Utah Salt Lake City Mission - President and Sister Condie

The weeks keep flying by. I’m sure most of that is due to the busy schedule we are keeping. It is transfer week next week so this week was spent largely arranging the companionships and areas of our approximately 170 missionaries. Last transfer I was so anxious, yet it seemed to fall into place. This time, I was much less anxious and it seemed to be so much more difficult. Ultimately, I felt I had put together companionships and areas that I could take to the Lord for his confirmation and approval. Even then, however, I needed the Assistants’ help to move areas around to make sure the Districts were even and appropriate. I attended and participated in my first two Coordinating Council meetings (a meeting with approximately 10 stake presidents and an Area Seventy) to coordinate the work of the stakes in that council area. Both of them went well and in the Holladay Coordinating Council, I was able to see an old friend from the University of Utah who was now the stake president of the s...

  Anne and I completed our first round of zone conferences – two last week for the 7 Salt Lake Valley zones and one this week for the 2 Wyoming zones. I felt like they went well for the most part. The missionaries seemed to be re-energized to do the work and expressed many compliments. My talk at the beginning of conference was on obedience. I felt like it was one of the most inspired talks I have ever been involved in writing. It seemed to almost write itself and I could see it in my mind clearly as it was formed. It was based largely on Elder David A. Bednar’s talk to the young missionaries in the MTC titled, "The Blessed and Happy State". The rest of the week was spent mostly finishing up missionary interviews in Rock Springs, Evanston and Park City.  Anne and I did, however, also attend our first stake conference as mission leaders Saturday night in the Murray Young Single Adult stake and were asked to speak. Elder Daren R. Barney, an Area Seventy, presided and spoke on...

Yesterday was such a wonderful day for Anne and me. We were able to attend 4 baptismal services, for 7 persons, in four different languages including English. In the morning we attended the baptisms of a husband and wife and the husband's sister (all in their late 20's and 30's). They belong to one of the Spanish speaking wards in the Millcreek area so the service was in that language. I am finding that my understanding of Spanish is improving but I have not found the time to practice speaking. The second baptisms we were able to attend were of a 19- and 21-year old brother and sister attending one of the Samoan wards in the Rose Park area. That service was obviously in Samoan. I was only able to understand a few words (baptism, testimony, and Jesus Christ). What a beautiful language and people! That afternoon we attended the baptism of an 82-year old man in one of the Tongan wards in Salt Lake City proper. I was surprised how different the Tongan language is from Samoan. A...

  In some ways it feels as if we just started. And in other ways, it seems as if this is all we have ever done. It's hard to believe that we hit our one month mark earlier this week! In two more weeks, we will have finished a full "transfer cycle" (missions operate on a six-week cycle or rhythm).  Once we will have completed our Zone Conferences in 10 days, we will have participated in most of the types of things we will be doing on our mission for the next three years. I say "most" because we still haven't participated in our first Area Council meeting (once a month), Coordinating Council meetings (once a month for each of the 7 Coordinating Councils), and Stake Mission Correlation meetings (once a month for each of the 68 stakes in the mission). Despite our schedules getting busier each week, we seem to be getting into the rhythm and feeling more comfortable with our responsibilities. A couple highlights from the week were: (1) being able to attend the fin...

What a busy week this past week! It was our first “transfer week”. We received 17 new missionaries (one from the Mexico Missionary Training Center on Monday and 16 from the Provo MTC on Tuesday morning); trained them all on Tuesday and Wednesday; coordinated the transfer of all those missionaries who were to move to new assignments; held the traditional dinner and testimony meeting for those missionaries completing their missions and going home; and then made sure the departing missionaries made it to the airport to catch their planes home to their families. Throughout the week a number of other activities also occurred, requiring various levels of Anne’s and my attention. Tuesday, we picked up the 16 new missionaries at the train station in Murray at around 8:30 a.m. We drove them to the Mission Offices where we held training for most of the day, followed by a climb up Ensign Peak behind the State Capitol building, a tour of the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City, dinner b...

As you can see from our failure to post last week, things have been busy. Let's start with family events. It was so much fun having all of our family stay with us for a few more days when they got back from their trip up to Bear Lake. It was a packed house but we had the room (rooms) to house everyone and it was wonderful having everyone together. We went to the Utah Bees minor league baseball game on the Fourth of July. The game was not all that interesting but the fireworks afterward were spectacular! We were so close to them, however, that ash and residue from the explosions would fall down on us and into our eyes. Most importantly, Kensington (our oldest grandchild) turned 8 on July 6  and was baptized in the same font as her Nana (Anne). It was so fun to see her excitement to be baptized and the change in her afterward. Everyone eventually had to travel home at the end of week and we were so sad to see them go. As it relates to our missionary service, Anne and I still f...

Prior to arriving on our mission, we sold our home in Winter Garden, Florida and our two cars and most of our furniture; stored what was remaining in a 20’ x 10’ storage unit; gave our dog Maggie to our son and his family; took a few trips; cancelled our membership at Bay Hill; retired from work at CATIC; participated in the blessing of our youngest granddaughter, and trained, trained, trained and did some more training. We enjoyed a tender mercy when boarding our plane to Salt Lake City. A s we boarded the plane, Anne pointed out that Elder Neil A. Anderson (one of the Twelve Apostles in our church) was on our flight to SLC. I said hello to him and told him I was happy he was on our flight. Anne and I were set apart (blessed and given authority) on Tuesday at the Church Offices in downtown SLC. I was supposed to have been set apart by Elder D. Todd Christofferson (another of the Twelve Apostles) but when we arrived we were told we were to meet with President M. Russell Ballard (th...