This week was jam-packed full of awesome meetings. We had district meeting on Wednesday, and on Friday we had a zone meeting as well as interviews with the president. The district meeting was pretty good. After it was over we went to this Thai restaurant. Our zone leaders contacted the waitress in Mandarin (all Asian restaurants are run by Chinese people). But the great part was the sign that they had over their bathrooms. There was one bathroom labeled "man," one labeled, "sheman," and one labeled "disabled toilet." I wish I could send the picture, it's hilarious.
President Brower has decided to do interviews a little bit differently. Since there are going to be 190+ missionaries that he has to interview soon, we are going to have a zone meeting every other transfer. The meeting will be taught by the zone leaders and in the meantime President Brower will be interviewing one missionary at a time. I think it's a good system. During this past zone meeting, we were watching one of the Preach My Gospel videos. The particular clip we were watching had Elder Ballard and Elder Scott talking about goal-setting. Sister Brower walked by halfway through the video, poked her head in the room, and said, "I thought I recognized that voice."
My interview with President went quite well. He is a very inspired man. The missionaries in our zone have noticed that he always puts his hand on your shoulder when he walks you to the interview room. We joke that when he does that he can read all of your thoughts, feelings, and past experiences. We joke...but we also wonder...
After interviews I went on travels with Elder Johnson down in New Market. Elder Johnson is from Mexico, but he was adopted into a LDS family when he was 12. He joined the church just a few years ago. I learned a lot from him, especially about how to improve my contacts. Friendliness is so important in missionary work. Of course that goes back to talking about hockey and ugly dogs in sweaters, which I'm trying to be better at. A lot of the people we've been talking to lately have mentioned the tornadoes that have ravaged the Southern states recently. It seems that everyone is okay now but that's really unfortunate.
The Elders quorum lesson this week was on gardening. I saw the teacher writing about vegetables on the board and I thought that he was either joking, or there was some deep symbolism and there was going to be an object lesson. But it was a legitimate lesson from the priesthood manual and it was all about gardening. I didn't know we taught things like that in Elders quorum. Most of my elders quorum experience has been either on my mission or at BYU, though. And BYU lessons were, "Get married," "Temple marriage," "Dating," "Mission prep," and "Get married."
I can't finish my letter until I say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLER! Sorry I'm late. And congratulations on surviving your first camping trip. It will be nice to call home on Sunday.
--Elder Wade
