Life's grand. The church is true.

Hi everyone!

  

General Conference was amazing.  It seemed like everything was covered and more than anything it was a conference of urgency.  I especially liked the talk about "being" vs. "doing" and how the two are inseparable and codependent.  There are many in South Florida that would have you believe otherwise.  All in all, conference, as always, was very uplifting and a great spiritual experience for all who saw it.  After the conference, we all met together by phone in a mission-wide conference call at the request of President Hale.

This request somewhat startled us because whatever he wanted to talk to us about, he didn't want to wait until Monday to send it in an email, nor did he want to relay information through zone and district leaders, but he wanted personally to tell every missionary at the same time.  Rumors about the bahamas and temple groundbreaking flew around, but what he told us was something that nobody expected.

This Wednesday, President J. Nathan Hale and his wife will be flying to Provo so that the best neurosurgeon that he could find can remove a tumor in his spine on Thursday.   Dad, it's in the the T-1 T-2 region of the lower back, you'll probably know better than me what that means.  It is thought to be benign, but there is a chance that it could be cancerous and, as you are aware, this type of surgery is very risky.  He will try to be back as soon as possible to finish the last few months of his mission.  The whole mission is praying for him, and we ask for your prayers of support.  Since the surgery is on Thursday, we will be fasting that day as well.  Anyway, that is what's happening right now in the Great Florida Ft. Lauderdale Mission.

That's good that you got to see some of the Sony Erricson Open in Miami.  It's a pretty big event here.  Tennis and handball are some popular recreational activities.  Most parks have courts for both, as well as the usual basketball court.

I'm gonna send a picture of a road that looks nothing like the roads in arizona, as well as a tree that looks nothing like the trees in Arizona.  This is a small one.  Yeah, there's mangrove trees lining the roads here.  They're really cool looking.  It's starting to warm up a little, but I'm doing fine.  We drive a car that in my opinion is way too nice for missionaries, but we take really good care of it.  We've been finding family after family it seems.  Now if only we could get them to church.  It's hard when someone so sincere has the difficulties of life blocking them from the blessings of the gospel, but when they overcome those challenges, it's all worth it.

Life's grand.  The church is true.

Love,

Elder Fine