Two Weeks Full of Conferences

 



We enjoyed a couple weeks full of conferences. It started with stake conference in Green River, Wyoming November 5th and 6th. They kept us busy. We were asked to speak in the Leadership meeting on Saturday afternoon, the youth devotional Sunday morning and the general session also Sunday morning. 

Just a couple days later, we started our first mission tour with Elder Hugo E. Martinez and his wife on Tuesday, November 8th. Elder Martinez is a General Authority Seventy and member of the Utah Area Presidency. Elder and Sister Martinez were so gracious, helpful, inspiring.


We started our tour with a Zone Conference up in Evanston, Wyoming for our newly created Summit/Wyoming Zone. Following the conference, we were able to enjoy dinner with the Martinezes back in Salt Lake City. That was followed by Zone Conferences in Salt Lake City over the next two days and finished with a Missionary Leadership Council meeting that Friday to conclude the mission tour.

The next day, Saturday, November 12th, we were able to spend the afternoon in leadership conferences with Elder David A. Bednar, one of the Twelve Apostles and learn from him. He was brilliant, personable, kind and enlightening. I could listen to him explain gospel doctrine and principles for days on end. What a blessing to be able to attend that conference. As would be expected from one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles, Elder Bednar bore a powerful and solemn testimony of the real and literal resurrection of Jesus Christ and the restoration of His church on the earth.

We had to rush from those leadership conferences to the other end of the Salt Lake valley to attend and participate in the adult session of the Salt Lake Big Cottonwood stake conference that night with Elder Michael T. Ringwood (also a General Authority Seventy) and his wife. We were able to talk with a few people after the conference that Anne knew from her years in Salt Lake City.

Then this afternoon, we attended and participated in a special stake conference for the Salt Lake Stake (Tongan) with Elder Jonathan S. Schmitt (also a General Authority Seventy). What a beautiful, warm and gracious people and culture. It was a great conclusion to a busy two weeks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Celebrating One Year!

Image
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...
Read more

"Sorry, it's been a while between posts."

Image
 Sorry I haven't posted for the last two months. I'll do my best to get caught up ... In July, we welcomed 54 new missionaries to the mission. The church is integrating service missionaries into existing missions. Previously the young service missionaries were not part of an organized "mission" but, rather, served under their stake president and a couple of senior missionaries called to be Service Mission Leaders (SMLs). The SMLs still work with the service missionaries on their day-to-day service assignments, trainings, etc. But now the SMLs operate under the Mission President of the mission in which their service missionaries live instead of the multiple stake presidents where these young service missionaries live.  We had our first “integrated” zone conference on July 11 th . It was wonderful. We had most of the service missionaries from the Salt Lake valley in attendance. One of the sister service missionaries did a musical number that was one of the best I have e...
Read more

Conferences and the Reconnection with Old Friends

Image
  (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 ...
Read more