ZLC, GC and Companion Exchanges

Hi Family!

It's been another busy week! Here's the wrap-up!

Tuesday: Zone leader council. Elder Barney and I held a 45-minute zone leader orientation beforehand, since 7 out of 10 zone leaders were new enough that they had never been to a ZLC before. (President Jones canceled the ZLC that had been scheduled for the beginning of the month - we generally have them monthly). We started teaching a nice Chinese girl named Ivy, who we taught a second time yesterday between sessions of general conference. She calls herself an atheist but she describes herself in terms of agnosticism. She is super curious, though, about Christianity and asks a ton of questions, which makes our lessons a lot of fun for us.

Wednesday: I brought Elder Perazzo, one of the Grand Rapids zone leaders, for an exchange at MSU. We had a great day, with five fantastic lessons - two of which were taught to investigators with a baptismal date, and a lot of good finding. We saw a fun T-shirt a girl was wearing that inspired my new motto. On the back, her shirt read: "Man up. Do work." That evening, we had dinner with Lindsey, who is being baptized on the 17th, and her parents. It was great to meet her dad and to be able to answer her parents' questions. They're great people; although they don't necessarily agree with Lindsey's decision to be baptized, they have encouraged her to do what she feels is right and never stop asking questions. Great advice from any parent!

Thursday: Among other things, we had a great lesson with Charles on the word of wisdom. We were nervous he wouldn't receive it well, but he seemed to really enjoy the lesson and committed to live accordingly. He's still planning on baptism in a few weeks on April 24th.

Friday: I went down to WMU (Western Michigan University) for a trade-off with Elder Riley. He is so cool. It was fun to get the perspective of working on a different campus. We had a really awesome lesson with a student from Burkina Faso. He converted to Christianity in his youth, causing his animist parents to completely disown him. Intense.

Saturday and Sunday: General conference was great! It's hard to pick a favorite talk, but I probably most enjoyed President Uchtdorf's comments on patience in the priesthood session. Overall, I felt very much that the Spirit was telling me that I need to develop greater charity. I still have so much more love that I could give to others. This was just one answer to a question I asked going into conference - "what lack I yet?" Lindsey and Levi were both able to attend multiple sessions of conference (Levi seemed particularly impressed by the priesthood session, and rightfully so). We rounded out our weekend with a delicious Easter dinner with President and Sister Jones and their son Nick, who was visiting with his family from Illinois.

Love,
Elder Cloward