Elder Derek Croft

Man, I'm trying to remember all that we did this week. From what I remember there was a lot of driving! Haha we live so far away from everything and we've had two meetings in the last week that have been at least a 45 minute drive away without traffic, and with traffic it took us almost two hours to drive there the other day! Still, we have had a lot of cool experiences.
This last Friday Elder Brown and I were called back into the office to work on some things with President and the current Assistants. Haha I admit it was pretty fun and that I realized in some ways I missed the office. It's incredible how we can always seem to find joy in whatever assignment we may receive no matter how different they may be. It was fun to be with all those good elders and to see how the revelation and inspiration flowed as we worked together on some of the problems/events happening in the mission. It was honestly just good to be back with President, and it was surprising to see the warm welcome that was given by the Senior Couples in the office. I guess sometimes you never do realize the impact that you have on people. It was just a blessing to be able to associate with all of them once again.
Our recent Convert Adam Beal is also now back in town and it was good to see that he was able to maintain his testimony even after being in a fairly toxic environment for the last week and a half. He's still just as fired as ever and it's cool to see how gung-ho he is about the gospel! We've also been back in contact with quite a few cool people that had kind of fallen off the map during Thanksgiving and we were able to help them progress quite a bit in a short lesson that we had with them. Other than that the work continues, we've been on exchanges, had a meeting with all of our District Leaders, and set some goals for the transfer. It was good to be with the District Leaders and have what was the equivalent of a PEC where we were able to talk about the specific needs of the zone and come up with a plan of action for the following month on how to help our missionaries continue to progress as well as help their investigators progress. There is a lot of potential in the zone right now and I just hope the missionaries can see the vision of what it is that they're accomplishing.
I also had the opportunity to give what we call here in the mission a "death testimony" or in other words all the missionaries who will be returning home bear their testimonies in the last big meeting. Ha, this is probably the only time you will hear me mention anything related to the end of the year, but it was a good experience. It was good to be able to reflect on all of the things that I have been able to learn, and of the testimony that I have received.... It's so interesting to look back two years and look at all that has been done and learned. The experiences gained, the friendships made, it's honestly overwhelming and incredible. As says the hymn "I stand all amazed".