Unexpected Event

Dear friends and family:

I finally received the invitation to Britney's wedding a few days ago. It looks nice. I'll only regret not being able to be there.

I thoroughly enjoyed general conference this weekend. We watched all but one of the sessions at the church building. (I still watched the other one, just not at church.) I loved all of the talks. It seems to me that in general, most of the Saturday talks were about marriage and eternal families, and most of the Sunday talks were about staying active and how to love inactive family members (and Easter, of course.) My favorite talk was the "do you dance" talk as well, because it was funny and I most certainly do not dance.

Half-way through the Sunday afternoon session, however, we had a little unexpected event interrupt our gospel revelry. Somehow or other, the fire alarm went off inside of the church, although there was no fire. A fire truck was dispatched, and they came and checked around the building as we continued to watch conference. We lost some of our focus because of that, but it was a funny occurrence. We'll just learn from that talk when we get the ensigns instead.

One of the things that I am most excited about is the newly announced temple in Haiti. I don't know when it is likely to be completed, but I fully intend to be there for the dedication! (And open house, if I can swing it, but if I remember correctly the open house and dedication were separated by two weeks in the Fort Lauderdale temple, and I don't really look forward to spending 2.5 weeks in Haiti... but I'll worry about that in the future.)

For those of you who don't yet know, the church has a great new Easter initiative, similar to the Christmas one that they did last December. It's called "Because He Lives," and this one will continue for most of the rest of the year. New videos will come out in the initiative every few months, each focusing on the miracles and blessings that we receive because of Jesus Christ. You can find out more and watch the first video at HeLives.mormon.org.

This week we struggled a lot to find new investigators, but we are still hopeful for Matt, our investigator from Laos. He came to the priesthood session of General Conference and really enjoyed it. He now has a copy of the book of Mormon in Thai, which is supposedly really close to the language spoken in Laos.

I still don't have any news on Neumont University, although supposedly something is coming soon...

(Note from Mom: Brandon was accepted to Neumont University and was awarded an Achievement Scholarship of $15,000 as well!  This is not the Presidential Scholarship we were hoping for, but I will be researching what we need to do to appeal the decision and maybe still get awarded the Presidential...Yay, Brandon!)

Thanks for all of your help and support,

Elder Slade