Phnom Penh South Zone Conference

There are times that we are blessed to be around the young Elders and Sisters a lot more than other times and the last few weeks have been great for that. It continued again today as we participated in the Zone Conference for the Phnom Penh South Zone. All of the previous Zone Conferences that we have gone to have been a joint conference with the South and East Zones. With the two zones there has been about fifty missionaries, which is almost half of the mission, but with just the South Zone there were only twenty-two young missionaries.

At President and Sister Christensen's first Zone Conference, almost fifteen months ago, they shared with the missionaries a concern about retention of converts. Only 21% of those baptized were still attending church a year later. Through efforts that has now gone up to over 40%. But there has also been a cost, with the effort to focus on recent converts the number of baptisms have decreased. Now they need to refocus the missionaries to teach repentance and baptize converts, but also help keep them active as well. It was a great Zone Conference taught by President & Sister Christensen, the Assistants to the President and the Sister Training Leaders.

One of the great things about Zone Conference is associating with these wonderful young missionaries, that are filled with faith and desire. We have been told several times that only the best are sent to Cambodia and we believe that. We especially enjoy being part of the Zone picture, eating lunch and visiting with them and seeing the love that they have for one another. Besides, it gives us great blog pictures.

As we looked out this morning it was very overcast but not raining so we decided to take a chance and go on our walk. It was good to get out and stretch our legs after a weekend and two rained out days. It started to sprinkle just before we got back to our apartment and the roads were wet as we went to go to the office.