Zone Conference & Zone Leader Council

Hello my friends. This week was a big deal for my mission. We are coming up to then end of the year and our baptismal goal is 720. Last year it was 610 and we hit 555. This year we are now just over our last year actual which means we have a long way to go to hit our 720. We are praying and fasting to find more people to teach. There is a really unified feeling in our mission right now and we've seen some pretty amazing miracles of families being found and accepting baptismal dates for December.

This brings us to our next point of conversation. We had Zone Conference this weekend on Friday and we discussed that if each of us could achieve 2 baptisms per companionship we will hit our stake goal and our mission goal. We have one on-date and most everyone else does too but we need to find one more person! It's quite a challenge with school coming to a close but there has to be some students staying over the holiday. After zone conference we had a zone leader council that was only 3 hours instead of the usual day on Friday and we had it at the Seattle North Stake Center instead because we held the meeting right after zone conference. We discussed our goal for next year and you could feel a pretty powerful feeling in the room.

After much prayer and council we set our new goal for the 2011 year. Our new goal is 1000 baptisms for the Washington Seattle Mission. This is amazing! Our mission is improving more and more and it's interesting to see why mission presidents are called at certain times. Our mission goal in 2008 was 416 and they hit 446. Only three years ago the goal was 416 and now it's 1000 with a Stake in our mission preparing to split. We may have a new zone within the next year. If we were to get 416 this year we would have all felt like failures as missionaries and yet... that was a big deal just three years ago.

I love seeing the mission become more unified and teach the doctrine better. Especially the doctrine of baptism. I thought baptisms were always a huge thing and expected investigators to be perfect. The opposite is true. After baptism the Holy Ghost is what gives people the drive to stay worthy. After they have done all they can the holy ghost will help them along the path.

Transfers are next week which means I may not have the opportunity to e-mail. We have transfer calls this Saturday and I am extremely nervous as always. I hate transfers! It's the worst. I've never had one where I felt completely confident or at ease. I'll for sure let you all know within the next few weeks what happens. As far as how my companions and I get along... Elder Frogley and I are unified and for Elder Jordan... lets just say we have a difference in opinion.

Thanks for the encouragement. Keep it up and live your life righteously!

Love,

Elder Bottema