Another fast week down in the office, there was so much work this week, every single day I was doing some kind of unexpected thing. It made it a little bit of a hard week. We barely even got out into our area and its suffering for it, but it looks like the coming week should be pretty normal, anyway here is a quick little overview of the past week.
Sunday- We enjoyed a great day of General Conference, but had a little bit of a setback. Church started a lot later than usual, so we went out in the morning and just contacted people inviting all of them to come and hear a prophet. Then we came back and watched the first session of conference on our computer in the office. After that I called Laura and her family to make sure they were still all ready to attend the 5 o’clock session and they told me they were all getting ready and planning on going. We had previously told them to go to a different chapel to view conference because it wasn’t going to be shown in our church, but we got everything working in our chapel so when I called Laura and her family I told them they could just come to our chapel thinking it would be easier. Well the session began and they didn’t come, I just sat there listening with my chair in the hallway so I could see the front door just in case they were coming late. I remember just listening to what Elders L. Tom Perry and David B. Bednar spoke about and sitting and thinking how perfect the talks were for that family. They didn’t show up for the whole session so we went to their house after to see what happened, because only an hour and a half before the session they told me they were getting ready. What ended up happening is that when I told them that they could come watch conference in our chapel, they thought it wasn’t playing anymore in the other chapel and there are no buses Sunday night going to our chapel, so it would have been easier for them to just go to the other one, so they all got ready and were going to walk, but then it started raining and they realized it is a pretty long walk, and Juan had some things to do later that night and didn’t think he would get back on time, so they just stayed home. They would have went and seen conference if I hadn’t told them to come to our chapel, I just thought it would be easier for them, but I guess that is how it goes sometimes. They are going to come to regular church this Sunday, and I am going to try to get them to watch some of the talks on the internet. They know so much about the gospel, so much, it surprises me sometimes, because the mom just reads and reads, we gave them a new member packet of books and she is reading through Gospel Principles, teachings of the prophets, the little book for temple preparation, pretty much everything, but there is still just some little thing that is keeping her from getting baptized. I really think she is just afraid of change, afraid to believe that everything she has learned her whole life isn’t right. But I’m positive she has felt the spirit and in the Lord’s time it will touch her enough to let her know of a surety that she needs to get baptized.
Monday- We have a missionary here that is really sick and can’t really even walk because of it, I had to take him to the airport at 6:30 in the morning so he could fly to Buenos Aires to be checked by the area doctor and then pick him up again later that night. After dropping him off I had to drive with one missionary to the center of Immigrations downtown for him to sign in, I took everyone that needed to sign the week before, but this missionary is out in a place where there isn’t really service so I wasn’t able to get a hold of him so he ended up going separate from everyone else. He signed and we left and ran a quick errand across the city and got a call from the lawyers that he had to come back and sign something else, so we didn’t get back to the office until about one in the afternoon. By that time that day I hadn’t showered, shaved, eaten or studied the whole day. After that President also had to deal with a different missionary and had a special interview late in the afternoon with him, President had been discussing with the missionary to stay for a while now, but he decided to go home, and so Monday night I got his flight plans and had to get everything ready for his flight on Tuesday.
Tuesday- I got to the office bright and early to weigh the missionary’s bag and get him all ready for his flight, I had to go back to immigrations for him to sign out of the country, then we went to the airport and dropped him off to go back home. It was actually a really sad experience, right before he left the office to go to the airport he was able to call his family and I don’t think he realized until right then how hard going back to life early was really going to be. All he knew is that he didn’t like the mission, didn’t like his companion, and he wanted to get home. Then, when he was going home like he wanted to, he realized the environment that he was going to have to go back to wasn’t at all what he had imagined. He had been fighting some depression and things of that sort since he got to the mission in August and he had so much help here in the field, access to great mission doctors, almost 200 missionaries trying to help him, and an environment far away from the reasons he developed his problems in the first place. After his phone call home you could tell he didn’t really realize how great he really had it here, so it was actually really sad to see him go off by himself and walk into the terminal. I hope he is doing alright now and maybe he’ll be able to come back someday, decide it really was what he wanted to do, I just hope more than anything he really holds strong to his testimony, no matter how little it was, so he doesn’t let this experience become an excuse to leave the church.
Wednesday- So after I sent Elder Jensen home early, the next day Elder Rush went home early also, but this one was planned. His release date is the 27 of this month, but he had permission to go home early because he is part of the marine core and has basic training starting in less than 2 weeks. So I took him to immigrations, to go shopping for some mission memorabilia, and then he was off to the airport also. Other than that, there wasn’t too much Wednesday, the only big challenge I had was booking a hotel for President in Pedro Juan. He is there right now he is on a trip to do some training of local leaders and interview the missionaries out there, but apparently the 12th is a holiday in Brazil, so getting a hotel for him was way harder than normal. I called 4 hotels on Tuesday and only one had any rooms, except one room in this really nice hotel, and the only room open was the presidential suite, 950 mil guaranies a night, which is about $200. So I booked the suite because there was nothing else and told President on Wednesday. He told me it was too expensive and I needed to find a different room, so I spent a good part of the afternoon calling hotels. I got a hotel list in Ponta Pora, that is the city on the Brazil side, of 10 hotels and just started calling all of them one by one, not a single hotel had rooms except the very last one, but the hotel didn’t have a website, pictures, and it was only 150 mil guaranies a night, which is only about
$30. So I called up President and told him the situation and he told me to cancel the old reservation and to book the other hotel. I talked to him yesterday to see how the hotel was and he told me, “It is something to sleep on.” Moral to the story, I think I need to make a note for myself and future secretaries to book hotels well in advance, but everything turned out alright, I think.
Thursday- So Thursday was actually a pretty normal day, there wasn’t anything to outstanding, honestly thinking back I can’t really remember anything I did, which hopefully means it was just a normal day and I did everything right, hopefully.
Friday- On Friday both of the assistants and President and his wife were out of town, which means the office Elders had the whole office to themselves, which means we went over to Super Seis, the big grocery store here, and made no bake cookies in the kitchen while our chef was making us lunch. They turned out to be really good, but they ran out quick. Then just as we were getting ready to leave to work we got a phone call from a stake president in Ecuador telling us that the father of Elder Lucas, who is actually our Zone Leader right now, pasted away Thursday night. I guess he had been really sick with complications of diabetes, had already had both of his legs amputated because of it, and was already about 80 years old, but obviously it still came as a shock to Elder Lucas. So after I got the call I called up President so he could pass the bad news, and then we waited in the office so Elder Lucas could come and talk to his family. It was tough to see him have to go through that, but he is doing a lot better now. He is one of the best missionaries I know in the mission, and is actually on the little office list of potential new assistants, he is a convert to the church too, so I don’t know if his family are members, if not hopefully this can help the family come together in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Saturday- Friday afternoon we got a bunch of extra mattresses put in our house so Friday night we lined them all up in our living room and had wrestling matches to celebrate P-day eve, when we finally got to going to bed Elder Dailey and I decided to sleep outside; we set up our beds in the back yard, which has razor wire and an electric fence, so don’t worry, and camped out for the night. We woke up in the morning, got things cleaned up, and had a two on two soccer game in the backyard, ate, studied, and then came to the church to play some more soccer, three on three this time. After that we all pitched in for Elder Ruiz, the Mexican of the office, to make us fajitas and now we are writing our families. I think the original plan involved sleeping after emails, but I don’t think we’ll have time now. I still don’t know what our night will bring us, hopefully some good new investigators and lots of people that want to go to church!
Anyway, that is pretty much the week, there were a lot of ups and downs, it was actually a pretty rough week, but P-day eve and P-day have made up for it, and I don’t think there is really anything big coming up next week, so we’ll try hard to devote a lot to our areas in the coming week. I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
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