Zone Conferences

I attended Zone Conference for the first time in a year and a half. The best part was… I left after lunch! I didn’t have to stay for the whole thing. It was awesome. First off, Slovenia. Slovene ZC was sweet. I got up pretty early to get ready in time for the meeting and to finish up my talk. The meeting didn’t start until 10, so it wasn’t too bad. I finished up writing my talk on “What I’m glad I did to have a Successful Mission.” It went really well, I thought, and afterwards Pres. Hill had me sing “He is Jesus Christ.” It was a great experience. I had lunch with the missionaries, and afterward stayed for the remainder of the conference. After the meetings, we took pictures and all that fun stuff, and I went off to a place called the BTC. It’s pretty much a city disguised as a mall. Ridiculous is what it was. I took some time to stroll around the old town at night (an opportunity few missionaries have, except in the winters when it gets dark around 4:30) and it was great. I talked to a few natives in my broken Slovene and only after having properly butchered their language, they would proceed in English and we would have a pleasant conversation. I got lost, but luckily I’m an expert at getting lost, so it wasn’t a big deal (I was a missionary, after all). So anyway, I made it back to the mission home after getting off on the wrong stop and having to walk an extra kilometer or so. It was pleasant, though, walking through the quiet Slovenian countryside in the shadow of Smartna Gora (I think…). The next day, we drove down to croatia. For the first time, I got to see the chapel in Zagreb in its full completed glory. I was there for the groundbreaking over 3 years ago, and it was a bit of an emotional experience for me. Well, ZC in Zagreb was good as well, and I ate lunch with the missionaries. This time, I had the opportunity to rub shoulders with the missionaries I actually taught… all 16 of them (which is about half the country at this point). It was a cool experience. One of my personal favorite moments, however, was seeing one of my best friends, Kiki Mraz. After lunch I bailed on ZC and went to Kiki’s house on the other side of the city. I saw him from the bus and got a little giddy. It was so cool to see him again. He had invited the missionaries over for dinner, so we had dinner, and since his parents weren’t home, he asked me to spend the night over there. It was awesome to be able to spend time with him, hear about the mission I like to think I helped prepare him for, and just talk about whatever (oh, and watch TV). The rest of the time in Zagreb was pretty uneventful, some shopping, lots of visiting people, a couple of movies (Green Zone and Iron Man 2). It was cool to be able to do everyday things in a place where I used to fantasize about going to movies and hanging out with friends late at night. Weird. I went to church on today at the Zagreb chapel, and it was great. There were more people than usual and a lot of people didn’t know I was going to be in town. It was great to see how some people remembered me, and how I still felt comfortable there. I always wondered if the spirit I felt there was just from being a missionary. I found out today that the spirit is from the faithful members of the church. Priesthood meeting was as exciting as I remembered, complete with a certain unnamed member affirming that it is important for a person to go into marriage with sexual experience… (I never remembered it being that crazy, on second thought). The lesson was on chastity, and got a little… out of hand, we’ll say. In the end we ended up na zelenoj grani, so no worries. Tonight, I’m off to Split on an overnight train… it’s gonna be sah-weet. More later.