Missionary Moments: Avalon Week 12

Yes yes! it's the end of another Transfer, and I'm started number 10 of 17! So I'll be staying in Avalon with Elder Taylor for this up coming transfer! I'm pretty excited, he's a great missionary to work with. Being a ZL, we get told who is getting transferred in our zone and that's pretty much it (I asked him if he had any inside info regarding transfers since he's a zone leader). Not who's going where, which would be nice. You only get told that if you're really close with the Assistants to the President (AP's) and even they're told not to tell anyone. So usually it's an unknown thing as to who goes where. But I'm staying, and I'm happy about that. (I also asked him about ZL duties) Also ZL's collect all the numbers for their zones and report them. We also go on a lot of exchanges with other missionaries, where I would go and exchange spots with another missionary in a different area for about 24 hours and use that time to work in that area and train the missionary I'm with. So that's fun. We also get to meet with the stake president once a month to discuss the happenings in the zone (The zone boundaries are the stake boundaries): how many recent converts and their status, how the ward mission process is going, how many member referrals we received from people, etc. I actually haven't had the opportunity to go to one of those meetings in the 3 months I've been a ZL Things just keep happening to where it has to be canceled.

There's actually a missionary coming out to our mission that is one of my friends from back at MV!! His name is Keeton Stewart, and we graduated together. It's really cool because we receive a little paper that has all the people coming in and going out so we get to see the new missionaries' pictures and I was like hey I know this kid! And it said that he's from Orem!! It'll be pretty exciting to be able to see him because there's a slight possibility that we'll be going to the transfer meeting tomorrow, and there is a possibility that he'll be coming to my zone/district because there are 2 missionaries that have been assigned to be trainers, and there's only about 5-6 missionaries coming out. It's pretty cool!

In other news: Since President Summerhays is going home in July, there are some missionaries that are excited for the music restrictions (only MoTab, hymns, and classical music) to be lifted upon the arrival of the new mission president, President Topham. Due to that concern, myself, another missionary and the AP's have been assigned to be on the music committee to determine a new set of rules. This has been established in the hopes that we can come out with a new, more "relaxed" set of rules, that are specific and defined, so that it will reduce the anticipated explosive effect of removing this particular restriction. The restriction was put in place because missionaries in the past had abused the mission standard of music as far as to listen to bands like "The Killers" on grounds of "the lead singer is a Mormon." Ridiculous. So we are establishing a new law so that we can slowly drain the reservoir, as opposed to removing the dam completely. It's hard determining what music will be appropriate or not so we'll be having a conference call later tonight to brainstorm ideas and boundaries. Fun!

This week was a relatively good/odd week for us! We received 11 referrals this week which was an amazing thing that we got 10 of them from one of our members. We had dinner with this family, shared a lesson, then a couple days later tracted their street. We reported our findings which weren't very much. Then on Sunday the Mom from that family came up to us and handed us a little piece of paper that had 10 addresses of people in her neighborhood that she wanted us to go and visit! It was incredible! From those 10 names we received we were able to contact 9 of them; 1 was said that we could come back and another wasn't home at the moment. That was a wonderful blessing that we received from that member! What a great experience! We also had one of our part member families come out to church this week! They are the C......... and they are a great family. Sis. C........ is the only member in the family and her husband, Jeremy and their 2 kids aren't members either. It was great to see them out to church and they said that they really enjoyed it! We've been working with them for the past couple of months and we have discussed baptism with them a few times, and they said that they would like to but need to discuss it as a family more. However it is something that they want for their kids.

I think I'll wrap this one up, it's relatively long. :)
The church is absolutely true! I love it! I love being a missionary!

Love,
3LD3R 83NJAM!N 53RRAN0
These are from his memory card with no explanation so I'm guessing at the caption.