Elder Devin Saunders Mission: 4/4/2016 New Companion and General Conference‏

Hey Everyone,

I hope you all enjoyed the wonderful words that we heard this weekend from our wonderful prophets. The testimonies they gave and the power they speak with pierced my soul and for the first time I was able to take notes for every talk in every session. For me that was a huge success and I will hopefully be able to keep the habit up for my entire life. We were able to watch the conference in English which was a nice refreshing few days for my brain. We also got to watch all of them live and we got permission to watch the priesthood late and we just the four of us gringos huddled around a computer in a tiny room for hour after hour like the prophets said it was so sick to hear them give us shout outs basically. haha

In Calafate we now have four Americans. It is nice but it is really hard to not just always speak English to each other. My new companion is Elder Petersen from Quincy Washington. He loves sports like me, has ten months in the mission, is shortish haha, likes a lot of the same things as me, and we are just really close already. He has grown up in the church and we both have a desire to work hard here in Calafate!

A few take aways I have from General Conference are... 1) No matter where we are or what we are doing we can change. We have the power and agency to make the choices that will move us closer and closer to our loving Heavenly Father. As we all heard from our dear prophet Thomas S. Monson, " Make the Harder Right choices, instead of the Easier Wrong choices." 2) Families are important. Really important. Even though I am a missionary I still have a family and knowing that we can be together forever is something I will treasure for my whole life. 3) We have a Father in Heaven and a Savior and They love us more than we can imagine. I know that our Savior lives and that we are all son and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Hearing prophets bare real literal witness of Them rang true in my mind that in times of need I have and you have two people that are there for you. In a whole as Elder Himes sais " Conference is like the Super Bowl for missionaries."

Besides conference the week was pretty normal. I took over my area and showed my new companion Elder Petersen around beautiful Calafate. He was able to meet the Branch and all of our investigators. I am excited for these next two transfers and thank you for your support back home and around the world!

Here's a bit about our investigators lets see right now we have a family of four the mendoza family they are amazing but like everyone the mom works a lot so coming to church hasnt happened yet. we have another family of seven the dad works in chile and the rest are here they are the crazy kids ive talked about a bit. they are awesome but we dont have the dads permission to baptize the kids or they would be baptized already. we have a single lady named rosa who told us she saw the first vision in a dream and her mom who said she had been waiting for her. so that is crazy. we have a sweet old couple named oriel and orieta. they are awesome and are just needing to come to church. that is the hard thing in calafate getting them to come to church.

I also apologize for my spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We email on spanish computers and I am trying to learn spanish and forget english. Thank you for your patience and love! I know this Church is true with all of my heart!

From the End of The World,

Elder Saunders

See it. Feel it. Trust it.