Sean is referring to this awesome lady in the picture. She is the mother of our friend Becky Higgins. Becky's parents are serving a medical mission based in Atlanta and they travel to 11 missions throughout the South for their service. They happened to be in the South Carolina Columbia mission on the day they had their mission Christmas conference. Becky asked her mom to find Sean so that they could give me a wonderful present! This is definitely a gift I can not repay and was so thoughtful and special!
Zone conference was really great and we got to finally watch Meet the Mormons! It was really great to just relax and watch something entertaining and uplifting for once. That movie brings the Spirit really well and I liked it a lot. The story about the candy bomber was my favorite. That man did a lot of good in the world and it's crazy how much one person can really change the world if they listen to the promptings of the Spirit.
President Turner had a lot of really great insight and stuff to talk about and it helped me out. Elder Bassett and I have been working so hard to find new people to teach and to have faith. We're being faithful through making sure that we're being exactly obedient in planning and that we are being hardcore planners, making appointments, and confirming everything with everyone. I think it's the best way to show my faith right now because the mission leaders have promised that if I do these things that they've asked us all to do that we will have people to teach, and families to baptize and so that's exactly what I'm going to do to the letter.
We had a breakthrough with a part member family because of our diligent planning and faith, and also a breakthrough with Miriam this past week. It's been awesome. I'm excited for this week to see how it all works out.
We started a ward mission plan with Brother Verburg and the Sisters this past week and the ward is really excited for it and Bishop Odom is totally on board. He told us that once the new year starts and when Tithing Settlement ends, he is going to make missionary work the main focus again and with the ward mission plan we will be changing a lot of things and making the ward more involved. It's gonna be great.
I hope I get my other package today! I'm excited. And we will be skyping at 10 AM my time on Thursday! I think it's 8 where you are but I'm sure that's not too early for our family on Christmas haha. I'll be on Skype then and if anything goes wrong I can just call you guys and we can figure it out from there. I'm really excited!!!!!!!
Hope your week went great!
Love you
Elder Sean Bills
Here are Sean's responses to some specific questions I asked him this week:
What was the most memorable lesson or message you gave?
The most memorable lesson we had was with Miriam last night. She told us about the spiritual experience she had when she had prayed and found the church to be true. It was way awesome.
What are you enjoying studying right now?
I've been studying Mosiah right now. I just finished Abinadi and that story so it was good to read and to study this week.
What's the funniest thing that happened?
The funniest thing were the skits at Zone Conference. An elder imitated President Turner and President Holm and I laughed really really hard.
What is your favorite thing about your companion?
Elder Bassett just says the funniest things sometimes. He'll get into a funny mood like once or twice a day and everything he says is hilarious.
Like Elder Jeffs and Huntsman came home one night right after we got back and they talked about how this guy told them that Mormons pray to Joseph Smith and weird stuff like that. Well 15 minutes later Elder Jeffs went "Aw man, my chapstick ran out" and Elder Bassett immediately went: "I guess it's time to pray to Joseph Smith" and we all just laughed really hard hahahahahaha. He's great. Happiest guy I know. He's always happy about everything. He gets really excited about stuff and it's just funny to see how excited he gets.