First Zone Conference

Hello everyone! Hope everything is going well! Here is what happened this week.  

Tuesday 

Today was the most lessons I have ever had in a day.... it was crazy! It was fun and made the day go by way faster, which was nice. Tomorrow i have my first zone conference.  We will be heading up to the capital of Addis Ababa in the morning. 

Wednesday 

Well today was my first zone conference!  Wouldn’t you know it, I was not in typical Adam fashion and we were late.  We didn’t account for traffic and ended up causing us to be late.  This did not look good. Other than that, it was nice to see everyone.  I learned a lot and took lots of notes.  As we were in the conference and I was taking notes and listening to what the speaker was saying I began to think about this from not only a missionary standpoint but also a District Leaders standpoint and thought about how i could help my district. How Adama (the town I am serving in) can become a branch quicker. I tried to incorporate what was being taught and how I could use it in my daily missionary life.  Overall, it was a really good conference.

Thursday

No trainers.... WOOOHOOOO (not in a good woohoo, but in a I am dying manner) The trainers as I explained in earlier emails are also zone leaders.  This means they must travel to check on the other missionaries in the zone.  This is really hard for me and the other zone leaders’ companion (we all live together in the same apartment in Adama) because me ant the other zone leaders’ companion are new missionaries and our language is not to the point of conversational.  When they leave it is a real challenge for me.  I feel like I can’t keep going without trainers, it is hard. Today was pretty much just a finding day which is interesting. I don’t like finding but it’s ok. My comp got his phone stolen coming back from exchanges. He lost it in a taxi or the bus.  The bus driver allowed him to frisk all the people on the bus, (That would never happen in America) however, no one had it.  So, we are just guessing it got stolen in the taxi.  This is a real challenge as the phones are given to us by the mission office and we can’t just go buy a phone on the street.  The mission office is over 2 hours away by car.  So now we are sharing my phone 

Friday 

I am going to skip this day. It was just hard with the language and everything. I was just done with it all.  Tomorrow will feel better, so I am going to leave it at that. 

Saturday 

Welp, I woke up really early and ate liver for the first time. The taste wasn't the problem it was the texture! I didn’t like it. I am not sure what type of liver it was, maybe cow, maybe goat, maybe something else that I will never know.  But today was big prep day because tomorrow we have our primary program! My companion and I have been working with the children for several weeks and I am just praying and hoping that it will go well but we will see. For the program we had food/refreshments and the missionaries helped pay for food, so it was a lot of our time today was spent buying food and getting things ready for the program.   We did manage to squeeze in a few lessons here and there but that’s it. Let's see how tomorrow goes.  I am praying it goes well.

Sunday

WE HAD 52 PEOPLE SHOW UP for church and the primary program! Usually we have around 20 people, so it was really nice to see so many people!  We visited with all the people that attended church and then spent a lot of the afternoon cleaning up after the people left.  The mission president has us doing a technology and social media fast which is nothing I worry about.  I have been able to manage my time wisely and not let this control me on my mission.  However, it is a big problem with other Elders and will be a challenge for them.  This means no Facebook, no emails. No internet.  Good luck to the other missionaries. 

Monday (today)

We ate lunch when we woke up (can you see the pattern) called home and now we are going to play pool at one of the many spots to go play on P-days! But that’s it for today phone shuts off at 6 tonight (my time) let's do this! Let's find people!

Email next week 

- Elder Frasier