Wow, so this week has been amazingly busy. A lot of what we've been busy with this week has just been meetings meetings meetings. I did love the meetings which we had though. It's amazing how meetings like that can take it out of you just as much as tracting and stuff like that can. I've been so tired this week. I think being spiritually drained is just as tiring as being physically drained. On Tuesday we had Zone Leader Council. On Wednesday we had Leadership meeting. And on Friday we had a district meeting which required us to drive to pick up the sisters and then drive to the other district meeting. We've driven 650 kms this week too, just driving too and from the city as well as the driving we had to do to pick up the sisters, driving can take it out of you as well. So yeah, we've just been loaded with busy work this week. I've absolutely loved it though. I've really needed some of the meetings we had. I'm still trying to learn all of me Zone Leader responsibilities and all that. Zone Leader council on Tuesday was really good. I kind of felt like I couldn't give much input into the council part of it though because a lot of what they were talking about was follow up from the last zone leader council meeting. So maybe that means that at the next zone leader council, I'll be able to give more input. It's great to see mission leadership at work though. I imagine it's very similar to when all the apostles and first presidency meet together, except they have a lot more on their plates than we do. But we were able to come up with a lot of really good action items of things we wanted to implement into the mission and more particularly into our zones. A lot of them had to do with preparation for our visit from President Callister. He's in the Area Presidency. He's coming to the mission next week and touring all the zone conferences and for two hours after zone conference he is going to select some missionaries to be interviewed. What kind of question do you ask a General Authority? That's my big dilemma right now, because he will be interviewing all the zone leaders for sure. And we get to have a special Zone Leader Council on that Friday (the 18th I think?) with President Callister. It's bound to be a very very spiritual week. We're actually going to get to hear from 2 general authorities next week because next Sunday we will be having a stake conference broadcast from Salt Lake. I'm not sure who the speaker is going to be for that, but I'm sure it will be good, and even more spiritual. I feel pretty blessed by the amount of General Authorities that have come to visit my mission since I've been here. I've seen more General Authorities face to face in the past 15 months than I have in my life. One of the many blessings of serving a mission. And oh yeah, I do hit my 15 month mark this week, wowzers!
In the Wednesday leadership meetings that we had, we talked about a lot of the same things that we talked about in Zone Leader Council except for this time all the district leaders and trainers were there as well. We were able to talk about some of the action items we came up with in zlc and see how the district leaders felt about them. President Cahoon also gave some excellent training on being positive and how it can affect every aspect of our missionary work and our lives. I had never really thought about some of the things I do or say as negative until President gave his training, but it really helped me open my eyes so that I would be able to be more positive more of the time and hopefully have the positivity rub off on the missionaries in our zone.
I feel like I've had some really good opportunities on my mission to develop charity and love. If you want to succeed as a missionary you have to love those people that you're teaching and sometimes that can be really hard. Especially when they don't do what they say they're going to do. Or when they're just not progressing at all. It's often easy to be tempted to just drop people and never visit them again when they promise you they're going to come to church and then don't make it. What we really need to do though when something like that happens is just show an increase of love towards them. And it's not just situations like that, but just when people are rude to us or whatever it may be. We must remember that the worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God. I think I've just been thinking about it a lot with President's training on being positive. And also because of watching Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with one of our investigators. The part where Joseph Smith tells those that he is in jail with that every soul is great in the eyes of God really struck a cord with me. Everyone we meet deserves a chance to experience the blessings of the Gospel that we enjoy, no matter what we think they may say to us. If you don't approach them, the answer is already "no". Just some thoughts I've been having lately.
As a zone leader we correlate with President and the APs every week. It was so good to get to talk to them this past week. Especially President Cahoon. I feel like I'll be able to really build my relationship with him getting to talk to him every Tuesday night. It's so much better than just getting to talk to him once every three months. We mostly talk about the zone concerns and investigators, but if I ever do have a question for him, it's much easier to just ask him while I'm correlating with him. I love President Cahoon though. He's such a loving inspired man. Not only is he inspired himself, but the First Presidency was inspired to send him to this mission. We couldn't have dreamed up a better mission president than President Cahoon. He always knows what to say when he's giving us training that will help us. So in tune with the spirit that guy is. I love it. I love him. I love the gospel. I love serving a mission. I love Australia. I love Rockingham. Most importantly, I love the Saviour. I hope to develop the kind of unconditional love for others that He has for me as well as those that I meet. I'm so blessed by the opportunity that I have to serve Him. It's sad to think that I only have 9 months left to be serving Him full time. I pray that I get another chance later on in life to serve full time again.
I love you all! Keep the letters coming, or, start them coming if you haven't written me yet, (you know who you are!) I pray for your safety both physically and spiritually each night. I know it's a dangerous world out there these days in both of those categories. Thank goodness for the armor of God!
Talk to you all soon!
Much love,
Elder Tanner
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