The Office - Week 24

Bueno. Hi family. How´s it going. Life here is splendid. Working hard. Sweating hard. Having a great time.
Actually we had a really good week. Glad to hear that things are good at home. That the b-day party went well... that you´re enjoying the snow... that you´re enjoying the hockey... (how are we doing this year btw?). Crasy to hear that everyone is growing up so fast and that your trip is coming up so soon. How exciting. I can still never remember when the exact trip will be. You´ve been saying that its going to be soon for a while now. lol. Crasy to hear that everybody is getting married here. Things are sure going to be different when I get home. Oh well. Thats life right. Congrats to everyone. How is this EFY thing working then? You say ¨Stay at home¨ program, but I´m assuming its just sleep at home instead of spending the whole day at home by yourself right? haha. Good stuff. Oh well. Should be good anyways. Anyways. Good to hear that life continues on and that you are having a great time. Keep up the good work.
As for us... Sunday was pretty good. We got to church and waited for our investigators. We were dissapointed when they didn´t show up for sacrament meeting. So we called them and found out that they had accidently slept in. So they got ready really quick and made it back in time to go to the sacrament meeting of the other ward, and then to a really quick Gospel Principles class. We´ve talked to them since and gotten them asegurar-ed for baptism.. Wow. I honestly don´t know how to say that in non-Spanglish. Like.... locked in or have made certain. I don´t know. Basically they´ve commited themselves to get baptized the 24th of February, and they are pretty set on it. We´re pretty excited. Should be good. They have member support. We´ve done everything possible to really teach according to their needs. I think they both have pretty solid testimonies of the truth. They could have been baptized last week since they´ve been to church enough times, but we really wanted to make sure that they´d be ready. So hopefully next week I´ll be writing back with good news of baptisms. Its been so long that I´ve almost forgotten what its like. I´m pretty excited. Sunday we also got the news that the member family (the Familia Cañisa) DID go through the temple and were sealed as a family. Good feeling. We had been helping and teaching and encouraging them for a while now and so it was super nice to see how happy they were. The mother was just ecstatic to tell us about how it was and how happy she is. Awesome. Also got to have a really good ward council meeting as well as a great sunday dinner visit. Yum.
Monday was crasy. There were tons of things to do in the office. Worked like crasy. But it was actually not that bad. I much rather would have lots to do than nothing. Tuesday wasn´t much different either. President was leaving town on Wednesday, and so I had to do a whole weeks worth of stuff in just a couple of days because he´s the only one that can sign checks and stuff like that. Almost had a few close calls getting it done. At one point I needed a check pronto, but President was out and about. I almost ignored everyone's advice to just call and ask him where he was. In the end, it turned out that he wasn´t going to get back in time, so I had to meet him at the bank itself where he signed the check 10 minutes before it closed. Close one. lol. Tuesday had an interesting morning. First, Elder Roberts (one of the oficinistas) went to turn off the trickling bidet and instead turned it on, shooting himself in the face. Ugh. haha.  Then we had district meeting. The district leader was just busy telling us off for not getting the best numbers last week in certain key indicator areas, where we obviously knew that we could improve next week. Anyways, the new assistant (Elder Short) walked in and when asked if he had any comments went right out and said that the spirit was not felt there in the room and that something had to change. Wow. Bold statement. Anyways, he was able to turn the whole thing around and save some of the lesson. He does a great job here. Sometimes he´s does a great job of being a second conscience - sometimes a little naggy, but really just telling you what you already know and helping you to do better. Good stuff.
Wednesday I got to catch up on all of the stuff that had gotten put to the side the days before. I also got to see the rewards of hard work. I think I had made 7 or 8 checks in those 2 days, but in the end, I needed every one of them and was really glad that I had put in the little effort before hand to save myself from suffering later. Kind of a good analogy for life and the Plan of Salvation I guess.
Anyways. I don´t really remember Thursday. Pretty tranquilo day. But Friday is where the real excitement came. After office work, we got to help set up for the talent show that we´ve been planning. The ward mission leader had the idea a couple weeks back. We were all kind of skeptical because the last activity we planned kind of flopped. Big time. But we played along with it because he was pretty excited. Even up till Friday I was interested to see how it would turn out and who would come. Well, after set up we went and worked. Made some personal and phone-style invites. Actually got some good work done just by using technology to our advantage. Anyways, we showed up at the talent show and people were already getting all ready for there acts. Little by little more and more people showed up. In the end, there were lots of people there. Members, less active members, members and visitors from other wards. Exciting. We had a weird incidence at the beginning where some guy was trying to accuse a member for breaking into his house the other week. Definitely possible. But fortunately he didn´t make a scene, and in the end there wasn´t really any problems. But the talent show went 100 times better than I would have thought. We didn´t have any time at all to participate which was good because we didn´t practice anything. I got forced into accompanying a song I didn´t know, and butchered it. But fortunately I don´t think anyone noticed because they were busy listening to the little primary singers. Other funny parts: The mission leader tried to get me to lead a whole pack of ballerinas upstairs to their changing room by myself. Didn´t fall for it. haha. One of them also tried to give my comp the traditional double kiss thing on stage in front of everybody as he gave them a thank you note kind of thing. In the end he pulled out like a good missionary, but made a scene of himself in front of everybody. haha. The members liked it. In the end, it just went great. I only broke I bottle of soda, but I made sure that everyone knew that it wasn´t me. lol. The dancers were actually really cool. They did lots of traditional dances for us and it was a really memorable moment. In the end, a great ward bonding experience. Super cool. The youth even performed the EFY line dances and all that good stuff.
Today pretty normal. They are opening a new area (hasn´t been done for a while) and so the assistants got to go out and look for a chapel and house. Unfortunately we weren´t invited, but cool nonetheless. Played more piki volley. Sweated tons.
This next week should be good and crasy. We have zone conferences almost every day and so we´ll have extra work on our hands every day. Ugh. Oh well. I´ll also be getting the newbie to train. Crasy how time flies. It still doesn´t feel like I´ve been here that long. So that should be exciting. We find out Monday night who the Elder is, and then he´ll be here Wednesday to start his training. Fun stuff. This might be my one and only time to train anyone in anything, so I plan on making the best of it. Its nice though, because he´s almost guaranteed to be a cool guy and should already know how to speak and how stuff goes. So that´ll be nice. Wish me luck. lol. I also plan on doing a lot of divisions with the young men in the next couple of weeks so that we don´t have to work in a trio when we can be doing double work. Exciting.
But yeah. Thats kind of my week. Went well. For some reason I can´t think of anything new besides that. Hopefully all continues to go well. Glad to hear that things are going well with you all. Love you all lots. I appreciate all of your letters and support. The church is true! Hope you have a great week, and keep up the good work!
Chau!
Elder Humphreys