March 9th, 2013

March 9, 2013

Well this past week was pretty crazy. As you know we had all the Zone Conferences this week. We went to two of them, out of four. - Ours here in Broomall and the one in Philadelphia. I made a sweet power point with our announcements etc. that we presented at the Zone Conferences to all the missionaries, which went pretty well. The first zone conf. in Philly was cool, because President Vai Sikahema came and talked to all the missionaries. He only spoke at that zone Conf. though, but we got to sit in on it. We also helped with the lunch for the first Zone Conf. The rest of the days the Relief Society from the different wards provided the lunches. 

K so I’m going to answer a couple of Mom's questions. No, Steve Parker did not ever get baptized. I'll ask President about going to do baptisms with Kevin, I was kind of wondering if I could do that. Yes we just got snow the other day. But it looks like it's going to finally start warming up, I’m super happy about that. I do not like the cold at all. I don't usually run out of money, I just stop spending it at a certain point or I will run out. It's been a little hard here because we do eat out a lot since we’re on the go a lot or it's not always convenient to go home.  So kind of cool you brought up Jack Weyland, cause on Wednesday we were running the office by ourselves because the Sr. Couples were in Dover at the Zone Conf. And the Weyland’s came in and asked if we wanted to go to lunch with them. So they took us to this Mexican restaurant (kind of like Costa Vida) for lunch. So that was pretty cool. They go home around May.  That's crazy Dustin is getting put back in Afghanistan... I thought they were taking the army out?? 

Ok here is a little bit of what we did this week. 

Monday - We finished up a little of our P day in the morning. We went to Philly with the other Broomall Elders. Saw the Rocky Statue, and got some Philly T-shirts made, then worked on the mission stats, and got ready for Zone Conference. We had to make sure packages, letters and supplies missionaries had ordered were ready to be taken to the right places for the conferences. So it was a pretty busy night making sure everything was all ready to go. Throughout the week I’ve been working on Presidents computer. Dad helped me with it a lot; it had all sorts of issues. But I finally got it working towards the end of the week. President is ordering Windows 7 so I can load it on there. Tuesday- We drove straight to Philly (my old area) it was zone conferences for 4 zones - Philly North & South, Cherry Hill North & South. So we were there helping until about 2. Came back and did some office work. We went to mutual that night. We went with the Priest and talked about Preparing for a Mish and answered questions. 

Wed - Zone conference was in Dover so we didn’t go. So it was just us two in the office. We took advantage of the time and tried to work on some of our projects. Oh it was also the 1 year mark of meeting the whole Mass family when we went to teach him the first time. That night we drove to Philly because we had to drop something off for a missionary. Then we went and saw a part member family in our ward. 

Thursday - Was our own Zone Conf. So we did our Presentation but also sat in the whole time since it was for our zone. After we went with President to Staples to buy some stuff for his computer. Then we went over to the Baileys for our coordination meeting/dinner. 

Friday - We had District Meeting in the morning, went and ate with the district. Zone Conf. was kind of far up in Nazareth, for the Reading, Lehigh Valley and Scranton Zones. So we didn’t go to that one. Worked in the office as usual, we ended up staying in the office for a while because we had to finish making a report for President. Then we came home and planned for our week.

Saturday - Well I cut my hair this morning. I almost accidently cut one of my side burns off. It was close. It’s really warm today and I super love it. Monday is the beginning of Week 4 of 6. So pretty soon we will be getting ready for the new transfer... already. We’re going to have more new apartments to fill and get ready. 

Oh president had a couple cool announcements at Zone conference. We found out who our new Mission President will be - T. Gary Anderson from Hyrum, UT. So he will be coming here around July 1st. other announcement is that the church changed their policy and Missionaries can now "officially" email friends and converts along with their family. So won’t make much of a difference for me since I’ve been out so long, but it’s pretty cool. Would have been cooler if it was announced before I left. 

Umm. Let’s see anything else? I really like my new shoes! Hope Jared does well with all the Student Council stuff. I think it’s kind of lame how they are doing elections this year, but what evs. I met a Sister in our mission yesterday that is from PG and I didn’t even know it! Her name is Sister Millet. She graduated from PG in 09. But her dad just moved to Idaho Falls. But she is pretty new. Cool thing about being in the office is we get to see lots of missionaries that come through the office for various reasons. 

Well can’t think of anything else. Any questions about what I do in the office. It’s hard to explain everything we do cause there is so much. Well ttyl!

-Elder JJ