PART II: THE SUMMER CONFERENCE

This past Wednesday (June 18) was our mission's "Summer Conference". All 7 zones got together for lunch and a sports tournament-type thing. Each zone had two teams that played the other zones' teams at ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and kick ball.

Every year, each zone makes shirts for their teams. I ended up being the one to design them and figure out a cheap way to produce 17 for the whole zone. They told me they wanted to play off the "M" of the logo for Monster Energy drinks. (Some background: Energy drinks like Monster, Rockstar, Red bull, etc. have been popular among most athletic of missionaries since I was with Elder Cole. They've never really appealed to me, but apparently they became so popular that it came to our President's attention. In the last Zone Conference, he asked the mission to stay away from them as much as possible, though, he didn't ban all caffeine/energy drinks, but advised us to be respectful if it is something that would offend other members/investigators.)

With permission, I ended up working on them for a "couple 3" (Washingtonian for "a couple" or "3") days. The design was no sweat--figuring out how to put it on the shirts, was.

We first tried a stencil and spray paint, but it didn't adhere at all. The member at whose house we worked was an artist, so we tried some acrylic paints he had and successfully produced a bright green Monster "M".

The whole process was so much fun for me, it was like being at home again designing wedding announcements, except the whole time I was dying to hage the Mac with all its time-saving programs. Instead, I did it the old-fashioned way and went with Microsoft Paint/freehand. They came out looking fantastic. The stencil/painting process was a pain in the neck, (literally), because it involved pinning down and dabbing paint onto 17 shirts, so it was also time-consuming. BUT, they looked awesome and the zone loved them.

At summer conference the senior couples ended up voting on their favorite shirt, and our zone won! I was very satisfied with myself and at the same time was extremely grateful that I'd been given that talent from the Lord, for the blessing of others' lives.

The rest of Summer Conference was really fun. I said hi to Elder Cole and his new greenie, Elder Cordada. Our team went undefeated too! We were 5-0, but two other teams were 4-0, (when it came down to the championships.) The two 4-0 teams played each other and we played the winning team. It was the first team we'd played and had beaten before 7-3. Somehow, they ended up killing us in the finals 1-5. It was pretty disappointing, but I went home happy, 'cause even if we didn't play the best, we sure looked the best! :)