Thoughts on General Conference: April 7, 2014

7 April 2014

Dear Everyone,

1. Dad wants to know if your house has more than one bathroom, and if not, how have you been showering while you have been fixing the shower?  There are 3 bathrooms and it only took about 2 hours to fix the shower, all the pipes here are PVC so it was a really easy swap out job.
2. Were you able to watch any of conference? I watched all but the Priesthood session due to the time difference.
3. Were any of your investigators able to watch conference? We had one lady that said she would come but it turned out that she couldn´t make it (her friend who was going to drive here there didn´t let her go.)
4.  Are any sister missionaries going home the same time as you, or will it only be you and Elder S. departing together? There is one sister going home the same time, Sister F.

This week was good!!!  It was a good week of work. We have leadership counsel tomorrow so I will be getting on a bus at 4 today to go to Londrina!! I´ll be able to see the “Wark” once again which will be great!!!

So conference was super good, I felt as though the first session on Saturday was all about whirlwinds and trials and they used Helaman 5:12 in almost every talk. I felt the theme of the second Saturday session was obedience!! The first on Sunday was all about that we are not alone, God is always with us and the concluding section was all about gaining a testimony of the church and James 1:5 and the First Vision. I felt as though it was maybe a farewell address for Elder Packer and maybe Elder Hales, they don´t seem too strong lately! It is hard to believe that my last General Conference as a missionary has officially ended. I am sad about that because as a missionary you give much more value to conference, I never in my life waited as anxiously for conference as I have as a missionary, neither have I felt such a strong spirit and received as much personal revelation from conference as I have as a missionary. I will miss conference with my nametag on, I hope that I can keep these same feelings about conference as I have right now!!

Here are some pictures for this week.

We tried the jackfruit but it has a really slimy consistency. Let’s just say I didn´t like it very much...

Here we are eating McDonald’s and drinking Guaraná Jesus in between conference sessions on Saturday.

And finally, here are some of the photos from the zone conference from a few weeks ago!!!

So that´s about it for this week!! Love you guys a lot!! Thanks for the help mom, you da best!!!

Elder Cummings

General Conference was Awesome!: October 7, 2013

7 October 2013

Dear Everyone,

1. What language did you watch Conference in? Where did you go to watch it? I watched Conference at the stake center in English!!!
2. How’s it going with your Mega-District? How many Elders and how many Sisters? They split up the district again, which is good, because it would have been a little much for me!! I would have been more than a zone leader basically with the number of people I would have needed to accompany and do interviews for, so I am glad to have my old district back!!! My mega-district would have been 10 elders and 6 sisters with 4 people training... but now it is back to 8 elders and 2 sisters with only one sister training!

In five weeks 7 zone leaders will go home and in 6 more weeks 6 more zone leaders will go home!!!! Big changes in the mission between now and the end of 2013.

General Conference was AMAZING but it went by way too fast. I loved all the talks but in particular I loved:

•  David A. Bednar and President Uchtdorf from Saturday morning
• D. Todd Christofferson, Elder Nelson, and Elder Dyches from Saturday Afternoon 
• President Monson from the Priesthood session
• Elder Eyring, Elder Oaks, and Elder Scott from Sunday morning
• Elder Vinson from Sunday afternoon

... yeah, I know, that’s almost all of them!! It was definitely a great Conference!!

Of course Conference talked about a lot of things but I felt that it really emphasized the following points a number of times:

• Freedom of choice
• Read the scriptures a lot!
• Marriage
• REPENTANCE
• The sin in the world
• You cannot change the doctrines of Christ
• Tough and trying times are coming and persecutions will once again rise up against the church like times of old and in our own church history!

So this week was great, we brought 3 people to Conference so hopefully we will have some baptisms here pretty soon. Here is the picture of last week’s “surprise” baptism.

Elder R., the new elder in the ward, is way cool, he is from just outside of Sacramento.

Way to go cleaning up Grandma’s house, eagle scout application, SAT, and getting a ´date´ to homecoming!!

Sorry this is so short, but I think that is about it.

love you guys a lot!!

com amor,

Elder Cummings

I Don't Know What Happened to Eldon Cummings: April 8, 2013

8 April 2013

Dear Family and Everyone,

Answers to questions, as usual, to start things off:

1. What Gospel principle really reaches the people you meet who are interested in the Gospel? Well, the First Vision is really strong and it is that and the Book of Mormon that touch their lives the most. (A lot of baptisms come from the fact that the people think the missionaries are cool, but sometimes even that works out in the end and they become really firm in the gospel after their baptism.)
2. What was your favorite message from conference? (this question is from Dad) Elders Bednar (chastity) and Cristofferson (missionary work, bringing others to Christ through faith and repentance so that they may experience His Redemption) were great but I loved L. Tom Perry (obedience, agency, and the little book he got in World War II) and Craig A. Cardon (the Savior does not demand immediate perfection and wants to forgive us)!! I also liked the talk (from a member of the Seventy) who talked about how in all his years in the stake presidency he only got one call asking where they were needed as they moved into the stake!
3. We did not listen to any talks on lds.org this week, mainly because I was a little confused. All the “talks” I could find were videos, and I didn’t know how you would be able to listen to them while you were cleaning your apartment. How does that work? Do you download them and have some sort of player in your apt? On a related question, BYU Men’s Chorus has put out a free album of hymns for missionaries. They are all MP3 files, and the music is BEAUTIFUL! How can I send them to you so you can listen? Would a USB stick or SD card work? They are too big to attach to an email, even one at a time. It is fine about the talks, don’t worry about it, as far as the BYU Men´s Chorus, it would be easiest in a USB in the next package.

Oh, I decided to not do chain mail, it is too distracting for me.

Noooooooo!!! BYU lost!!!!! L Yeah, please ask if I can switch to come back for Winter Semester instead of Fall.

On Tuesday night we got a member reference but they didn’t remember the street name or number but remembered how to get there and were going to drive us over there but they didn’t have a man there so she drove and we ran the almost 3 miles (or at least it felt like it, it was probably a mile and a half) to the reference’s house just to find out that their friend is really strong in her own church and doesn’t want anything to do with us!!! At least the members were happy and we didn’t break any rules by riding with the sister by herself!!

Elder R. gave me some root beer concentrate but we don’t have any instructions so can you send me the instructions for McCormick root beer concentrate please!!! J

Dad, this is a question for you. Can you type up a word document talking about what you do for your job? I’ve been thinking about it this week in between conference sessions and was thinking it would be super cool to do what you do, but the problem is that I don’t know what it is that you do! Oh, and I’m going to stick with bioinformatics after all and just take computer programming and chemistry again with my newfound study skills. The mission really teaches you how to study really well!!! J

The mission changes you so much! This week in between conference sessions again I was thinking a lot about how I want my life to play out and my desire to play videogames is so far down. I don’t know what happened to Eldon Cummings but this Elder Cummings is really weird!!!

Fun fact: we were running late to get to conference on Sunday afternoon so a member gave us a ride (all 4 of us) in the truck bed (against mission rules) and when we pull up at the stake center guess who was making a surprise appearance in Cascavel... President T.!!!... But it’s all good!!

 Elder R. and I are the only two Americans in Cascavel, 

so we got to watch Conference all by ourselves!

We love oranges!

Hopefully we will baptize this next Sunday!! All out of time!

Lots of love,

Elder Cummings