April 8, 2013

Hello Family and Friends!

 

Hope you are having a great week this week! Conference, as always, was amazing. All of our investigators were able to watch at least some of conference at home, and Edwin actually came to church and watched the Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning Sessions with us. It was a very missionary-themed conference.

 

Our exchanges this last week took us to Guntersville AL, about an hour south of Madison. I worked with Elder Campbell, one of our district leaders (knows McKenzie J). It's a very beautiful area. The city itself is on a small peninsula extending onto Lake Guntersville. I really enjoy exchanges. They give you an opportunity to see someone else's teaching style, and you just learn a lot of things.

 

Friday night President announced that Salt Lake has instructed the mission to assign "sister training leaders", a new leadership position for sisters. We don't really know the specifics or how many there will be, but they will attend our monthly leadership council with the assistants and zone leaders.

Our zone training meeting that Elder Oslapas and I conducted went well on Tuesday. I was so stressed out about it, but the spirit really kicked in and helped. It ended up being almost 3 1/2 hours.

 

Our zone has 16 elders and sisters (a relatively small zone) with 2 districts of 8 people.

 

One of our missionaries in Cullman is a visa missionary for Brazil, and this morning received his visa. There's going to be some switching up in the next week. When I email next Monday, Elder Oslapas and I will be in a tripanionship with Elder Cowan (from Athens). His companion (Elder Cowan) will go to Cullman to replace Elder Measles (the visa missionary) and serve with Elder Van Wagenen. This Elder Van Wagenen just so happens to be Craig and Tyler's cousin! Diana had mentioned that he was serving here before I left, but since I've been in the south of the mission until now I forgot about it. Elder Oslapas and I will remain the zone leaders.

 

E is really progressing to baptism. He was able to meet some more members of the ward Saturday and Sunday and is super excited about the whole thing. He's been taught everything. If all goes well it will happen on Friday.

Zone leaders pretty much have unlimited miles. We're trying not to abuse it, but both of our bikes are in need of repair right now, so we've actually not done any bike riding yet.  With what I said about the miles don't interpret that as I'm being lazy. We're still working real hard. It's just that with at least one exchange a week we don't have time to bike.

The mission is really helping me learn to handle stress. I'm really grateful that I'm in a small zone in this leadership transition. If I had been in my former Montgomery zone (with almost 40 missionaries) that would have killed me!:)

As I said, conference was wonderful! I loved seeing the BYU choir perform Saturday Afternoon (I recognized a lot of people, including Allie S--- from Eagle)! I was actually kind of sad for me that I wasn't there with them. But what I'm doing is more important. I really enjoyed both of President Monson's addresses. I always enjoy them, but this conference I think they may have been my favorite talks. Elder Perry also did an inspiring job.

 

I really liked the 4 steps President Monson gave in Priesthood:

1. Search the Scriptures Diligently

2. Plan with a purpose

3. Teach the truth with testimony and

4. Serve the Lord with love.

I'm really going to try and apply those thoughts to my mission. His talk gave me a lot of insight and answers to missionary questions I had been looking for.

 

We've been teaching E and M (&others) as well. We taught E again on Thursday and basically went over the baptismal interview questions with him. He's progressing, but his baptism honestly probably won't be for a few more weeks. M is just really struggling receiving an answer right now. He has a great desire to make the right decision.

 Well, I think that's everything. Hope you all have a great week. Im glad that I was able to transfer the pics. Now I can focus on actually taking pictures in my new area!

 

I love you all!

 

Elder Coleman Madsen