email 3/28/11

Some of you requested my current address, so just in case anyone wants to know, this is my address:

Elder Shepherd

440 Meriden Rd. #220

Waterbury, CT 06705

Missionary life is the same. The rest of this week was largely uneventful. We knocked a lot of doors and talked to tons of people. Our teaching pool seems to be very fluid--that is, we find lots of people with potential and, as quickly as they lose interest or reject the message, we find more people to teach. Lots of coming and going.

This last Wednesday was nuts. We had a mission conference with a visiting general authority, Elder Zwick of the seventy. We were in Bloomfield by 9 AM, and seated for prelude at 9:30. Elder Zwick shook everyone's hands before the meeting started. The conference itself was awesome. He talked a lot about the law of sacrifice in regards to missionary work. He hit home with me on a lot of it--I felt like he was speaking directly to me in answer to the prayers and preparations I'd had leading up to it. Elder Zwick speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Portuguese, so I got to speak with him in Spanish a bit. I was lucky to get to talk to him a lot. I picked his brain and learned a lot from him. After our conference ended at about 3:30 PM, we had a leadership meeting with Elder Zwick, the mission president, and the zone leaders. We spoke about how we were working with the wards and how we could better correlate our efforts and be more effective. Immediately following that meeting, I spent the rest of the afternoon working one on one with all of the missionaries who will sing in the musical fireside that I've been organizing for the spring. It was the only chance that I would get to rehearse with each of them before our first performance on April 10th so we had to take advantage of the time. I rehearsed all the way until 7:30 PM when we had 1 more meeting for the day, a meeting for all the ward councils from the 2 stakes in our area and the missionaries. I was in the back translating for the meeting. After the meeting I was able to talk to members I hadn't seen in a while and friends from the mission. In particular, my uncle Alan was in attendance at the meeting so I took advantage of the opportunity to talk to him. The last time that I'd seen him was 1 year earlier at the musical fireside last year in Bloomfield, and it caused me to reflect on the last year of my mission. I've changed a lot. I've learned a lot. I'm a better person than I was 1 year ago. I've had to struggle through a lot of things in the last year, but at every step of the way I've been strengthened. God has blessed me abundantly and I have great reason to rejoice. Through the challenges and struggles I face I know that God is molding me into the person that I'm capable of becoming. I'll be eternally grateful for it.

Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. I rely on them on a lot. May God bless all of you.

        with much love from your favorite elder,

           -Elder Shepherd