Councils, Learning and Fun!

This past week was filled with great association with fellow missionaries. Mid-week was Mission Leadership Council, where mission leaders, from throughout the mission, met in Zagreb for instruction and to council together. 

Thursday and Friday we stayed in Zagreb for the Sister Missionary Conference. 

Thursday afternoon was filled with activities that strengthened relationships and allowed us to get better acquainted. We got to try some folk dancing, speed friendship and 'guess that baby'.

Our first presentation was on the Parable of the 10 Virgins presented by Sister Cordray. We had a discussion and learning about the priesthood by President Cordray. In the afternoon there were 13 vignettes about heroic women; from the Bible, church and family history.  It was fun a to discover unknown cousins using "relatives near me" function of Family Tree.  A beautiful special musical piece by Sisters Rolfe, Unsworth and Gardner and time for personal reflections made it a rich spiritual experience. 

(Sister Lamb presenting Mother Teresa)

Another treat of the Sister's Conference was that the Elders did the cooking, headed up by Elder's Throndsen and Connors. Elders Parkinson and Goodrich had "dough detail", making naan and Elder Reed was the "johnny on the spot" support. Thanks, Elders, it was DELICIOUS!

A HUGE Thank you to President and Sister Cordray and to all the missionaries who made it happen!

All photo credits: Brian Cordray

 

 

Christmas and a New Year

 Well we are doing things for the second time now that we made it past our one year mark. We are now some of the "old timers". We don't know if we like it, but it is what it is. We are getting to be slackers on making our posts to this blog. I have some catching up to do.

We had wonderful and very fun Christmas Zone Conferences. Zone conferences happen every six weeks and is when half of the missionaries all get together for two days of meetings and some fun. We meet in Belgrade Serbia with half the mission and then do the same routine in Zagreb Croatia. So on those weeks we are gone ALL week. For our Christmas zone conferences, Day 1 had a spiritual focus. One activity was our learning about the many names and titles of Jesus Christ.  On Day 2 we had games, skits, white elephant gift exchanges, watched Elf the movie and had awesome food. The young missionaries had a great time. We have 38 that have been here for less than three months so we tried to help them not to be homesick. I think we succeeded. 

As our mission covers five countries, with three major religions, we have several different holidays to honor. The Catholic countries of Slovenia and Croatia celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 and 26. Then in Serbia and Montenegro the Orthodox celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7. Bosnia being primarily Muslim, as you know, don't celebrate Christmas but we went with Croatia for us missionaries anyway. It was kind of weird Dec. 25 was a normal day with school for kids and all the stores open. 

We hosted the other senior couple and their family visiting from Nevada and our six young missionaries. We had a house full. It was fun with a late breakfast more games and a small gift exchange followed by a movie and gingerbread house building. Sister Lamb gave the young missionaries nerf guns so they played like they were littles kids. It was good for them and Helen was happy, it helped her to not miss our family in America. 

Helen and I did our usual contributions to Christmas morning. I read the account of Christ's birth from Luke and Helen sang and led us in Christmas songs.

And yes that is an electric guitar Helen is playing.