This was the busiest week of my life. We had three Zone conferences, transfers, and a baptism. Don't tell anyone, but yesterday we both laid down for a 30 min nap during our lunch, and woke up 2 hours later. I was so tired. But all in all Maxwell still got baptized and S accepted a baptismal date for February 25th. It's really quite amazing, all this success in Matthews. 4 months ago this place was not so successful. We used to make fun of the assistants because they hadn't had a baptism in like 9 months and they were supposed to be the examples to us. Elder Clarke and Elder Blanco really put a lot of hard work into this area while they were here. And now Elder Peterson and I are fueling it further. February is going to be the 4th month in a row Matthews has had a baptism every other week. (Or twice a month). I'm just praying and trying my best to keep up the trend. Hopefully I'll finish my mission here, I'd hate to have to spend my last transfer somewhere else, unless it was Danville of course. Speaking of Danville, Elder Beaulieu is getting transferred there!!!!!!! I'm really happy for him.

So here's how my week pretty much went:

Tuesday was super quick because we had to spend a big chunk of the day preparing for Zone conferences in the office. Then Elder Monteleone took us out to lunch at Moo and Brew, a burger place uptown. He's our favorite office missionary. He and his wife live in the Weddington Ward and are over housing and bikes. They're hooking us up with a new apartment soon because ours is pretty old and gross. Anyway, that day flew by real quick because we spent the evening teaching and helping G quit smoking.

Then Wednesday we had the two Charlotte Zone conferences together. It was a little rough because some trainings took a lot longer than others but we got through it alright. In the evening we drove up to Greensboro and stayed the night with Elder Everette. Remember him? The one I trained in Danville from Alaska that's kind of a wild animal? Yeah him. He made me a tie and baked us brownies. It was nice. He actually just got transferred down here to Reedy Creek and will live in the same complex as me so I'm pretty stoked.

On Thursday we had the Zone conference in Greensboro with the Greensboro, High Point, and Winston Zones. It went a lot better. That night we drove back to Matthews for our dinner and to check up on G and then up to Hickory to stay the night with Elder Hatch and Christensen because the next day (Friday) we had Zone conference up there with the Hickory and Gastonia Zones. It was kinda odd sitting through the same 6 hour meeting three days it a row. The theme was the plan of salvation and President taught us all the doctrine of the lesson so I learned a ton from that. Each time my understanding of the fall deepened. The fall has been one of my favorite study topics lately.

On Saturday Maxwell was baptized. It was a fantastic service. Brother Yessay baptized him. He joined the church in Liberia so they bonded pretty well. Maxwell cried a lot and it was a pretty spiritual meeting. Afterwards we went and got giant nachos uptown with the Reedy Creek ZLs and then went over to President's to finish up transfer business. Well by 5 that evening President wasn't quite feeling right about the transfers (he'd go in his room and pray about it, then come out and we'd make a few changes and he'd pray some more.) so we went to our dinner and proselyted till about 8 and came back. By then he was feeling pretty good and we went through the leadership calls he'd need to make and typed it up for him. We got out of there about 9:30, got to the office around 10 and then started working logistics for where everyone would meet to get their new companion. That was a lot more complex then you'd think because you have to chain each companionship until you get a full circle of companions that are all swapping companions. Add in missionaries going home, training new missionaries, and a few car changes and we didn't leave the office till 1:30 am! Then at 6am we got up and called all the zone leaders to give them the transfer news for their Zones and hurried to church at 9. Maxwell was confirmed and we came home and took a nap. Last night we also had the mission president's fireside. G came and I think it helped him a bit.

Alright here the pics from the week: