Zone Conference, District Conference, and an Organ Recital

This one is again for all my faithful followers and stalkers!-

It has definitely been an interesting week full of ups and downs and fun and work... aren’t missions just awesome, but all is well in the end and we just keep having a great time doing the work of the Lord! We had some great things happen this week... Zone Conference, District Conference, Organ Recital, etc. so I guess I will stop boring you all with my intro and just move into the fun!

Well, last Preparation Day was a bit busy, it always seems to be when we are trying to prepare for Zone Conference, just so many errands to run... getting haircuts, food, setting up rooms, etc. but luckily we were still able to find some time to get some great Indian food at Karma for lunch and get my suit fitting done. I need to tell you all, my suit is looking “fly”! I hope it just looks so good in the end, actually I know it will so that isn’t even a concern!

We were also able to have a great meeting on Monday with our investigator Emma, who is doing well and we had our MP Lia’s help, which is also really useful. We took things really slow and just talked about scriptures (Bible and the BofM), specifically focusing on why we have them, what is in them, etc. and then we talked about prophets just to help her understand it all better. The meeting seemed to be good, especially because her daughter came in at the end and was able to just testify about the Book of Mormon along with us, so hopefully she was touched by the spirit!

Tuesday, Zone Conference, ended up being a great day! Our Zone Conference went really well, and I think everyone enjoyed it. People actually told us that it was the best one we have had in a while so that was exciting! I guess I will try to give a quick recap, the only unfortunate thing was I was doing a lot of translating this time around so I didn’t get a lot of notes, hopefully I can remember most of it. This conference was a bit different because we took an hour off the start and the end, so they aren’t so long, so it was just 11-5, but still seemed really great and effective.
President Dunn’s morning talk was a lot of business on Emergency Preparedness and things that he wants to cover before the new Mission President arrives so he doesn’t have to worry about it. Then we had quite a few talks from different missionaries. Let’s see, my son Elder Garner spoke on Finding the Elect, Elder Reece talked about using faith to get through difficulty and adversity, Sister Ferguson talked about serving with all your heart and mind, Elder Stutz gave a great talk on the Gift of Tongues, Elder Clark covered measuring our Diligence and improving it, Sister Bishop had a interesting topic on how we can know that our planning and goal setting is moving the work forward, and finally Elder Chaney gave a great talk on Beware of Rationalization. We felt really good about all the talk assignments we gave out to the missionaries and they really covered what we wanted and made the meeting go well.

Our lunch was ordered from a place called Top Table that delivered really delicious Sandwiches, baked potatoes, fruit salad, and Carrot cake (which was pretty darn good). After lunch rather than have the Assistants and us give separate talks we decided to put our time together and play a game. It was something different and people really seemed to get excited and enjoy it, plus, it was effective! We made a Jeopardy board with 5 categories and 5 questions for each, worth different points. The teams got to pick the category the question/concern they wanted and every team then got to pose an answer and we had Elder and Sister Shulz judge. We worked really hard on coming up with concerns we face in the work and I think it was helpful, effective, and a great activity. If I remember the categories were... Investigator Concerns, Less-Active Problems, Doctrines of the Missionary lessons, Christlike Attributes, and Questions of the Soul.

Our snack was Ice Cream Bars, which was easy and refreshing, and then it was President Dunn’s turn. I really liked President Dunn’s talk as usual, it was called “To Change, or not to Change” and focused on making a decision to change for the better and always work toward that for our entire life. This was probably President’s last talk to us so he wanted to make sure it would be really meaningful. I actually translated President Dunn’s talk and think that it was super helpful for our Armenian guests too since it wasn’t particularly focused on how to be better missionaries, rather how to be better people. Finally the meeting ended with testimonies, which was enjoyable as usual. I have to say I left Zone Conference feeling pretty good and pumped up... plus I don’t have to plan the next one because it will be a Mission Conference in 4 weeks with Elder Scott, Elder Rasband, and President Powell! I guess that’s the recap, sorry if it was boring for you.

