Zone Conference

Zone conference happens about once every 3 months. We travel up to Montreal (about 1 1/2 hrs.) and go to zone conference from 9am-2pm... this includes lunch. The 2 mission assistants do some teaching and then we hear from President and Sister Cannon. This time we reviewed the talk given in Oct. conference of 2011 by Elder Matt Richardson. He's the one who spoke on missionary work... (are you are REAL missionary? .... and a mission was the best two years FOR my life) It was excellent. Usually the senior couples in the area are in charge of the luncheon for everyone.... So... we got to go to this zone conference and then next week will go back to the second zone conference and work in the kitchen and help serve. While we are in meetings, the senior missionary couple in charge of vehicles are outside checking everyone's car. They wrote "Wash Me" on our back window.... hmmmm. In our zone there are 9 sets of elders, 1 set of sisters, 1 set of assistants, & President & Sister Cannon. There are also normally 4 sets of senior couples, but 1 set was in the kitchen, another set was called to work in the temple that day - and the 3rd set works in digitizing geneology records and usually do not come, so it was just us. The four elders down front left are all serving in the Mandarin ward and have a tradition of all 4 wearing the same tie to zone conferences - they are Elders Shaver, Tam, Nzojibwami, & Bell. The sisters are Rodriguez and Fitch. The two zone leaders are Pistorius & Erickson, & the two assistants are Elders Jacquier and Williams. The back row left to right is Elder Reid, Elder & Sister Mahaffey, Elders Bonny, Garcia, Jepperson, McLean, Lockhart, Resek, Blank, Rollingson, Green, Mollinet & Rasmussen.We did Hawaiian Haystacks... (for 50 !!!). They were a big hit... of course, I forgot to take a picture of the lovely serving tables until everything was almost gone! sheesh!
Still, it was a great conference and lunch. Sister Cannon got up at the end & presented everyone who has a birthday coming up in the next 3 months a candy lei and their companion has to give them a birthday wish. You can just IMAGINE what that was like ! ha! It was, all in all, a really wonderful first experience with zone conference.