First Zone Leader Meeting - Spiritually and Physically Fed!

     It’s funny when you first start on your mission you see someone who has been out for a year and you think --"they are almost done!" Then you get to your year mark and you just laugh because the end is still soooo far away!

     I have now found out my purpose as a zone leader...motivational texts. It’s my life now.  Twenty-four hours a day I am thinking of a motivational texts that I can send out to the zone to pump them up to do missionary work. I would bet money that some tears have been shed from reading my texts!

Flying to Singapore - Incognito 

     We had our zone leader meeting in Singapore this past week.  Singapore is so amazing and our zone leader meeting was super, super good!  We all met in the high council room and President Mains said that he will run zone leader meetings exactly how the Brethren run their meetings, so everyone first stood up and bore their testimonies. Then President Mains gave his opening remarks which were really inspiring. He talked about how we are examples to our fellow missionaries and how we should always be happy and positive. Then we just discussed problems and solutions. The major thing we talked about (for like two hours!) was that since the church in Malaysia is brand new, the members are still super reliant on the missionaries. For instance, President Mains took the Elders out of a branch in Miri and moved them into my branch.  The old branch was given to the Sisters and within a month the branch was barely surviving. The branch counselors became too stressed out, so they stopped coming to church and then everyone else stopped coming too.  Eventually there wasn’t even enough people to have the other two hours of church, so they just cancelled it altogether. We discussed that missionaries could hold callings in a branch presidency if needed--which would be a huge change—OR, each branch could get two sets of Elders.  One set of Elders would be for strengthening the branch (helping the Branch President, helping members with callings, and helping them prepare for temple) and one set for tracting. President Mains said he is going to pray about it and let everyone know what we our going to do at our next meeting.   

 Ahhh, the life of a zone leader--Chillin at Chili's!
Forget about all the other Elders eating rice and
beans back in Malaysia! 

     It’s crazy how fast time flies. Mom, don't worry I will be home before you know it!! Thanks for all the support, I love you so, so much! I have a quote in my journal that says, "Be the Missionary that your Mom is praying for." I live by that quote every minute of my mission. Whenever I get down or want to take a minute off, I think of you and that quote and it motivates me to work harder. LOVE YOU!

Elder Madsen