O, I forgot to tell you the other thing that happened to me on Tuesday morning! Well we wake up and Elder Gull starts telling me how he went to the bathroom last night and saw the biggest cockroach he had ever seen in his life... I laughed because that is gross, but didn’t think much of it. I showered first and went in the bathroom and looked at the floor, didn’t see any roach and figured it was gone so I am just in the shower doing my thing you know and I felt something on my leg, I figured it was just water and ignored it... but then later I felt it again higher on my leg... this time I look down and the biggest cockroach I have ever seen is just crawling up my leg... needless to say I freaked, smacked it off and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to wash it down the drain... he put up a good fight... in the end I got him. For the rest of my shower though I did have one eye on the drain. I got out and told Elder Gull the story and then he mentions that he forgot to tell me he saw the roach on the tub not the floor of the bathroom. It was pretty disgusting, but also a pretty funny story, I thought you might all appreciate it.

After our Zone Conference we had a meeting with our investigator Nara, but it didn’t go as well as some of them have in the past... something just felt a bit off, I guess we will see though. We taught about the first half of the plan of salvation and thought it was just great but, something just didn’t click I guess. We all felt the difference, Elder Gull, Lia and I... but we hope our next meeting will be better. Unfortunately we didn’t meet with her after that, but we are hoping to see her today so I guess we will see how that meeting feels.

The next exciting thing that happened this week was an Organ Concert/Recital, I don’t know what I am supposed to say, that happened on Friday. President Pearce, the Branch President in Malatia, works at the American Embassy and his mother in law came to visit them. I guess she is a really well known organist who plays with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and she ended up doing a free concert for about an hour in Center during her visit. It was a really cool thing and she actually played a few songs I have played in High School Band, which was cool, specifically 2 John Philip Sousa marches. She also did one song where her 3 grandsons (4,6, and 8 years old) played with her so that was cool. Overall it was a really enjoyable time and we had a lot of good members come and also some investigators from lots of missionary companionship's. Friday night, I started losing my voice though, which was interesting... probably from all the screaming and cheering at the concert (KEESE!!!)... but it only got worse later.

Saturday, I could barely speak, my voice and throat was just in rough shape. I don’t really know what got me sick... an Armenian said it was because I drank too much cold water, but either way we went out for part of the day after planning session, then in the evening I just came home and slept.

Sunday was our District Conference and it went really well, I enjoyed it. We had an Area Seventy from Moscow visiting... Elder Reshitnikov, and he gave a great talk! It was interesting though having him speak Russian and having a member translate it into Armenian. Elder Gull and I took our young new member Mher to the meeting and I learned that it’s pretty hard to keep a kid quiet and occupied for a 2 hour District Conference. I was kind of listening with one ear to the talks and using my other senses on Mher. I still had a good time though and was able to learn a lot. Again President Dunn also gave a really good talk here and just really gave some good last words to the members since he doesn’t know if he will have time to speak in 4 weeks at the Conference we will have with the members and Elder Scott. My voice was still pretty messed up yesterday... actually I was supposed to help the Assistants translate for the Senior couples but I wasn’t really able to do that, but I did get a Priesthood blessing from Elder Gull, Elder Carlson, and Elder Williams, so I am already feeling better. Plus our Branch Missionary Lia gave me some Armenian remedies that I am sure helped out as well, one was Blackberry Preserve Tea and the other was eating a Lemon. The lemon one wasn’t so fun, but I just wanted to get better so I tried it. I feel pretty good today and my voice has gotten a little bit better, so hopefully I will be good to go in a couple days! The rest of our Sunday was spent in meetings, no rest for me since I rested on Saturday, and everything seemed to go pretty well.

Our new investigator search is going to continue this week, since we would really like to get busier with investigator meetings, and I am sure I will be having miracles to report on next week. We have a referral from our member Vika that hopefully will work out well, and we are just going to pound the streets and seek out the elect!

Well I guess this is kind of long so I will wrap up my letter now, I hope you all have an amazing week. I will be writing next week same place, same time!

Love,
Elder Piercy