THE Office - Week 20

Hi.

Hope everything is well back at home. We´ve gotten into the habit of writing right away in the morning now so that there is more time to goof around in the afternoon, but nbd. I´ll log on later to see whats up.

We had a pretty good week here in the office though. However, a bunch of the other office guys just told me that I should write shorter letters. That long letters are probably super boring to read, and that I should just be more to the point. So thats what I guess I´ll do to save you all from the weekly rundown.

Needless to say. The week went well. The mission is fantastic. No complaints here. Should have another good week coming up again. Hope you had and have a good one. The church is true! Love ya lots!

Elder Humphreys

Hi.
haha. Sorry about the short one earlier. Really, I just didn´t have tons of time to write right then. Lots to do when your p-day is only 8 hours long! lol. But yeah. Let me know if I should shorten them down for reals. But until then, I´ll just stick to what I normally write...
Sunday was cool. We unfortunately didn´t have any investigators this week in church, but all of the people that missed seemed to have semi-decent excuses, so I think they will probably be there tomorrow. The coolest part of the day though was after church. Normally every Sunday after church we eat, do our studies, and then have our weekly planning. Its a little different because in the field you usually do it Friday, but thats when most people remember that they need something from the office and so they call us up. And there are always people stopping by and so we just move it to Sunday. Anyways, that was recently changed, and so we´ve started this week to plan on Fridays anyways. We´ll see how it goes. Its what President Arnold told us to do. Anyways, this was our last week to do it on Sunday, and it just so happened that President had a little bit of extra time on his hands, and decided to pay us a visit. Fortunately we were warned ahead of time, and so we had time to make sure that our room was nice and clean. lol. Anyways, he joined us for our weekly planning. It was pretty cool. He gave us lots of great advice, and at the same time got to see how the things that we´ve been taught are really carried out in the actual work. So it was good because he got to see how it really goes, and we got to learn and get advice on how we can do things better. Cool experience. What else. Oh, we also had our missionary correlation meeting for the first time. It went pretty well. It was funny though - our ward mission leader has gotten himself all excited about a talent show activity that he wants to have. We´re all up for helping him, but its funny because he has super high hopes for it. The part we didn´t tell him is that after all of the work that we put into the movie night a couple weeks back, we had a total of one active member family show up. Ouch. So we´re trying to be optimistic, and yet realistic at the same time. I talked him down to only having it one night, and that each organization (primary, relief society etc.) only should have to do one presentation each, instead of 4. Hopefully it goes well. He´s pretty excited, so we´re going to help him out with it...
Monday was super fun. Lots of errands to be run during office hours. Had to return some tables, go to the bank, get sick peoples lab results from the hospital. Something else, but I can´t remember what. Oh. I think that was when we got to go out to my old zone (Mariano Roque Alonso) to drop off a cell phone. That was fun. Exciting to see a place that I loved and miss. Then in the afternoon we got to work. Went well. There is a new family in our ward, so it will be exciting to work with then. Really young recently married couple. They don´t really fit in with the style of our ward (mostly nearly-deads), but its fun for us to have somebody exciting to visit. Anyways, after all of that, we got to go to a dinner visit. That was really out of the usual because nobody eats dinner here. But there was another family that moved in a month or two ago - and they are from the states. Jackpot. The Lloyd family from Utah. We went to their house which was one of the nicest houses I´ve been in in a while. I was minorly freaking out. It was funny. We ate spaghetti, homemade cookie things, and oreos. It was LEGIT. But the even cooler thing is that they are super hard working, and want to help out the ward in any way that they can. Wow. Something that nobody else around here is really interested in doing. So thats super cool. Right now we have them trying to help a really tricky less active member that lives close that nobody else will visit. Once their car gets shipped in from the states though, it´ll be out of control. lol. I´m really excited to actually be able to work with members that have animo to work. Should be good.
Tuesday was the opposite day in the office. There was tons of paperwork and stuff to do in the office. President, the hermana and the assistants went on a road trip this week to do mini zone-meeting things with all of the zones that are farther out. So that meant lots to get done so that everything was in order, there was money in the safe etc. Tons of reimbursements to do. So that was that. But President was at EFY all day, so that meant that we had to go to his house so that he could sign the checks before he left. Awesome. The hermana won´t let you go by their house without making you stop and eat something. She spoils us.
I honestly don´t remember what happened Wednesday. It was about this day though that were just driving randomly down one of the busy roads in our area and saw one of our investigators who had reluctantly accepted a Book of Mormon a couple days before, sitting out in front of his house reading. So that was cool. Don´t know if anything will come of it, but it was a little exciting. Most people here really aren´t into reading, and so usually people don´t just pick up a book and read during the day unless you´ve really convinced them to do it, or they are just exceptional people. lol
