Utah Salt Lake City Mission - President and Sister Condie

It seems impossible that Anne and I are celebrating one year as mission leaders! (The picture above shows our first day feeling very inadequate to fill the shoes of David and Lisa Prier who preceded us as mission leaders of the Utah Salt Lake City mission.) One-third of our mission experience is over. So much has occurred over this past year that giving a summary will not seem like a summary. Therefore, some of the highlights of the past year include: being set apart for our assignments by President M. Russell Ballard, the presiding Apostle of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles and Elder Kevin W. Pearson, the Area President of the Utah Area of the church; going to the ER on my first day because of an episode of Transient Global Amnesia. attending four days of training at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah with entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the senior leaders of our church); starting our official service on June 28, 2022 and so began the adventure of s...

  Tomorrow is Memorial Day. I'll spend part of the day at my father's gravesite with my mom and siblings. Anne took flowers to her parents' gravesite today. Memorial Day for me has historically been just a national holiday where I got an extra day off from work. Maybe it's because I'm "retired" and no longer employed that it has taken on a different feel and meaning for me this year. It seems the focus on Memorial Day is generally directed to the remembrance and honoring of our fallen military personnel and the sacrifices they made to protect our freedom. That, and the many sales. It is also a day, however, to remember our deceased ancestors and others who sacrificed so we could enjoy the blessings and comforts we do. I'm grateful for my father, who taught me through his example the importance of a good sense of humor, patience and charity, humility, honesty, and most importantly a knowledge and testimony of a loving Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. ...

"In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. ... And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for his is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay." Matthew 28:1, 5-6 With the Easter holiday behind us, I add my testimony to that of the angel, that He lives! He is our Savior and Redeemer. That by Him and through Him we may receive forgiveness of our sins, strength to overcome them and any other weakness we may have, and healing from all diseases and infirmities, sadness and discouragement of every kind. The week preceding Easter, Anne and I were blessed to be able to attend General Conference at the Conference Center for the Sunday morning session in which the prophet Russell M. Nelson spoke. What a wonderful talk - as were all of them over the entire Conference Saturday and Sunday....

  (photo of Summit/Wyoming Zone missing) Between zone conferences and stake conferences, it seems there was at least one conference every week this past transfer cycle. Following our typical format, we held two combined zone conferences down in the Salt Lake valley and one for the Wyoming zone up in Evanston, Wyoming. A wonderful spirit of camaraderie and learning was felt throughout each of the conferences. Additionally, the many stake conferences Anne and I attended and participated in were each full of the Spirit and were so uplifting and edifying. The most recent stake conference was held in the Murray North stake. Elder Matthew R. Clarke was the presiding authority. During my talk, Elder Clarke realized that we went to high school together and were in the same graduating class. Then, afterward, Lisa Nordgren Hansen came up and said hi. She too was in our graduating class from Skyline high school. It was fun to reconnect with both of them. And Tracy Burger, one of my coworkers ...

  (Replica of the Christus, an 1833 white Carrara marble statue of the resurrected Jesus Christ by Bertel Thorvaldsen located in the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark. The one pictured is located in the Conference Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah) "Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." 3 Nephi 5:13 It has been a while since my last post. Some of that is a function of how busy missionary life is and some of it is a function of some of the repetitive aspects of missionary life. The natural cycle of a mission is 6 weeks and I feel like Anne and I are getting into the rhythm of the 6-week cycle. We are, conservatively, working about 76 hours a week trying to plan, organize, minister, and administer to the needs of the mission and the approximately 180 missionaries currently serving in the Utah Salt Lake City mission. We received a great bunch of new missionaries from all around the world, 16 in total. T...