Zone Leaders Council

Russ held the Zone Leaders Council for June here at the mission home. We have nine zones, so that means we have 18 Zone Leaders. They came to the house on a Tuesday evening and stayed overnight so they could get an early start the next day. We give them pizza when they arrive, so they are very happy about that. On Wednesday morning they have breakfast, then they meet and discuss the issues and plans for the mission for the current cycle. After lunch, they finish up and always take a picture. We always hold this meeting the week after transfers. We consider it week one of the six week cycle.
Here we have all the Zone Leaders, the Assistants and the three Secretaries. These are some of the finest missionaries in our mission. We will lose four Zone Leaders and one Secretary in the next transfer, they are going home. The time goes so fast!

Our schedule is a six week cycle. Week one is the Zone Leaders Council - "Consejo". Week two we have four days of Zone Conferences. Weeks three, four, and five are interviews with the President, (he interviews all 203 of them!) and week six we have transfers. During transfer week we receive the new missionaries on Monday, and do their training and paperwork. They stay here overnight, then on Tuesday we have the transfer meeting - "cambios". The departing missionaries come back to the mission home with us for the "Despedida". This is the dinner/testimony meeting. Then EARLY Wednesday morning they leave for the airport. It is a busy few days, and there is never a dull moment. The last two cycles we have had missionaries come from the Provo MTC, but they have been late because of visa problems. This kind of puts a wrinkle in the schedule, but somehow it has all worked out. Sprinkle in a few Stake Conferences, committee meetings, Stake training with the Area Seventy, weekly emails, calls on the cell phone, etc.......... and there you have the mission life.