Post Easter Greetings from California!

Easter festivities are over and done with, and OH what an Easter it was. Not much as far as baptizing has gone on in the last week, but I appreciated Conference more over these last couple days than I ever have before in my life, so that's a good thing.

Life with Elder Sheppard continues to be a fast paced one. He's coming up on the end of his mission (3 weeks!), and there are two ways that missionaries react to coming up on the end of their mission. 1. They get "trunky". They recognize that the end is near, and therefore they don't try quite as hard. Their minds are on things back home, and not on things of the mission. Or 2. They shift up a gear. They recognize that the end is near, and feel that they haven't done the best they can yet, so they try suuuuper hard to the best of there ability to do everything they possibly can, feeling like their mission won't be a success if they don't. While this is very much preferable to becoming "trunky", it does start to stress you out a tad. Not that I'm complaining, I just miss lunch a little bit.

So, I've decided that one of my favorite moments from General Conference (not counting the Priesthood session, cause I missed that one....) was Wilford W. Anderson's talk on faith: "The true source of hope is faith. Faith in the lord Jesus Christ and his atonement. The one true foundation we should build our lives upon." We all need to have faith. Without faith, how could we ever make it through this life, much less the next? But he goes on to say "True faith Requires action." To believe is simply not enough. If we say we believe, but we do not act, we do NOT have faith. We must act upon that faith if we are to receive the blessings that our father in heaven has promised us. By not acting upon that faith we deny the blessings he has promised us, and we deny the Atonement. If we are to have faith, we are to repent daily! Even for the smallest things like "I called someone a loser". Once we have taken the steps to ensure our behavior reflects that of Christ THEN we have faith. I encourage each and everyone of you to exercise your faith. Bear your testimony to at least one person every day. Stop doing the things that you know are wrong. Repent, and return unto Christ.

Finally, on a mostly unrelated note. I decorated Easter eggs this Easter! I haven't done that in forever! Then after decorating them, my companion asked if he could eat them! Silly Samoan. So he stuck them in the microwave. And guess what? It exploded! It was so cool! I'll include some pictures. One last item of business. I'm not sure if emails sent to keebemon@myldsmail.net are still getting to me. I think they are, but just to be safe, send them to keenan.monnett@myldsmail.net as well.

I love you all!

Elder Keenan Monnett