Ministerin​g vs. Administer​ing

Well let's start off with a scripture this week. I read it this morning and liked it! D&C 97:8 is the one. Sometimes, at least for me, I get wrapped up in all the expectations and responsibilities I have. I don't necessarily get stressed out or anything but sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and relax and realize we're trying to do what's right. And if we're honest and moldable and willing and obedient, then the Lord will look at us and regardless of whether we're struggling or doing okay, he'll be pleased with us.

Well it's been a pretty crazy week! We had MLC which is our mission leadership counsel meeting for zone leaders, sister training leaders, assistants, and Pres/Sis Center. Super good meeting! It's just nice to know you're among some of the best missionaries in that meeting, coming together and talking about the same thing, which is our purpose and how we can carry out the focus of President Center to the rest of the mission. We learned a lot of things in the 5 hour meeting, but most of it was exclusive to our own leadership assignments. The idea behind the meeting is to take notes and use what we learn to form an outline for our zone meeting a couple days later. So we prepared a training on the importance of goals, planning and preparation, and we assigned the STL's in our zone to give a training on revelation through the Book of Mormon. 

The only problem was that we got caught up in our own area the night before our zone meeting. We were teaching our closest investigator to baptism, Shane, about the Plan of Salvation and things went into overtime, plus we gave him a blessing to help him quit smoking. So by the time we got home it was like 9:45pm haha and then we had to plan the next day as well as prepare for our training the next morning. We went to bed at like 11 and woke up and got ready and started up our zone meeting at 9 am. It turned out pretty good! We were kind of all over the place, but the spirit was there guiding us and that's the main thing. It was nice to just finally meet all the missionaries in the zone...our zone goes out to Kanab and Kaibab! Anyway, President and Sister Center were there as well just for fun or something beats me. But it just goes to show if you have an extra 10 minutes to burn, just ask President an inspired question about how we can be better missionaries and he'll fill up the time! haha but the sisters gave a great training as well and the whole meeting itself was a success in our opinion. It's just been tricky to find the balance between ministering and administering between our own area and all the missionaries we cover. We're getting a hang of it though!

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Pukahi from Hawaii after zone meeting. Such a big teddy bear! One of my favorite elders! He's working in the Pineview Spanish area, so I got to speak some spanish! que bueno. We had 0 appointments though and like only 4 people answered there doors all day, so not a whole lot happened. But we did get to go into Buena Vista 2 for a little bit! Gosh I miss that area! We contacted a couple spanish families that I had run into while I was there last year. I'm honestly more trunky to go back there than I am to go back home. But oh well! Elder Pukahi has been out for 6 months and half of his mission has been in English, so his spanish is about as good as mine haha. We made it a fun day though.

Yesterday we decided to go to the Crimson Cliffs ward to get more involved and maybe meet a potential part-member family. Well, turns out the ward was doing part of their "Mission Impossible" program going on, which is the ward's little exclusive missionary effort for the youth. Part of it was that the youth needed to prepare talks in advance because as a missionary you never know when you're going to get called on to speak or teach a lesson. So the bishopric called up like 7 random youth to speak, and they had a musical number by the young women, and even after all that, there was still 20 minutes left of sacrament haha. So the bishopric pulled one on Elder Lewis. Haha the counselor re-emphasized the fact that as a missionary, you never know when they'll ask you to speak... "...so we'd like to ask Elder Lewis...if he could give us a few remarks..." hahah I was laughing at him! I was thinking the whole time that we'd probably get asked to go up, and so I was thinking of scriptures and experiences. But they only asked him to go up! haha shoot. He did a good job and shared a couple great thoughts. Lesson learned though, and the bishopric definitely got the point across!

Other than that, we've eaten a lot of Mexican food this week. I think the families we've eaten with have all conspired because we've gotten tacos, tacos, fajitas, and tacos respectively this week. Go figure!

Well, gotta run!

Love,

Elder Payne!