The Very Busy Life of the Zone Leaders

I never ever realized how busy life is as a Zone Leader until this week.  I wrote in my journal the other day how I have never felt so busy but done less teaching in my entire mission.  There's lots of things that Zone Leaders have to do like lots of planning, lots of random "errands" (like clean out an old missionary apartment of an area that got closed), and give trainings at Zone Training.  Elder Swan put it this way, "We do lots of stupid things so our zone can just focus on the work."  

Elder Swan has been out one transfer longer than me, is from San Diego, CA, and has been a ZL in Sioux City for 2 transfers.  He's also one of the funniest people I've ever met and I feel like a lot of our conversations consist of him telling stories and me laughing at them.  Its been a really fun week. 

Like I mentioned earlier, we had Zone Training this week.  It was so great to actually get to meet the Elders and Sisters of this zone and to be able to talk with them about how the work was going.  Elder Swan and I felt like the best thing that we could do would be to talk in our training about potential, setting goals, and broadening our vision.  A lot of time as missionaries, its easy to slip in "habits" and not really try anything new, even if what you're doing isn't bringing a whole lot of fruits.  This seemed to be something that the whole zone has been struggling with.  With this transfer brought changes to almost 1/2 of all the companionships in the zone, which means a lot of "newness" and a lot of potential.  We trained about how the adversary makes us think that what we're doing is "good enough"  and that he puts ideas in our heads that our areas are "fine where they're at".  This gospel and this work is to help us with our eternal progression, therefore we have to constantly be putting an effort into everything that we do.  According to our District Leaders, the whole zone really liked it and has got a lot of excitment about this transfer and the good things that are going to happen!  This week we start exchanges, so I'm excited to get to know the zone better and to work with them! 

In other news,today a member from the Sioux City 1st Ward drove all the Sioux City and Storm Lake elders down to Omaha to go to the zoo!  It really is the world's best and it was a lot of fun!  

I hope your week was great!  I love you!

Lots of love,

Elder Zack Paddock