First P-Day in March

To all my great family, friends, fans, etc!-

Well first off hopefully I can say everything I need to say in a short amount of time because we have something epic going down today, actually pretty soon. You all know that we had South Zone Conference last week so tomorrow is North Zone Conference... because of that everyone in the North will be down in Yerevan today for Preparation day so... we organized a huge North versus South Soccer Game! Elder Simonsen and I rented out a field and everything! It is going to be great because even Georgia is going to be there so I will get to see all my good Georgian buddies... plus I get to see how well the British actually play socceer... Elder Lucas is going down! I actually anticipate that soccer won't last very long so I brought a football too, that would probably be more fun anyway...

Well now that I have bored you enough off to the important things!

Our Preparation Day last week was full of busy preparation for Zone Conference, but we were able to get everything done and it turned out great. I know you probably don't care but I am going to give you the Zone Conference report because I think it is interesting... so here we go!

Well we started out with announcements and things as usual but since it was Elder and Sister Dutson's last Zone Conference we gave them a little bit of time to bear their testimonies and give us some advice and things... the awesome thing was that Sister Dutson bore her testimony in Armenian!!! It was one of her goals to be able to do that and she did great! Afterward she asked me how many mistakes she made but I didn't notice any because the Spirit was so strong! After that Elder Simonsen did a little skit thing regarding the transfer game, it was humorous and a bit silly but the sad thing was it is really that bad right now. We also gave some advice on how to avoid playing the transfer game. For those who are unaware of what the transfer game is basically it is when missionaries waste time and effort trying to guess and worry about were they or other people will be going or who they will be serving with and things for the next transfer... basically it's a big waste of time and President Dunn hates it... that's why he asked us to address it. Anyway after that President Dunn talked for about 30 minutes and told us a bit about our new Mission President. I don't remember his name, but I wrote it down... I think you can actually find it on the Newsroom, [President Reese A. Carter] but anyway he is pretty young... 55 [ Michael is so kind] and President Dunn thinks he will do great!

After all that the talks started and like usual everyone did so great with the topics we assigned... it just blows me away how good people are at speaking and teaching and things like that... I almost feel inadequate... but anyway. Elder Stutz started out our talks with blessings he receives from being obedient to mission rules. Next, Sister Crego very creatively and interestingly taught us how to have an effective Companion Study, followed by Sister Cornwell teaching us how to have an effective Language Study. Then, Elder Pulsipher taught us all how to use goal setting to reach the Standards of Excellence that President Dunn has given us. Next, Elder Gull and Elder Jonas did a little activity teaching us how to plan an effective meeting based on our investigators needs and helped us practice a bit. The next round of talks started with Elder Lusk teaching us about the power of the Spirit in conversion, followed by Sister Bishop showing us how to use the Book of Mormon to give our teaching power. Finally the first session ended with Elder Chaney teaching us about holding ourselves personally accountable and Elder Clark sharing with us how to find joy in Missionary work. It was busy action packed but a super good first session.

Our lunch went really well, we went down to Gold's Gym and had Hamburgers, fries and fruit salad. It all tasted great. After lunch our Second session started out with Elder King and Elder White giving us a great musical number. They said they had a hymn planned and although it wasn't a hymn it was still good, they did a little Simon and Garfunkel for us all. Then we talked to everyone about making Personal Covenants and how we can use those to have miracles happen in the work and just be all around better missionaries. I felt like it went really good and the general consensus is that people enjoyed it and are now trying it! Next the Assistants talked about the Consequences of Willful Disobedience and just did a great job. I really enjoyed it even though I felt like I had so much to improve on... that's life, constant improvement. Our snack went great we had all the brownies that Elder Simonsen and I made with Ice Cream on top and everyone said they were super tasty... YES! Next President Dunn gave us his presentation called "Arise and Shine" it was basically part 2 of his last presentation "Crossing the Rubicon" and was awesome! He pulled a lot of ideas for those 2 presentations from a book called "Leadership" by some old Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve back in the day... sounds like a sweet book I wonder if I can find it someday! Anyway we ended with a good testimony meeting and that was it.

Overall I just felt like it was a phenomenal zone conference. We were really pleased because President Dunn had nothing bad to say about it, he just gave us a lot of praise! The best thing is the next Zone Conference in 7 weeks I won't even have to worry about planning! Since it will be a Mission Conference, it will all be on the Assistants... we get a break!

As for the rest of our week nothing super out of the ordinary or exciting happened, just work as usual. A few of our investigators are doing super good especially Igit, Narine, and Karlen! The best thing is that Karlen accepted a Baptismal date for March 27th so hopefully we can help him continue to progress and reach that. We are still in
a big finding mode, so hopefully as we apply all the great things we learned at Zone Conference, we will find success and miracles.

Well, I am sorry most of this letter was just a Zone Conference report, but I can't really think of anything else to write so I should probably just end this. I hope you all have a wonderful week and keep on keeping on!

Love,
Elder Piercy