Leadership
conference was good. It was reasonably uneventful because we had several
meetings last transfer, but we basically talked about how to verify the plan of
the mission in our zones. One of the new leaders is Elder Garity, who was
secretary at the same time as me. It was really good to see him, he's a man
"without guile or hypocrisy." I didn't have a special assignment, but
of course participated in the council. In a typical conference we present the
monthly results of our zone, we hear announcements/brief talks from the
President, his wife, and the assistants and we have a council about the new
announcements, strengths and weaknesses of the zones/etc.
There are a lot of
newer missionaries in the zone. There are a few that I had bumped into in other
zones as well, but it was a pretty big change at first. I'm already pretty used
to the missionaries though. I still haven't studied one of the talks from the
conference because I had downloaded talks from other conferences and wanted to
finish them first. I should be able to start this week with the recent talks.
My favorite part of the week was that we had a baptism. I
forgot to ask his permission to send the picture and his name, but I'll ask this
week. There are several promising investigators right now as we had 12 people
come to church, but I'll update you with more specifics as we go with them.
The
biggest challenge right now has been knowing how to help the zone to care about
the little things. The zone is somewhat disobedient for the moment and although
there is some respect for the bigger details there is a frank disregard for the
little things. When you want to help people to be more obedient it is always a
delicate process because if you say too much then people take offense and if
you say too little than nothing changes. We had the same problem when I got to
Martinez and things changed so I'm hoping that with some patience and diligence
things with be resolved.
It was a real miracle that so many people got to
church because typically around 25% of the people that say they'll go to church
actually go, but this time we had a good 75-80% (these aren't real statistics,
but that's the idea).
I've had the opportunity to laugh quite a bit lately,
Elder Romero is one of those people that knows how to make people laugh. One
thing that happened was that he cleaned the bathroom on Monday and opened the
window to let some air in. Afterward I went to shower and realized that the
window was open so I tried to close it. After struggling a bit and realizing
that it was jammed I gave up and decided that I would simply have to shower as
close to the wall as possible so that the neighbors wouldn't see. Elder Romero
showered next and then we were off to the conference. We didn't say a word to
each other about it until we realized while chatting in the bus that we had
both fought and lost the same fight with the window and then proceeded to
shower glued to the wall. It was funny in the moment.
I'm sad to hear about the struggles that the family has had, but I
know it's for a purpose and that the Lord is merciful. Try to stay calm about
everything and it will turn out alright. Did you already have the conference
with Elder Costa? Remember that every night when you pray for me, I pray for
you all too.
Love you,
Elder Finlinson
No comments:
Post a Comment