Nov. 18, 2013 a rewarding week!

I´m going to try to mention a few things really quick.

The conference with Elder Nelson and Elder Rasband was very rewarding. We had a very small group there. Just about 125 missionaries--the half of our mission in lima. Elder Rasband spoke on a couple really interesting things. He mentioned D&C 88:73 (and the surrounding scriptures) that talk about hastening the work. This day is the day in which the work has been, and will be hastened. And WE are the ones hastening it. The church is changing, and has absolutely gone gung ho on this new form of missionary work--working shoulder to shoulder with members to find investigadors to baptize, FIRST by looking for inactive members of the church whose time it just may be to come back, and therefore bringing family members they might have to the church for the first time.
It is very exiting that finally, from here on out, and probably in the next year or so we will really start to see a difference in the retention rates worlwide, and especially in south america. I love watching members of the church get involved and fired up, and the truth is that all of our successes come from working with the members. When we find people on our own, those people seldom turn into converts at the same accelerating rate, or with the same results, as people who members introduce us to. It is phenomenal.

Elder Nelson talked about how we are the ones to hasten the work, and that faith is believing that God can, and will, work miracles through his very imperfect children--us. He said that "God does the unlikely with unlikely people." He accomplishes the impossible with very imperfect souls. He mentioned various examples we have of ideas, or concepts, or scientific "proofs" that we have seen, and when god wants to perform a miracle, he sometimes takes the weakest, or the the most unlikely, or the most ironic set of skills and uses them to absolutely perform a miracle--something that should not be able to occur. He said Childbirth is a very good example that he uses often. (Think of the unlikelyhood of the actual birth of some very wellknown cases namely The virgin mary, and Abraham´s barren wife. God accomplished the impossible, with someone very unlikely.) I thought it was a cool thought.
He also spoke about this dispensation being a very important and exiting time to live. He said that "in YOUR (mine) generation the gospel will fill this earth." I thought that was a very exiting prophesy.

Also.. We are going to meet Elder Rasband at president´s house tomorrow! I am exited as I´ll get out. just those of us from the office. He is going to eat lunch with president before traveling to a meeting we have in the south of our mission, and President wanted to give us the opportunity to meet him. Hopefully he´ll tell me something really cool like where the three nephites live (haha joke, everyone knows they live in Peru).

That´s about it for now. I have to run get my eyes checked. They´ve been bugging me lately. 

Love you all!!
Elder Hartvigsen