Zone Conferences

 As the Housing Coordinators we have to train the missionaries.  This takes place at the Zone Conferences.  We have five zones and the conferences are spread out over 2 weeks--3 one week and 2 the next week!  That is a lot of traveling and work.  The Northern Zone is done over Zoom because some of those areas are 22 hours away.  Our mission is the size of Texas although since our mission president is from California, he says it's the size of 4 Californias!  

I, naturally, wanted to make a PowerPoint to save us time and to remember all the key points.

We introduce ourselves and tell them what Housing Coordinators do:

• We acquire housing for senior couples and missionaries
• We furnish apartments with missionary-approved furnishings (no couches for juniors) :D
• We facilitate inspections--agents, state fire alarms, etc.
• We schedule repairs
• We replace appliances

That's the official stuff.  The unofficial stuff is traveling, sometimes 2 hours, to help missionaries because they locked their keys in their flat, moving beds around during transfers, going through lots and lots of email, going to the airport to pickup or drop off missionaries, taking new senior missionaries to get Australian sim cards for their phones and oh yes, Elder Bond is the Zone Leader for the senior missionaries--that's a whole different list of responsibilities!  We focus on different things--mainly problems that we're seeing:  teaching them how to change aircon filters, clean kitchens to prevent insect infestations, test CO detectors.

I try to stay on top of the paper work and contracts and I'm Elder Bond's navigator, or navi-guesser, whenever we travel.  We do have a large GPS screen in our van which is super helpful when it's working!  Sometimes we don't have a phone signal and I have to give Elder Bond turn-by-turn directions.  He'd rather be able to see it.  We adopted the go-around-the-block system of navigation when we miss a turn.  We're getting more comfortable navigating through the city now--we  say, "We don't want to take that route, Google, we know a better route!  I think that maybe sometimes we say that to God and then regret it later, right?