOO happy and I'll never forget how she said through our laughter, "This is so less than ideal!" Hahaha. But a miracle truly happened. We somehow managed to take care of our Zone responsibilities, attend a session, an announcing meeting, and still nearly double the amount of referrals from the day before- how? I have no idea except to say it was a miracle of the Lord. We worked really hard and said a lot of prayers, but the people who came were filled with the love of the gospel and wanted to share it with their friends. We met at 8:30pm Sunday night for a "Hi-5" meeting to celebrate conference and achieving our goal... but 20 minutes before we were still 400 souls short. 10 minutes before.... still short. However, Sisters kept running in last minute into the Tabernacle and saying "ten more!" "five more!" and miraculously... We made our goal!!! We were so thrilled and knew that the Lord had been helping us to bring more souls unto Him. We sang called to serve (temple square version with an added 3rd verse as always) and I just cried! I couldn't believe it. I just thought of each of those names as a family- a family that will now have the chance to become an eternal family. We still need to call them, to teach them and help them to find out for themselves that this is true, but 7,541 more people will have the opportunity of hearing the gospel because of the faithfulness of the members over this 2 day General Conference. If this is not a miracle, I do not know what is. These are not numbers- these are souls, Children of God and I thought that if even just one of the people find the fulness of joy that the restored gospel brings because of all this, all the hard work, just everything would be more than worth it. Thanks for all your love, support and prayers. Please continue to pray as we call and teach these people that we might be able to help them come unto Christ and have faith in Him and receive the Restored Gospel. I know miracles will happen and am trying to have the faith required to do my part. I love you all so so much! Hope you have a wonderful time this weekend as Tanner is blessed. How special! You'll be in my thoughts and prayers as well this Easter Sunday! Lots of Love, Sister Mullen PS- What was all of your favorite part of Conference? -----

So.... One of the mission presidency has some connections, and he was able to get hold of candid pictures they took of missionaries for the Ensign!!!

Turns out I was in a few of them!! Fun, eh?

(Even one is Sister Au-Yeung and I during a prayer last October General Conference).

It was a lot of fun to see them so I thought I'd pass them on!!!

I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!

PS- The picture of the Japanese sister praying is Sister Dorff- She's friends wiith the Brinleys from when they lived in Japan. I was wondering if Sister Brinley could get it to Sister Dorff's family if she's still in touch because I thought it'd really be a treasure for them!! I love Sister Dorff SOOO much! She's super talented and very sweet.

Sister Lui (in orange dress sharing a scripure) is from Italy and her companion, SIster Mokalake is from South Africa!!!