Yaateeh my family!

Well it has been quite the week here in Winslow. Their is a lot of responsibilities that come along with this new calling to serve. Last Monday we spent all day driving up to Farmington for Zone Leader council and didn't get back until late Tuesday night, so basically two days of work were gone. The meeting was really good though. It is fun to be able to work closely with President Jones and receive council and direction from him. In the meeting we primarily learned of what we are going to be teaching in zone conference. We have three zones that get together for zone conference, so that is quite the pressure for me to prepare something of benefit and present it to that many people. It is on the 22 so we have a couple of weeks to get everything put together, so hopefully it all works out. We do it with the Flagstaff Zone and the Page Zone. Our Zone is the Winslow Zone and it covers: Winslow, Josph City, Holbrook, and on the rez Sanders, Greasewood, Dilkon, and Leupp. The two district leaders are serving on the rez so when we do exchanges it will be fun to go spend the day there. There is one set of elders that we are worried about. It came up in district meeting the other day that they are not doing companionship study, and we got a phone call from some other elders who were told that they are doing a lot of hanging out at peoples houses and staying out late. So last night when we called President we talked to him about it and what we can do to help. Then this morning we went to go fax numbers in and the guy that we go to do that at is the high councilmen over that branch and said they slept in and didn't come to their PEC meeting. This is where it comes hard for me to be in a leadership spot, but it sounds like we are going to have to uplift them in some way. We have some idea's so hopefully we can get across to them.

We are working with some really good people. It is a lot different here then anywhere else I have served. I have never had to deal with someone on probation before. Now here it seems like most of the people we are working with have to wait to be baptized because they are on probation, and most of the recent converts had to wait because they were. But something that we realized is that it took something dramatic like that to change their life, and now they are doing really well. There is a man and a women that we are working with that got their children taken away from them, and that's what it took to get them to stop drinking and smoking. Yesterday in church I saw Rachael's mom and went and talked to her. Her other daughter is not baptized and really wants to so we are going to start meeting with her. That would be pretty cool to baptize sisters, and they live in different states. We will have to see though I guess dad doesn't want her to get baptized.

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I know I will! Time is flying by! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Schmidt