Spiritually Jam-Packed Week

Family,

We have a spiritually jam-packed week. It started with General Conference this weekend. Then we had a Zone Meeting on Monday. We went to the Temple today. And on Friday we have a Zone Conference. That means we have to wear our suits a lot... (and now that conference has happened it is again a rule to wear suits every night from dinner on... Not excited for that)

Conference was great. I was very much looking forward to it and it did not fail to exceed my expectations. I took upwards of 10 pages of notes. I hope they were useful... I feel like I will get much more out of it when I get to read the talks in the Ensign in a month. With the announcement on the age of missionaries my first reaction was that I wish it came out earlier so I could have gone straight out of high school! But after that initial selfish thought I realized that the age change wasn't meant for me it was meant for other 18 year old crumb crunchers.

The Zone meeting that we had yesterday was great. We are implementing a new way to set monthly baptismal goals. When Elder Maynes came a couple weeks ago he suggested an idea of a "rolling 3" where you set goals and make plans 3 months at a time for baptisms. So instead of just setting a goal at the beginning of October for October baptisms. We set a goal for October, November, and December and then we reevaluate each month. We have names to back up the numbers in most cases but for some of the November/December baptisms we realize that we will probably find them within the coming weeks. So that is what we will be using from now on. Also, we received news that we will be getting new mission vehicles. Subaru Legacys and Toyota Tacomas instead of Chevy Colorados. That will be fun. I love what we drive now though (2012 Ford Fusion).

The temple today was wonderful as usual. I spent time in the Celestial room with Elder Barton. He is one of my Zone Leaders and he knows a whole lot more about doctrine than I do so I decided to have a quiet conversation with him there while we could speak about pretty much anything. It was very insightful... He told me a few things that I hadn't heard before and got me thinking about things that I hadn't thought about before. Ha ha ha. Deep doctrine... I could spend a lot of time talking about that with him. It's interesting to find out what is and isn't doctrine in Christ's church but in the end I do know that we have all we need in the beautifully simple Doctrine of Christ and the rest is just add on to that.

I'm sure Zone Conference will be wonderful.

Gotta send.

Love,

Elder Paxman