Transfers!!

So I`m not sure if I mentioned last week that we were going to have transfers today. Yeah they kinda snuck up on me too. Well my beloved companion, Elder Castrejon left and went to Bogota this morning! It`s weird because I feel kind of like I did when Elder Perez left me. Just kinda wanting all of the awesome time we spent together to just rewind and start all over again. I can`t believe he`s already gone, I can`t believe we succesfully opened up our area, and I can`t believe that it`s already been 3 months since I left Suba. Weird. Oh well I am excited because an elder named Elder Meren is coming to be my companion. I have never met him before but the people that I have asked if they know him have been saying YEAH he`s the elder that knows how to breakdance!! So, that made me even more excited for him to get here!!! I`m planning on us being great friends so we`ll see how things go. I`m definitely going to make him teach me how to break dance. We have a talent show coming up in a few weeks so hopefully we can both break dance it up. Hahaha that would top the synchronized swimming FOR SURE:) so I`ll let you know how that goes:) So  like always I am super happy for a new change to start but still kind of living in the past because of the great companionship that I just had with Castrejon. He`s really into studying English, so I gave him the set of English scriptures that I had. He also gave me a tie for my birthday yesterday, I was pretty surprised.

SO CONFERENCE WAS AMAZING! honestly I believe it is more than coincidence that both years in my mission,  my birthday has fallen on conference weekend. It has really allowed me to relish and cherish the 10 revelation filled hours that we get every 6 months to listen to the prophet and apostles. The Saturday session, in my opinion, was better than the Sunday one, and this Priesthood session was THE BEST I have ever seen. Every talk was so powerful and awesome, those 2 hours passed like a blink of an eye. For some reason, I have been liking more and more Russell M. Nelsons talks, I loved his on Saturday about acting as one person and not dividing yourself. A close second was the talk of Elder Zwick on communication, not only did he talk in the microphone like a football announcer,  he delivered an awesome message!  Elder Oaks gave such a mind blowing talk about the doctrine of the Priesthood to start the session off, and to end I absolutely loved the 3 last talks by the first presidency. Elder Uchtdorf on ¨Are you sleeping through the Restoration¨ Elder Eyrings on ¨Priesthood Heroes¨ and Presidents Monsons on ¨Defenders of the Faith.¨ Also there were 2 on Sunday that I really enjoyed, like mom I liked Elder  Uchtdorfs on gratitude and how being grateful in all things is a catalyst to all other Christ like attributes. And Elder Bednars about how a heavy load gives us the spiritual traction to persevere and endure to the end. I really hope to continue cherishing conferences like I have in the mission and not let worldly things get in the way.

Haha so I have a funny story to tell about Sundays lunch in between conference sessions. We had lunch with a member of our ward, but since the stake center is a little far, most people only went to the Sunday morning session. So the members just gave us money and told us to go out and buy something for lunch. Elder Dos Santos and his comp also had this problem so we discussed it a bit and decided to go ahead and buy hamburgers. We all felt such guilt as we went to the mall to buy our MALL HAMBURGERS. There were tons of people watching as  missionaries bought burgers to go. Then we went back to the stake center and snuck in without anyone seeing the bags of contraband that we had. I made a video of all our thoughts about breaking the sabbath day and then we chowed down. It was just kind of a funny experience on my birthday. But what else could we have done, we weren`t going to starve!!

So to end I just want to thank mom on all the time and effort you have put into getting me ready for college. Thank you for letting me just focus on my work here and taking all of the stress away that I would have felt if I were to have had to do all of that stuff myself. Also congrats to Shay shay who did great on her race!!! Keep up the strong work Sistaaaaaa:) Love you all, and thank you to EVERYONE who sent me e-mails saying happy birthday:)

-Elder Crook