Do You Love Me?

Family, DO YOU LOVE ME?!

Oh man, Jeffery R Holland is the best. This weekend was honestly one
of the best weekends ive ever had in my life. It had a few different
factors that added to it but the main reason was conference. But i
will start off explaining that the investigator that i told you all
about, Manuel, is doing great. We went to go teach him this week
after having a week and a half of not seeing him, and we straight asked
him, Do you believe that the restored gospel is found in this church?
and he said, and i quote "I KNOW that the restored gospel is found in
the church of jesus christ, i KNOW that the book of mormon is true, I
KNOW that Joseph Smith was ordained by God, and I KNOW that this
church is true." I was honestly stunned. I sat there for a few seconds
with a huge smile on my face so happy and so stunned by the power of
his testimony and the spirit that it brought that i didnt know what to
say. I then asked him if he wanted to be baptized into this church and
he said yes. I honestly cant explain to you all how "chosen" this
brother is. He was prepared by God. We have done nothing differently
with him than with other investigators. He has been prepared to accept
this gospel. Then he was able to go to the Sunday morning and
afternoon sessions and afterwards i asked him what he thought, he said
"I know exactly what i need to do now, i need to take the next step
and follow the teachings of God" He explained that he had always been
searching for a church where EVERYONE taught the same true principles
and that he hadnt found it until now. he said " I listened to the
missionaries and knew what they taught was true, but now i have
listened to the prophet himself, the leader, and his teachings are the
exact same. This is the true church." I cant explain how amazing this
weekend has been in strengthening my testimony. There is no fault in
this church. It is lead by God! I know it and it has given me such a
greater desire to share it with everyone! I strongly encourage
everyone to watch conference, there is honeslty nothing in the whole
world that compares to it. I loved Elder nelsons talk and i came to
the realization, that  an apostle of Jesus Christ has so much confidence in
us that he is referring everyone to us in hope that we can help them.
That gave me a kick in the butt to be better. haha We were able to
watch the saturday afternoon session and priesthood session in english and the rest
in spanish. I understand it all in either language, but what i miss is hearing
their voices. When Elder Holland raised his voice and said "DO YOU LOVE ME?"
all it says is" me amas" in Spanish. Not the same at all, but he was
speaking so loudly i could still hear his voice in the background
haha!! . Everyone here started freaking out when they announced the new
temple to be built here in Peru and the change in themissionary ages. It was funny though because we were watching by internet and the quality wasnt great. So we heard the
announcement of the young men lowering the age to 18 which was awesome
and then we heard President Monson say "and we are now going to lower
the age of the young woman to ----" and then it skipped and we didnt
hear it! haha everyone was really mad about that. so we didnt know
until Elder Nelson came on and said it was 19 later on in the talk.
Exciting!

This week wasnt all that successful, we didnt have a ton of lessons
and in fact we were rejected quite a bit, but my testimony is stronger
now than ever before because of conference. What a blessing.


Thanks for everything! I love you all.

Elder Woodburn