EXTREMELY Busy!

Aloooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhaa!!!

Dear Famiree,

I'm doing grrrrrrrrrreat! I am so excited to hear about Bryan being ordained an elder. That is a huge step. We spend months and months and months trying to help our recent converts prepare to receive the Melchizedek priesthood. Some of them never do. I am so grateful to have a family that prepared me over the years as I grew. It is much more difficult to try to do when you are grown.

I am EXTREMELY busy. I haven't been to bed before midnight in a week and a half. It is a real challenge to balance running an area and running the mission. We plan all of the training of the mission--from district meeting topics to a 12-week curriculum for trainers to zone conference to mission wide leadership training meetings. We run errands all over the mission. We are responsible for moving into and out of new/old apartments. We do emergency transfers. We collect key indicator information (numbers) for the whole mission each week and write the reports that everyone gets in the wards/stakes/missions/Church areas around us. We plan and conduct meetings and conference calls. We do just about everything for transfers. We assist President in deciding who goes where each transfer. We pick up new missionaries and take the departing missionaries to the airport. We speak in sacrament meetings with President. We inspect missionary apartments and vehicles. We help the office staff with their assignments. Pretty much...we try to keep the mission running smoothly. And we baptize in our own area...somehow.... :) In a nutshell, that's what we do. If we have time, we do tract. We have an amazing ward and all of the success comes through President Monson's Rescue Plan.

I am in a different apartment. My area is West Hills. We live directly across the street from the Westtown Mall in Knoxville to give you an idea of where we are at if you google it. Since we frequently have missionaries staying overnight with us during training/transfers, etc., we have a huge apartment. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a full dining room.

Anyways. I love you all very much. I really appreciate your prayers. I cannot do this work without them.

Elder Raymond