Week 86 - The week of My first Zone Conference as Zone Leader! WOW!

This week we started off with a Multi-Zone Conference on Tuesday and for the first time, I had to give a training in a Zone Conference as the Zone Leader in Rivera.... I was low-key freaking out. It was a really great conference, but it was kind of nuts getting everything setup.  We had to organize the breakfast and lunch for everyone during the conference because it was going to be in Rivera so we had to run around trying to figure all that out on Saturday which was nuts. We also had to organize a special musical number for the zone on Monday, and then during the conference we also had to sneak out in the middle to go get all the food. We had to set up the tables and chairs beforehand as well. Lots of little details I never thought about until I had to do it. Ha ha!

Our musical number was 4 of us from our zone. It was Elder Cox, Elder Sandholtz, and I singing with Hermana Blake playing the piano. We sang "How Great Thou Art." Elder Cox sang the melody, Elder Sandholtz sang Tenor and I sang Bass. It was really hard though; I was stretching to get to those Low F's. Ha ha! 

Afterwards, Elder Cox and I gave our training on working with the members and it went really well. I was actually really surprised. I was super nervous during it, and after I was kind of wondering how it went, but after the conference, President Dunford came up to me and gave me a HUGE hug, (really though all of his hugs are huge) and he just told me that the presentation was outstanding and that now he knew why he had felt inspired to make me a Zone Leader. That was a really great feeling.

 

We've been having some hard time with the few people we've been teaching recently, and in trying to find more people. Elder Cox and I both felt that the most important thing that we can do right now though is fortify the members, and we've been trying to do just that this week. We learned a lot preparing for our presentation and we went nuts trying to help out the members this week and we have already seen a huge difference. We went from a difference of 36 people in church last week to 57 yesterday. We just visited a lot of less actives that sometimes come, and they ALL came yesterday. It was great.

 

This scripture stood out to me a lot this week. We asked our bishop to share his favorite scripture and this is what he shared with us. 

Ether 12:4

 

4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.  

 

I could literally give an entire talk just on this scripture but I am going to do my best to not do that.  I just found one interesting thing that our bishop mentioned. He said that lots of ships when they are about to face a storm actually use more than one anchor to protect the ship. They will generally use 3 in a triangle formation to completely keep the boat from moving. One thing I thought as he said that, is that the logical thing to do is obviously put down more anchors when trouble comes. In a gospel sense, I feel like too often when people are experiencing the "storms" the first thing they do is pull their "anchors" up and then blame them for the "storm." That will obviously do no good. The Gospel is meant to protect us IN our trials not FROM them. 

I'm going to stop there before I write a talk. I know the Church is true!

I love you all! Nos vemos!

 

-Elder Martin

Bryant meeting Elder and Sister Uchtdorf

From his previous area - Bryant and Elder Prado

with President Dunford