Howdy all!
Well, things this week were really, really good. But I’ll have to explain why, because it was almost one of the worst weeks of my life as well at first. All right, it’s my second week as zone leader, and we get called up to MLC – mission leadership conference, (zone leaders and sister training leaders go up and make decisions on stuff for the mission). We spent the whole meeting talking about the most pointless stuff; clipping at the branches and not getting to the roots. This last week, my comp and I have been really working hard at getting our zone in shape, and we’ve been trying to do it the right way. The meeting just destroyed all of our work. In the meeting they decided that our mission is going to play big brother and try to force the will of the leaders on the people, and that we were going to change preach my gospel standards to make our numbers look better than they were. Both of those things were really against everything me and my comp had got set up for the zone. We were the only two who disagreed. We both disagreed so much, we vented a bit to our ward mission leader. Our ward mission leader is incredible. Like, is probably going to be a general authority before too long. He affirmed what we said was right, and that what was going on would ultimately hurt the mission, but he made us a promise. If we would fast and pray, we would either get an opportunity to change it, or we’d be able to be at peace with it. So we did. We fasted and prayed like crazy. We both woke up the next morning not exactly sure what we should do, only that we should start doing something. We decided that we’d write a letter to the mission president, just write it first, and then see where we were. We spent a lot of time writing it. When we finished, we felt that sending a letter was the right thing to do, but I felt like we needed to have it looked over before we sent it. Our ward mission leader actually edits Phd essays, so we sent it to him. He told us that we were too harsh in some things, so we rewrote it. It came out to be 3 pages long. We sent it to President Back, and gave him a call to read it. We explained to him that we wrote a letter on the things that happened at MLC that we wanted him to read. He said he would, but then said “You know, it’s funny that the two of you should call. I’ve been thinking about you all day. The decisions we came to at MLC, I think that if you feel like it should stay the old way, keep it that way. The things we talked about didn’t really matter anyway, and I’m fine if you and your zone do it the old way.” He hadn’t even read our letter, but God had changed his heart. It was the biggest miracle of my life so far. It may not seem like much in words, but honestly, if I needed proof the church was true, I got it.
So things are great. I got to go on trade offs with my trainer Elder Phillips (he’s an AP now), and had three of the most smash lessons of my mission. We had Zone training meeting, and it was the most powerful training I’ve ever given. It’s honestly been a really blessed week.
Time for some questions!
Why do you want to learn Maori and how will you learn it? I would have thought you might study Samoan. It’s pretty cool. It’s an almost dead language, but the most unique of the islander languages. It just sounds really cool (it’s the language of the haka in Forever Strong). If there is any language I don’t want to study, it’s Samoan. It’s the most confusing and ridiculous of all the languages.
Does Elder Weiss get chances to use his Spanish much? Occasionally
How is the work? Did you teach a lot of lessons again? Have you got any more people about ready to commit to baptism? Teaching a lot, but this week was crazy. We weren’t in our area for quite a bit of the week, and when we were, we were stuck doing administrative stuff, but it’s good.
What are you doing for P-days? What do you do for exercise every day?
We play volleyball for p-days, and lift weights for exercise.
Well, love you all. Have a great week!
-Elder Shelton