The week goes well in Africa. Right now I’m in Uganda, sorry for not letting you know, and I’m emailing a day late because yesterday was full of zone leaders council meetings. I’ll be back in Ethiopia by the end of the day and things will be back to normal.
This week was transfers and for me I’ll still be in Awassa as the Lone Zone Leader. We are getting three missionaries but losing three as well so it’s still stay at six. I’m getting a new companion from Africa somewhere but I don’t know his name that well and I don’t want to butcher it on here so I will tell you his name next week.

The week has been full of basic missionary work and preparing for the end of the transfer. I did have to come to Uganda (which I’m here emailing right now from) for a Zone Leaders Council. I headed up to Addis Ababa on Saturday to spend the night there because our flight was the next day at about 1 in the afternoon. I attended the church there. It was kind of sad to see this giant chapel they have there, only about half full. I guess the work hasn’t been going so well there and when the church stopped the church leaders from giving out money to the members (which they weren’t supposed to be doing) many people left the church when that stopped.

The flight to Uganda was amazing of course. Like I said before, Emirates is THE nicest airline I have ever flown on. They give you a meal no matter how short the flight is and it’s just comfortable. If you haven’t flown Emirates before, I would suggest it (am I an advertiser for them now or what?).

Yesterday was full of the Zone Leaders Council meetings and it was pretty spiritual. We had the Zone reports and I was happy to see that our zone was the most efficient zone per missionary for the last two months. It was nice because after that the Assistants than kind of blasted everyone for not doing so well. I’m so proud of the missionaries we have in the zone and the work they do. It’s a small zone but it’s the one I hope people wish to be in. Even for August we had a 2.46 baptisms per week per companionship average. That was nice. Especially since the next highest zone was about 1.19.

After that we just crashed and now it’s Tuesday and I’m just emailing before we have to head to the airport in a couple hours to fly back to Ethiopia.

The week has been good and I really do feel more recharged from these meetings. I also feel a lot more accountable for my zone which was kind of the theme of the assistants trainings. The whole zone is basically our area and we are accountable for making sure our zones are running and being efficient. I hope the missionaries in our zone keep being awesome. I’m so proud of those guys.
I’m safe and only a little sick from allergies right now but thanks to Mom I have medication to help with that. I’m getting old aren’t I. Now I have allergies and all these things I used to think you guys were old about. Stay awesome and eat a steak for me! I love you!

Elder Welch