March 2012 Zone Conferences

It's time for zone conference once again.  Time goes by quickly 

when you have to plan for interviews and training for ZC.

This time around I will be training on nutrition for the interviews

and baptisms for the conferences.

This was my little set up for interviews, President called it 

my pre-school.  I don't think that's quite fair.

I just need a little visual aid to keep the missionaries attention.

I started by asking each one to pick a day in the near past and tell

me what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I'm was planning to

 see a few things from this.  First, what are the missionaries eating, second,

are they getting the proper nutrition and third, what kind of meals are they

being fed by the members.  Just curious.

It was very enlightening to find out what they are eating.

For instance, for breakfast I saw everything from fruit smoothies to 

cold cereal.  One sad elder had a pepsi and skittles. (don't ask)

For lunch I saw everything from dinner leftovers

to rice and chicken to beans, rice and tortillas.

The common factor in most lunches. . . hot sauce!

The hotter the better.  I guess it kills the taste buds.

Then we went over their day and made sure they were getting a balanced

diet with a little something from all the food groups.  For the most 

part, they are all doing pretty well.  Then I gave them a paper with

information on what foods to get specific nutrients from.  Vitamin D,

Vitamin C, potassium, iron and fiber.  Did you know that cocoa powder

has iron?  That's right, chocolate is a necessity.  Yeah!

On the back of the paper, I shared with them a few fun, easy and 

inexpensive recipe ideas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Just in case

 their are tired of the same old thing.  I felt it was a very good training

and now I know for myself that our missionaries are eating alright.

After their interviews, they were invited to taste a few samples of the

recipes I gave them and some St. Patrick's treats, green milk included.

We tried something new this time around, we combined four of our zones

into two.  We are trying to see if we like it.  We interviewed one zone

on Tuesday, had combined zone conference on Wednesday, and 

interviewed the other zone on Thursday.  

 The Bonnie Doon and Ed North zones, play fishbowl.

Preach My Gospel books on the head, ready for the first question.

Now they look for a hymn, with only a few lines read.

You'd think the piano players would have an advantage, but not so much.

Now this is their real strength, scriptures.  They amaze me at their 

knowledge of the scriptures and where to find good teaching passages.

The Relief Society sisters are so kind, they set the tables, provide

 fun napkins and served "Cafe Rio" for lunch.  The elders love it when 

they serve sweet pork and they even buy the round aluminum foil pans.  

Now that's going the extra mile, for sure.

District ties!

This was our first combined zone conference.  The thing I liked

about the combined conference the best,  the singing.  They sounded

awesome when they sang "Called To Serve" for the sisters that served

us lunch.  Not too shabby, as far as singing goes.

 Red Deer Zone Conference, lots of sisters in this zone,

yeah!!!  We did interviews and conference on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The area got hit by a huge snow storm Tuesday morning, mission cars 

were spinning out all over the place, they never did plow the parking lot.

On Thursday we drove to Grande Prairie for interviews and then

did their zone conference on Friday, in the high counsel room, no less.

They like to play fishbowl just like the "big" zones.

Put your heads together elders and see how many missionaries you

can name, now serving in the Canada Edmonton Mission.

  Don't forget the sisters and the office missionaries.

Their names used for fishbowl, obviously the brainy BC's

are truly the brainy ones.

Lunch served us by the sweet Grande Prairie sisters.

Final combined zone conference, Riverbend and Millwoods, playing

fishbowl.  They were really competitive.

We had to have the combined conference in the chapel because we

are so big, but we had to move the fishbowl into the Relief Society 

room because they get so excited and so noisy.  

Can I just say, that I think the activities that the assistants are coming 

up with are getting a little out of hand.  A little too complicated.

They need to take it back to the basics, Preach My Gospel and

scriptures.  Get away from the physical challenges.  They did do

one cute one for the sisters, they had them tie a tie.  Now that was

clever.  Do you think I'm partial?