Jersey City Week 1 - Zone leader

Hello family! This is Elder Sumsion reporting to you live from Jersey City!

 The last couple days have been some of the craziest days of my mission but I made it! Things are going good. So I got transferred to be a Zone Leader in the Jersey City Zone. It is madness up here. I have never lived around so many people in my entire life. Ha I feel like its a dream and I'll wake up soon, but no I am living the real city-life. Our zone covers from the bottom of Bayonne to basically Union City and Secaucus. So just this cool little island with a million people. I am actually in the Secaucus library now. It is so fun though. My companion is the one and only Elder Drewes! He is the one you were talking about that his grandpa is in the Park City Stake Presidency. So we are just tearing it up out here and having so much fun.

So right off the bat things got crazy. I was called to be with Elder Drewes in Jersey City and then an hour later, We were rushing to make sure everybody had rides back to their areas. There are 8 companionships in the zone and we only have 4 cars. And we have 4 new missionaries in the zone with all their stuff. So getting everyone's stuff from transfer conference into the cars was a nightmare. We had to put a lot of it in other zone's cars and so the rest of the night we were just driving around Jersey City trying to get everybody's stuff to them. Ha it was crazy busy. Then the next morning we had to plan out all these crazy rides to get everyone to district meeting. Then we got to conduct district meeting at the beginning. Ha so much fun. It has been a big change for me in my mission.

Then on Saturday we had mission leader council with all the zone leaders, sister training leaders, and the assistants and President and Sister Taggart and their family to talk about the upcoming month. Super fun to be with all them. Elder Vargas ( I lived with him in Perth Amboy for 3 transfers) got called to be a zone leader this last transfer and Elder Aspinall (my companion in Clinton) and two other good friends I have had on the mission. So it was fun to see them all their again. President and Sister Taggart are awesome. They are doing things way different than the Jeppsons but it is just what Jersey needs.

I am going at like a thousand miles and hour. We have been preparing a whole zone meeting for tomorrow too and we have splits with President and the Assistants on Wednesday. Ha its has been absolutely nuts and this week will be too! Ha it doesn't feel like this is how it always is as a zone leader, but I think things just got piled up this past week with all these meetings.

Jersey City is the best though; tons of people to teach. Our area got split last week so we have to pretty much start fresh again. But we have already found a lot of potential.

So this is what it feels like to be in the city life? Ha now I see where Lex is coming from.

I hope all is well at home. I love you all and have been thinking about you. Cant believe Drew got home a few days ago. He is a stud.

Thank you for the package and letters this past week. I loved it. and I love the salt water taffy.

Love you all so much!

Elder Sumsion

PS -

Guess what? Every other day we run down to the Hudson and there is  NYC across the river. It is just the coolest view, right in the morning at 6:45. I swear I can see Lex's house! Ha not really. We are a little more south so the view we get is mainly of lower manhattan with the Freedom Tower. So fun. The Holland Tunnel is right by us.

(With our friends the Taggarts being the new mission presidents there, they were very concerned that I knew that the Lord called Ben to be a zone leader not them.  Sister Taggart communicated with me this week and told me that the missionaries that are the Assistants to the President were the ones that presented Ben's name as a Zone leader - not them. :-) She assured me that it was a call from the Lord. )