Saturday's leadership meeting report

I checked my blog today and find that there have been 6,954 hits since I began it last year.

It is unbelievable that there are many more hits from Russia than from any other country.  I do hope that my blog does not contribute to another cold war or something.

Yesterday we drove to Topsham to attend the Saturday meetings of the Stake conference.  A Church leader who lives in New York was the main speaker.  He talked about how leaders in the various church units of this Stake, should be in very close contact with the members under their care, especially the youth.  He told of how some years ago he and another youth leader decided to hold a campout for the young men.  They announced it and said that at 6pm on Friday they would be at a certain camp site and they would have a camp out with cooked food over an open fire   the first week only 2 boys showed up.  As time went on they ended up with over 20 boys showing up and he counts those times with the boys around the camp fire as some of the most remarkable experiences he has had with the youth in the church youth program.

He said that at one time he encountered a few problems and he made it a matter of prayer.  He said that he was guided to work with one problem in particular and he found that someone from outside his realm of responsibility stepped in and took care of one other and the third problem just took care of itself.  He admonished the leaders to rely heavily on inspiration from prayer to get the job done that they are called to do.  Inspiration from God is something we should always seek no matter the problem facing us.

This was the first time Bill and I had driven ourselves to the Topsham church building and even though we had map quest print off the directions we only got lost one time.  It’s a shame that we finally are beginning to know our way around and we leave in 5 days.  It seems that just about every main road here has a route number attached to it and they seem to radiate from the traffic circles.  When we first got here reading the signs that told where each route was going was the most confusing thing to us.  It was also really confusing learning how the traffic circles (roundabouts or rotary are two other terms in use here) in Maine work.  We have perfected the “yougo-igo” to enter the circle.  If the car on our left starts moving, we wait one second and then we go as well – you go, I go – and it seems to work pretty well.  We figured that the guy on our left does not want to get creamed by the traffic entering the circle so if he goes, then it is ok for us to go as well.  Only 5 more days of trying to figure on this method and we can leave and not have to work with it unless we are asked to come back and do more work here in Maine.

Today we travel to Westbrook for the main conference session.  I am really looking forward to it.  we are taking Meredith with us.  I met her the first week we got here in Augusta.