Zone leader responsibilities

It's been a crazy week. I love my new area, but feel like we don't get
to do a ton of proselyting sometimes because we have other things
responsibilities we have to do as zone leaders. For example, MLC took
up part of Thurs night and all of Friday. We stayed the night at the
Amarillo ZLs apartment and drove to Lubbock from there. The meeting
was really good. It was all about being a leader and how to do that
better, which was great. Then, we had to drive back to Borger after
that. It was a long day. We got up at 4:50 and didn't get to Borger
again until around 8pm.

Today is another good example of zone leader responsibilities. We went
to district meeting in Dumas this week (we switch off between the two
districts) and after had to drive to Spearman to inspect this
bunkhouse the Perryton elders were maybe going to stay in sometimes to
save on miles and such when they had to go out to Spearman. We left
for district meeting at 9 and didn't get back until about 4 (and
district meeting usually goes from 10-12).

We got a sweet new investigator this week too. His name's J and
he's the boyfriend of this less active girl, T.
The Borger sisters passed them off to us because they are supposed to
only teach Spanish speaking people. The lesson was at our Bishop's
house and went pretty well. The Bishop and his family showed up late,
though (to their own house!) and it wasn't the most in-sinc lesson
we've ever taught. We still need to work on our teaching unity since
it takes a little more effort being in a trio, but the Spirit was
really strong during the first vision. He's going to read the BoM and
T is wanting to work toward going to the temple.

We also got to go do some service for this lady this week. She
had called the church building in Borger to ask for some help moving
since we were "the most trustworthy people she could think of". So we
went out there and got to help her load
up some of her stuff and move it to a storage unit (since we have a
truck). It turns out she's a member of the church and her daughter
happens to be too, but neither of them knew the other was a member
until they were both trying to find people to help her move. They
both called the Church, haha.

I'd like to share something I learned from MLC:
During the meeting Pres Heap shared an experience from when he was
stake president and went on trek with his stake youth. At the
beginning of trek, right from the start they all took off. Within 30
min of walking, the handcarts were all way far away from each other.
People just wanted to be the first one to camp. But that's not the
legacy our ancestors left when they first crossed the plains. They
took the time to break the rock-hard ground and plant crops that they
just left behind so others behind them would have food. That's the
legacy we have to uphold. We cannot leave any one of God's children
behind. It's not about who gets there first. It's about everyone
getting there safely. So watch out for our brothers and sisters and do
everything you can to help them get safely home to our Father in
Heaven.

Love,
Elder Carlson