Week 96 - Preparation day woes.

Since Elder Marques and I work in the office, we have our p-day on Saturday.  Things like real estate agencies and other businesses are only open Monday through Friday and we have to be here to solve anything that comes up. We also need to answer the phone calls.  Rather than a p-day on Monday with the rest of the mission, ours is on Saturday.

We asked the assistants to try and change their p-day to Saturday so we could do things together but they didn't.  A couple of weeks ago they played basketball with President and Sister Silcox.  Elder Marques and I were allowed to play for ten minutes.  P-day alone just has no point.

With all our appointments on Saturday, we don't have time to go anywhere.  Our p-days are never really p-days anyway.  We are always solving and fixing problems.  Somebody always calls. There are often housing and medical problems that need fixing.

I don't do anything with the housing problems. Elder Marques handles all the housing issues.  I handle the medical issues.  Even if I don't have anything on my plate, if my companion does, I need to stay with him until the problem is solved.

In the states, the missions have senior couples that act as the secretaries. Here most missions don't have senior missionaries.  Plus most missions have four secretaries. In our mission it's just Elder Marques and I.

Sometimes, there is little to be done.  I hate staying in the office when there is nothing to do. I just study scriptures all day.  Sometimes I'm so bored.  It's been hot recently, but I would welcome the opportunity to be out in the streets again finding and teaching people.

Today, we woke up at 5:00 to play soccer with the youth and we hope to get away and play with the adults at 4:00. We will have lunch at a wonderful Chilean member's home today.

The Mission President, the Sister Leaders, and the Assistants are working on transfers right now. Transfers are this coming week.

The zone.

There's tons of mosquitos now.  Is the Zika virus a big problem world wide?

Here in South America dogs are like the squirrels back home. They are all over the place.  There are a lot of strays.

Week 95 - Preparation day.

For p-day we played soccer this morning with about ten people. We had lunch at a member’s house. It was really really good. They are Bolivian. She made lasagna but it tasted just like mom's taco casserole but without the crunch! We were there for about two and a half hours.

I fixed some medical problems in the mission and we just got back from going to get açaí with the assistants.

The one thing I haven’t seen yet that I would like to is Aparecida and Our Lady of Aparecida. Aparecida is in the last zone of this mission. Our Lady of Aparecida is the biggest catholic church in South America.

The family we helped last week has disappeared.  We haven’t heard from them at all.  I think something has happened...

Lunch with the assistants and sister training leaders.

Week 94 - The Lord's second coming and serving with love.

We had a conference this past week.  We were told that the end is getting closer and we can no longer hang on the fence. You have to decide who's side you're on.  Elder Nelson gave a POWERFUL blessing to all of us at the end.  He talked about how this is the last time the Lord is sowing his fields. 

Our mission president said we will have a world wide mission devotional on the 20th.  It's going to be about baptizing people who are truly converted. 

Sister Nelson gave us a question to think about to do a self evaluation.  She said what if we told you that the Savior is already here on earth meeting with his true followers in preparation for his second coming?

The mission has had some turmoil lately.  The assistants have been doing splits with the zone leaders all week and there have been several emergency transfers. But everything has been going well overall.

Elder Marques and I were contacting referrals we got from mormon.org this week. We received ten. Only two really existed.  One was a person who didn't want to be contacted but he ended up taking a Book of Mormon anyways.  He is part of a religious group from Kentucky.  Elder Marques got into this huge bible bash with him and I just sat there listening to them argue for an hour.  Elder Marques tried getting out of it (Contention never produces anything good) but the guy kept poking him.  The man kept sayings things like "You can't defend yourself because you know I'm right."

On the way back this family stopped us and asked if we knew where a church was. They are from the favelas (shanty towns) in Rio.  Rio's accent is really funny! It's a ton of "ssssssshhhh"-- almost like a lisp. The man received a job offer here.  He brought his family but it ended up being a scam.  They lost everything.  He has three kids:  One is five.  One is two and the other is a new born. They were living in the streets because the homeless shelters don't accept families. They would split them up if they went to a shelter.  We gave them some clothes and I cooked them dinner that night. The bishop talked with them and the next day he helped him prepare a job resume. That same day he was hired! I don't know where they are sleeping, but they are super cool and are going to come to church on Sunday! 

We should have a lot of people come to church tomorrow!  Elder Marques and I are going to give talks. He will talk about how members can do missionary work. I'm the last speaker and was asked to talk about serving with love. I've already started working on my talk. I'm going to talk about what is service and the difference it makes when we serve with love.  I'll also talk about the blessing we receive through service.