How About That

29-08-2015

The highlight of this week was the zone conference held on Wednesday and Thursday (three zones each day), led by Elder Dyches of the Second Quorum of the Seventy (and counsellor in the area presidency). It was quite a different zone conference from the time Elder Ballard was here or when Elder Moreira visited. Though from the sound of it, it was similar to when Elder Texeira came to the mission just before I arrived. As some might say, Elder Dyches "threw down". He spoke about things that a lot of the missionaries are not doing as well as they could. And he even looked at the daily planners of some and spoke about what could be better in each one. But it was of course a very uplifting conference and he gave a lot of great advice. 

On Monday, we discussed the plan for the week, mainly concerning Elder Dyches' visit and everything that needed to be done to make that go smoothly. I was not as busy as usual with President's assignments, haha. That evening was the first time for the new Leiden elders at our weekly dinner appointment. Right before, we sent them to the less-active grandson's house to play a prank on the greenie and then we picked them up. Apparently the prank was successful.

The next day, we drove to Rotterdam to help clean out the Rotterdam senior couple apartment, since we will close it soon. A good ten people were there to help with the cleaning. Mostly, we packed the furniture and kitchen stuff into four different vans and transported it to other apartments and to the old Zoetermeer church for storage. It was a long day. We were unable to return and change before our dinner appointment that evening, so we went to it in our work clothes. It was pretty weird, to be honest, not wearing proselyting clothes at the temple president's house, haha. But they were fine with it. Afterwards, we made a last trip to Zoetermeer with the rest of the furniture.

Wednesday. My companions drove the supplies (and two elders that slept over) to zone conference and we worked in the office most of the day. 

Thursday. We went to zone conference early in the morning and arrived well on time. Long gone are the days of arriving an hour late to zone conference in Apeldoorn, haha. The conference started with a talk by President and Sister Bunnell, followed by President Scheltinga. All three very good talks. After a short break, we heard from Elder Dyches. He spoke about the questionnaire we filled in a few weeks ago concerning Preach My Gospel and other missionary stuff and concerns that were mentioned there. He also spoke about the things he had learned on his mission in Germany and during his time as mission president in Oregon. The third main topic was working well with members and local leadership, something President Scheltinga also touched on. All in all, a great conference.

In the morning, I stayed in the office with one companion, while the other drove to Brussels with a group of missionaries for legality. Maybe one of these days I will go again, but I will have to see. Maybe when my new companions are here.

For p-day, we played football and it was fun; we also cleaned our house for most of the rest of the day. In the mid afternoon, we went to some weird restaurant and I ate a philly cheese steak. It was not terrible, but the service was slow and it was on the expensive side. After showering, we went out to work, happy with how our house had turned out, in spite of the age and wear and tear through 23 years of missionaries.

"Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world." -  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan