The train was crowded, so I stood by the door and gazed out the window. It was hot, and the scorched Apennine Mountains seemed dry, brown, and uninteresting. "You'll love the Apennines," said a man selling oranges at the station. Impressive or not, they weren't foremost on my mind. I was a new zone leader, and I wanted to baptize.

The Florence station was large, and I had to stop several times to rest my arms before arriving at the taxis with my two years' supply of white shirts, ties, and books. A big, smiling taxi-driver shouted, "Vieni qui ragazzo!" I staggered towards him and dropped my bulging cases in front of his car. "Via," I gasped, "Boito."

Friendly and outgoing, he pointed to several landmarks as we worked our way through winding streets to Via Boito, my new apartment. I didn't pay much attention to him—my mind was on zone conferences and zone visits and interviews.

Elder Lewis was standing out in front when I pulled up. Tall, blond, and sun-tanned, he stared at me as I fumbled through my pockets in a frantic search for lira. A teacher had told me in high school that first impressions often determine success. There I was, a new zone leader, and I couldn't even remember where I had put my money. Feeling like a failure, I finally asked Elder Lewis if he had 1,500 lira.

Fare paid, we carried my suitcases up the stairs to our second-floor apartment.

As I had hung up the phone a day earlier, I had thought to myself, "Me? A zone leader? They can't do this to me. I'm already tired of trying to be a perfect missionary, and now I'll have to push for statistics and numbers and enthusiasm even more."

I had in my mind a picture of what I thought I was "supposed to do," and I was determined to do just that. Early in my mission I had decided that the only reason for being in the mission field is to baptize. So now there was one major goal in my head: to "psyche" the zone into baptizing as many people as we possibly could. It was my goal—one that I thought a young fireball zone leader should have.

"What was Reggio Emilia like?" Elder Lewis asked as I hung up my ties.

"Great!" I blurted out. "We were teaching twenty discussions a week, selling ten copies of the Book of Mormon, and putting in eighty hours." I thought it sounded impressive.

"E beh," Lewis replied, which means, loosely translated, "Do you want a trophy or something?"

I couldn't figure out why he wasn't excited about my statistics—goodness knows he couldn't have been doing much better. At least it didn't seem possible. But, then, maybe zone leaders were everything I thought they were. Maybe they really did teach thirty lessons every week and stay out of the apartment for one hundred hours. Would I have to start working that hard? Not wanting to pursue the thought, I went to see what was on the stove for lunch.

There were two other elders living in the apartment with us; we talked for a while during lunch, but the conversation began to drag after a few minutes. Trying to pep it up with a little enthusiastic baptism talk, I gushed to the other two, "Elder Lewis and I challenge you to a baptismal contest this month." Silence. "Whichever companionship baptizes the most eats the pizzas of their choice at the other's expense. Do you feel up to it?"

Another painful moment of silence. Then, "Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, Elder Lewis, we'd better get out there early in the morning tomorrow, because I l-o-o-ve pizza." I looked to Elder Lewis for some supportive comment; but he was busy grating Parmigiano cheese over his spaghetti. I looked around for a hole to crawl into.

Something was wrong. I was doing my best to be a fireball, baptism-conscious zone leader, but it wasn't working. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough, I concluded.

After district meeting Elder Lewis suggested that we visit Brother Bilotta, first counselor in the branch presidency. "He usually gives us something to eat and occasionally makes us stay and eat a full dinner with him." I interjected, "Maybe we can ask him for the names of all his friends, so that we can start teaching them." Elder Lewis remained silent.

The evening progressed, but an opportunity to ask Brother Bilotta for his friends' names never materialized. True to form, he offered us something to eat, and then insisted that we stay for supper. It was great fun; we laughed a lot, looked at pictures of the Bilotta family vacations to Sicily, and ate almost a kilo of Italian "bel paese" cheese. It was late when we arrived at our apartment, exhausted but wonderfully full. We knelt and prayed for more baptisms in the zone and for our families and girlfriends, then climbed between those itchy Italian sheets. I had completed one day as a zone leader.

"We were called here to be successful," I said in my talk at a zone conference a week later," and that means teaching fifteen lessons, selling ten copies of the Book of Mormon, and working eighty hours every single week!" Though Elder Lewis and I hadn't even come close to doing that the previous week, I nevertheless thought it a good challenge. The missionaries seemed rather excited about it, so I felt good about my presentation. I had said just about what I thought a zone leader should say, and I was content. For a season.

As we drove home from Brother Bilotta's house that evening, I tried to get up courage to tell Elder Lewis that I thought we should be working more. "Do you think zone leaders should be examples for the rest of the missionaries in their zone?" I ventured.

"Yeah, I think so," he replied.

I took a deep breath, and said, "Do you think we're being good examples?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Well, I don't."