April 1, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!
 
Things have been going well in Madison! We were able to go to the temple on Tuesday. 
After the temple trip, we went on an exchange in Athens, which is about 25 minutes west 
of Madison. We spent the night there and came back to Madison Wednesday morning.
 
We committed Ed--- to baptism on Friday (April 12th). He's been to church twice now - 
sadly he wasn't able to come yesterday. He had to take some pretty severe medicine (for 
his MS) the day before and he just wasn't able to come. He's still really excited about 
everything though. He's been to church twice.
 
Er-- is another investigator we have. He's dating a member of the church and has been 
having the discussions for a few months. He just really wants to make sure that he is 
making the right decision, and that he doesn't join the church for the wrong reasons. 
He's come to church both Sundays, but between the two he got pretty sick so we weren't 
able to teach him this last week. We have an appt scheduled in a couple of days.
 
M--- is another investigator we have. He's also been investigating for a while, and 
really enjoys church. He is just having difficulty recognizing the spirit, and in turn, 
an answer of whether it's all true. He has been coming to church really regular, and for 
the last 3 sundays has brought his girlfriend with him. She's really felt at home in

relief society and we're trying to arrange for the sisters to go over there and teach her.

Mom to answer your question - Missionaries are organized into "districts" with 
a district leader, and districts are organized into "zones" with two zone 
leaders. Up until this transfer we had 6 zones in the mission and 12 zone leaders, but 
because of the rapidly growing numbers they created 3 new zones, so now we have 9 zones 
(18 zone leaders). The zone leader position is unique because our proselyting area is 
techniquely the whole zone (which is all of the missionaries in the Madison Alabama 
Stake). We go on exchanges a lot (at least once a week), and conduct training. Elder 
Oslapas ("oh-sh-la-paz") and I will be conducting a 3-hour long zone training 
meeting tomorrow.
 
We had zone leader council in Birmingham on Friday (probably on the blog) with all the 
zone leaders, the assistants, and a couple sister companionships that President specially 
invited. (Since a lot of the decisions we make are about sisters, President wants to make 
sure their voice is heard). By the way, you probably saw this but Elder Kaupert(Coleman's 
first companion) is the new assistant. It was over 5 hours long and it was a new 
experience to be trained by President in that kind of a setting (it was kind of intense). 
I enjoyed it though.

((from Susan - A good friend of mine growing up, Janet, lives in Decatur AL with hubby 

Jim and their kids--Colemans zone!!))   

Both the Decatur Elders and Sisters have mentioned in calls we've had that they've met 
Sister B-- and that she's asked about me. The Decatur Sisters asked for my address 
because evidently she wants to send me a package. We'll probably be headed to Decatur on 
exchange some time next week.

Well, I'm about to be booted off the computer. Hope y'all have a great week!
 
Love
 
Elder Coleman Madsen