Monday was busy, as usual. I now have a new task. Bro. Gonzales is over material acquisition and working with the health insurance company to get the missionaries set up with health insurance. He came in Monday to find out who in the mission office had taken Elder Vega’s place in sending to him the information he needs for all the missionaries who are coming to the mission so he can get them set up with insurance cards. It appeared that Elder Vega hadn’t trained anyone with the job so I volunteered to be the one to do it. Bro. Gonzales said that he would come in on Tuesday morning to show me what he needed and how to get it to him. So he spent some time on Tuesday showing me what to do. One of the items of information that is needed is the passport numbers. All the information is supposed to be turned in to the insurance company 15 days before the anticipated arrival date of the missionaries in order to have everything ready. The big challenge has been getting those passport numbers before they get here. Supposedly the MTC’s have that available to them but the Colombia MTC has not been very cooperative in giving that to us and most of the missionaries come from there who are from Latin America. I’ve spent the better part of the week trying to get the numbers. I found out on Thursday that I should be able to get that information from the area office but, with this being Holy Week, most offices are closed until Monday so I’ll have to wait until then. Since our next group will be arriving on April 9th it looks like we aren’t going to make the deadline.
On Tuesday we had a group of four visa waiters come in, among them was one who was called to serve in Canada. He was supposed to go to the Provo MTC but the USA would not give him a visa so he went to the Colombia MTC before being sent here. On Tuesday afternoon he was supposed to get his visa from Canada but he found out that Canada won’t issue him a visa. It is now up to the area office as to what is going to happen. He may need to be reassigned to another mission. It seems that his family had lived in Bountiful, Utah when he was young and, for whatever reason, his parents didn’t have the proper documentation done at that time and the family ended up being deported. That is the reason that the USA wouldn’t issue him a visa. He is staying here and been assigned an area here for the time being until the area office can decide what to do. He is a good young man and wants to serve the Lord. Hopefully, he’ll be able to do that.
We also had another young man come this week. He was also having some visa problems, but instead of going to the MTC in Colombia to get his training while he waits for his visa the Stake president decided that he should come here first. Pres. Ghent was not in agreement with this but the Stake president sent him anyway. After discussing his situation with the Colombia MTC it was decided that he would go there for his training and then return here if his visa had not been issued by then. We sometimes have some very unique situations occur here.
This week had a couple of missionaries who were sent home early. On sister, who has had some health problems had to go home and an elder was sent home because he wouldn’t obey the rules. The president has been working with him for some time but he was just not doing what he was supposed to do. Missions are not for those who are not willing to do the work and missionaries are sent home early, not just because of grave sins, but sometimes, for not being willing to do missionary work.
Our ward relief society has been given the assignment to provide two musical numbers for the Saturday Adult session of Stake conference that will held the week after general conference. We practiced right after church on Sunday and also had a practice on Wednesday night.
Thursday, Elder Kaneen and Lynn went with President Ghent to Ambato to look at more apartments. With 26 missionaries coming in a little over a week we are needing about 18 new apartments, so the Kaneens have been working on that. Lynn goes along to help. While they were gone Sis Ghent came into the office. When I first started preparing the mission history she let me borrow her photo album to get pictures for the history. I asked her to give me some information about the pictures. As she was looking at them she remembered some stories and shared them with us.
She saw a picture of two missionaries and told about them. It seems that they were serving in Colombia. While they were teaching a man in a park a car drove by and shot and killed that man. They then had to give a report on what happened. The mission office then felt that they needed to get them out of the country as quickly as possible for their safety and so they were sent to our mission. It just so happened that one of the elders had a brother that was serving here. They were very good missionaries.
Another picture was of the baptism of a sister. She said that the sister, Betty, was a rather simple person,
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| Betty is on the far right. |
Sister Ghent also shared a story that one of the zone leaders had shared with her husband this last week. These missionaries had been to a local park posting some signs that had a picture of Christ on them and something about Christ visiting the Americas after his death. When they were visiting with some of the people there was an indigenous woman that said she knew about Christ coming to the America’s. This was surprising to the missionaries. She started relating a story that had been passed down from her forefathers and she could have been quoting from 3rd Nephi.
Friday was Good Friday and a major holiday here. Just about everything was closed down, even the Church Office building. But, the mission office was still open. It was kind of strange walking to the office. The roads were really quiet and there weren’t very many people out and about. President Ghent let us leave early, but I guess we should have stayed because after we were back at our apartment the nurses needed to get in to the office and their card doesn’t work right now so they had to come borrow Lynn’s so they could do some work at the office. A couple of elders also need to get in to pick up a package that had been sent. We probably could have gone out and seen some sights but Lynn ended up having diarrhea on Friday and Saturday so we stayed at the apartment. He did feel a little better in the afternoon on Saturday so he took a little walk.
As I walked into Relief Society today the Relief Society counselor who was giving the lesson wanted me to sing a solo of a song that she wanted as the opening song, “We love Thy House, Oh God”. Since I don’t do well with the higher notes I agreed to sing it without accompaniment. That way I could sing it in a lower range and not have my voice give out. It turned out fairly well especially considering I didn’t get a chance to practice at all. Her lesson was on going to the temple. They had planned on going to the Guayaquil Temple this weekend but the trip had to be cancelled because there weren’t enough who could go. Her husband is the bishop and her lesson was an encouragement to get ready for the next planned trip in May. It’s a bit of a challenge for the members to go since it costs about $100 to $150 for the 8 hour bus trip. There is housing at the temple grounds for them but they have to pay for the transportation there. Since many of the members are very poor it’s really hard for them to come up with the money. Sis. Platts was planning on going with them on this trip so she was very disappointed to not be able to go. We in the office have to get special permission from the area office in order to go since it’s out of our mission area, and we can’t all go at the same time since they need someone to be in the office. We will try and go later in the year.
For Easter Sunday we had a pot luck dinner at our house. We invited the Ghents to join us and had a most enjoyable evening sharing stories, good conversation and good food.
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| Sis. & Elder Phelps, Sis. Kaneen, Lorena, Elder Kaneen, Sis. Thomas |
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| Elder Nelson, Sis. Platts, Sis. & Elder Sego, Sis. & Pres. Ghent |
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