October 7, 2015 Conference!

Hey Family! 

Everything's going well out here in New York. Conference was really cool. We watched every session at the church, because we weren't supposed to watch it at a members house, but a bunch of our members came out to the church anyway so it wasn't super weird in the Spanish room. Though we watched the English feed in the chapel (because neither of us can really follow well enough to get a lot out of a talk), and it was pretty much completely empty except for missionaries and a handful of English members. 

President approved us to go to the Priesthood session past curfew, which I'm super thankful for because president Monson's talk was really good. Some awesome members fed us in between sessions and in between the Saturday afternoon and the Priesthood session there was a baptism with dinner after. So, with the baptism, all the food, conference sessions, and the extra training studies we're supposed to do, we didn't even make it to our area all weekend. We did have a few people make it out to conference though and we taught a lesson or two in between sessions, so it wasn't a complete lack of missionary work we just didn't get to do any "normal" proselytizing.

I loved this conference, there were so many great talks. I loved the new apostles, each one of them said something that has stuck with me, and Elder Rasband shouted our mission out. Elder Holland's talk was
great, I bet it made mom feel great. The scripture I'm "ponderizing" is Alma 33:10. The President Monson thing was pretty sad but, he finished his talk, considering what he must've been feeling that's amazing. That man is living example of divine support.

Other than Conference we had our interviews with the president this last week, this was my 2nd one and it's always a great experience. This week is going to be pretty cool, on Friday we have a special zone
conference because Elder Arnold from the quorum of the 70 is coming to the mission. We had a bunch of things to study and I'm sure it's going to be awesome.

It's great hearing from you. Thanks for writing to us Ike, you're awesome!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride

P.S. President Bench called us a couple of days ago and said that he called president and got approval to take Elder Mackintosh and I out to dinner tomorrow, and I just saw him in the temple so that's pretty awesome. What a small world.