Basically as far as the actual work of proselyting goes, it hasn´t been our best week. Not sure why, but we just have had a really unlucky time finding our investigators at home this week. Kind of frustrating. Lots of walking, getting shut down, thinking of plan B´s and having them fall through as well. Oh well. Seguimos adelante. Me and Elder Thomson were actually talking about one of the big problems that are in the mission that actually relates to that. One of those problems that can´t really be fixed, and so we just have to work around. The problem being that making appointments with people usually brings little or less success then not setting times to visit at all. Its funny because back at home, you typically have to call ahead of time, set apointments with the families that you are going to visit, and then you go to their houses when you said you would. Here on the other hand is a little bit different. You can try and phone people and plan things. But typically no matter the way that you try and set up a visit with someone, they don´t really do anything to help themselves remember. Nobody has a day-timer, or a calendar or anything like that. So you rush to get to their houses when you planned, and they either aren´t there or they are busy with something and just can´t talk at that moment. Really frustrating. So rather than be direct with people about what time you are going to visit them, you usually try and say ¨We´ll probably try and pass by maybe this day at about this time¨. That way you don´t have to stop in the middle of a lesson or run across half of your area to get to their house. Instead, the culture usually just has the people let you in to share with them any time you happen to show up at their houses. But that has its downsides too as you show up and there still aren´t people there or when 3 visits in a row fall through, you quickly have lots of time with a lot less to do. But, you do your best. Try to be prepared and yet flexible. Planned and yet ready for anything. Makes things exciting.
We had another short term office addition this week. A sick Elder who got pulled out of his area far away to be closer to the doctors and on a better diet. Put with us until changes. Well, basically, it made things a little interesting here. Not to be rude, but its been a long time since any of us have been put with somebody that moved so slow, complained so much, was so bad at sticking to his diet, or distracted us as much from our work. haha. We tried really hard to be positive, but wow. It was a challenge that we werent really prepared for. That occasionally made things a little tense in the office. Thankfully Friday, after a good morning of weekly planning and homemade pizza for lunch, I got another fun day of errand running to do. Its nice because I´m now almost the most experienced office Elder, and so I have the most driving practice (it takes practice with such crasy streets), and I now have a pretty decent idea of where most of the areas and people are and such. So that puts me as one of the more designated drivers for now. Something I enjoy. Only had one close call with a very typical, Paraguayan style, unlabeled, invisible speed bump. But we came out alive. haha. So we got to do a huge route around the mission dropping things off, and helping people out with stuff. Had to drop off shoes, maps, teaching supplies, and buy some proselyting bags. Took all day. lol. Fun stuff. I remember that back in the day I hated errands, but now its one of the numerous benefits of being an office Elder, and help the work move forward in a different way. Don´t get me wrong though. Can´t wait to get back to the good life. Working on 100% missionary work day in and day out. Good stuff.
Side note, but when you´re with your comp for a really long time, you get to know a lot about their very unusual previous life. Anyways, my comp and the other office Elders have now seen Mamma Mia. All that good stuff. Anyways, Elder Thomson now requests a picture or two of ¨Elder Humphreys in Overalls hits up the beaches of Hawaii¨. But only if its not that big of a hassle. haha.
Anyways, that basically brings us up to today. Today was pretty tranquilo. Basically the boringest p-day in a while. But I guess thats not all bad. Typical soccer in the morning for exercises. Emails in the morning. Only got a bit done before going out for lunch. TGIFridays. Delish and expensive as always. Tried our best not to get distracted by the TVs, but I will say that Dakar and the X-games looks like something that I will be excited to watch on the big screen. AFTER the mission. Also, Elder Patterson kind of had a funny moment today that we kind of got involved in. I hate to share it and ruin the story. But basically one of the companions in the area nextdoor to them has had some sort of brain problems in the past. Tumors or something that seem to have been all fixed up. But his comp tried to wake him up this morning and for one reason or another he wouldn´t wake up. They had to call a taxi and rush to the hospital (more reliable than calling an ambulance). He was fine, just for some reason out of it. Finally woke up in the hospital. Somehow he had also had a sleep walking moment and shaved a large chunk of his hair and his eyebrow off. Weird stuff. Then I had to take Elder Patterson and his comp back home and whatnot. Crasy stuff. So that kind of took a large chunk out of the day. Oh well, we would have probably just wasted it playing sports or something anyways.
But yeah. That was kind of the week. All of our investigators are basically in  the same places because we couldn´t visit them this week. Lame. Oh well. Hopefully more results this week, and people in church. Wish us luck! - Aka, you can pray for us whenever you want :) But yeah. Changes this week. Should be crasy as always. Thankfully small groups leaving and coming. Good to go.
Anyways, gotta run and get some groceries. Love you lots! Thanks for the letters. Have a good one!

Elder Humphreys