Sorry this letter comes late! We've had a CRAZY week this past couple of
days! It's been pretty weird getting used to the new assignment as a zone
leader. It's kinda blowing my mind; there was SO MUCH administrative work to
get done! It took us straight from Transfer tuesday 'till sunday to get it all
figured out; we had Zone Goals to create and report, Evaluation forms to fill
out, Exchanges and district meetings, and all other kinds of stuff. It was
really weird sitting in the church all week instead of proselyting! We did
manage to get a little bit of work done, but largely we've had to rely on the
Lord working in our area instead of us. I have met one investigator; his name
is Eric and the lesson we had with him was amazing! It was incredible teaching
with Elder Jenkins; he's super developed as a missionary! Eric's story is
something else;
Eric met with Elder Buckmiller and Elder Haws originally, which was RIGHT
after Elder Buckmiller left Taft. He was atheist, but he really caught the
spirit of the message and was progressing way fast. At some point though, he
slipped up, felt unworthy, and dropped them! After a long while, he texted
Elder Bernards and Elder Jenkins (Who had no idea who he was) and said "I want
to be baptized. Can you give me the lessons so I can do that?" They thought it
was a joke for a while! But after they realized what was going on, they started
teaching him, and now he is set to be baptized on the 25th of December. White
Christmas!
The reason I got this letter off late to everyone is because we didn't have
P-day till today! On Monday, Elder Jenkins and I went down to Ventura for a
"Zone Leader training" meeting. It was a super spiritual meeting and really
helped me catch the spirit of sacrifice that this assignment requires. It's a
very curious point of the mission, because of the 14 Zone Leaders, 7 were new.
The coolest part of the day was President Castro took us on a hike up into the
mountains, and as we went up, we broke into different groups and discussed
different parts of the 5 areas of focus: we are Preach My Gospel Missionaries,
We Baptize, We Obey with Exactness, We Seek to Be Trusted More Than Loved, and
We Teach With Power and Authority. As our group went up, we discussed "we seek
to be Trusted more than Loved. It was SUPER helpful to analyze leaders I
trusted and ones I struggled to trust. When we came back down, we had a short
soccer match. It was great fun, and I actually scored a goal! President Castro
was the Goalie on our team, and it was really wierd to see him out of his suit
and running around like that but it was awesome! To his credit, we won 5-0, so
they never actually managed to score on him although really talented players
tried!
Tuesday we had our Mission Leader Councle meeting. It was super insightful
to see all that goes into those. We learned a lot about SO MUCH it would be
impossible for me to recount it all to you now. But it was really great.
I love you all, and I'm very excited for this transfer and this Christmas
season. I don't anticipate to have e-mail problems like this for the next
little while, but we'll see what happens. Take care and be awesome!
Love,
Elder Matthew David Clough
