District or Zone Conference (like our Stake Conf.)

Yesterday was a full day...It was the semi-annual District Conference in Belgrade.  We loaded our small car with the two missionaries and an investigator from Vienna and headed to Belgrade.  Sister V. , her two daughters, and a niece went in a Taxi...(A Taxi is really cheap here, that is by our standards, but people are really poor here.  So the church paid for the Taxi with fast offerings) Their husband and father have the Flu and is very ill...but the family is poor (he teaches English in the Schools and they don't get paid very much..6-800 per month) so they couldn't afford gas to go otherwise).

Belgrade is a huge and not so clean...high rise apartments everywhere.  The church is in the same area as the American and British Embassy.  A three story very old building with the Chapel on the second floor.  The District Pres. (Stake Pres.) conducted and talked about how he used to be an atheist...and now is a Christian church leader.  We had a two hour meeting with about 60 people there.  The church over here is truly in it's infancy stage.  They gave three men the Melchizedek priesthood with one of them being our young man with no country.  He is so proud to be an Elder.
They served a lunch of sandwiches and cakes after which we had Relief Society and Priesthood.  We also had to stay after to set apart a new Branch Pres. for Belgrade and the new Elders.  They are really pushing to have young men and women from here go on missions so they can better learn how the church works and then come back and help the branches here.  Needless to say, it was a long, yet fulfilling day.

All this makes me realize what the church must have been like when it first started with Joseph Smith.  Some truly faithful members and yet so many that thought the gospel strange or evil.  It is like that here, but a senior couple leaving soon summed it up when he said what a privilege it has been to be here and be part of the Lord's final gathering.