Zone Conference: The Power of the Sacrament

On May 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, we held zone conferences with our seven zones. The focus of this zone conference was to increase the number of our friends attending sacrament meeting each week. This focus was identified by our Mission Leadership Council in our council meeting held earlier in May.

Mission Leadership Council – May 2024

At Zone Conference, Sister Barlow taught us about removing “lids” that may be limiting our efforts and success. She did this by showing a video about fleas.

Sister Barlow taught us to have a “No Lids” mindset like Nephi.

She then invited us to “bury our lids” by writing down any lid we have, and putting it in a jar as a symbol of our efforts to remove all lids from our missionary work.

She then taught us about how we can use technology more effectively to involve more members in more of our lessons. In addition to having members join us in person for lessons with our friends, we want to include them via the video and phone, even if only for part of the lesson to share the blessings of going to church and inviting our friends to attend church with us. Involving members more will help us increase the number of friends who attend sacrament meeting each week.

We talked about the purpose of the sacrament, and what we learn from the line in “The Living Christ”: “He instituted the sacrament as a reminder of His great atoning sacrifice.”

The sacrament is essential to applying the Doctrine of Christ in our own life. The sacrament helps to strengthen our faith in Christ and to reflect on His relationship with us. The sacrament is all about repentance and lifting the burdens of sin. The sacrament helps us renew the covenants we’ve made with God. It is all about the Spirit, so that we “might always have His spirit to be with [us].” And it is the one ordinance that we repeat over and over in our life to help us endure to the end.

We reviewed the symbols of the sacrament with the bread and water and how they represent the physical and spiritual sides of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And we thought about the blessings we can promise others as they come and participate in the sacrament with us.

As the missionaries learn to apply the sacrament in their own life, they will be able to teach it more powerfully with their friends.

We also had four workshops to help us improve our invitations to sacrament meeting:

Planning for members in lessons
Using technology to include more members
Inviting to church with greater power
Leveraging the power of Chapel Tours

We closed out the zone conference with an “Avengers Assemble!” moment where we broke into zones for zone councils on how we can apply the invitations we received throughout the day.

We left with big goals to have more powerful experiences at sacrament meeting ourselves, and to significantly increase the number of friends who join us at sacrament meeting each week. It’s been remarkable to already see the faith and efforts of these wonderful missionaries to apply the things we learned.