Dear Family,
We’ve now experienced five
straight days of zone conferences. President Gifford meets with each zone, rather
than combining them into larger groups, so the instruction feels more like a
classroom than stake conference. The APs, Zone Leaders, and Sister Training
Leaders all give instruction; Josh and I taught “Teaching By The Spirit.”
Having been taught the Learning Model by Elder Bednar when he was our college
president, we teach through modeling, role playing, and interactive discussions
with limited lecturing. Our smallest zone was 11 missionaries in Craig and the
largest was 24 in Montrose. Two of the stake presidents joined us for part of
the day, which was impressive. We stayed overnight in Craig and Rifle and drove
close to 400 miles. We’re loving it! Each day the Relief Society provided yummy
lunches, and one of my favorite parts was singing “Helaman’s Army” to those
sweet sisters and ending with an additional line: “And tha-ank you for the
food!” We smile and clap and they cry—every time.
I marvel at the miracle of
missionary work. Even though these missionaries are young (Sister Gifford says,
“they’re just six years out of Primary”), and sometimes act their age, when the
Spirit speaks miracles happen. They have to be out of their apartments at 10 am
and work until 9 pm, mostly riding bikes and walking, even in winter. For every
100 doors they knock only 1 person will get baptized (Josh says it used to be
1,000 doors). Today as we were almost home we met two of the missionaries
walking to the church. We gave them a ride and asked how long it would have
taken them to walk: “About an hour and a half.” At least it was about 40
degrees (the high temp for the day).
Saturday we went to two
baptisms. At the second one Josh met two of his former students; one of them
went with Business Club to Florida in 1996 and remembered Amy. We seem to find
Ricks College/BYU-I alum everywhere we go. Today we went to the confirmation
for Jessica Martinez. Her mother is Catholic but came to the baptism and
confirmation and stayed for Gospel Essentials class.
Surprising week for the
family. Rexburg had a power outage one evening and the Badillos were out of
power and Richmond had a 15-second earthquake. We understand a earthquake is
why the Richmond Tabernacle had to be torn down.
Sweet thought from
President Monson: “Love is the very essence of the gospel and Jesus Christ is
our exemplar.” Bulletin board in Primary Room: “Exaltation is our goal;
discipleship our journey.” President Uchtdorf
Have a wonderful week. You
are in our hearts and in our prayers. Sure do love ya, Karen/MOM
