Week 12 from Quito Ecuador

As always, Monday was a busy and hectic day.  The morning was quiet, which is usual.  As it was approaching 10am Elder Kaneen stepped out of his office and said, “It’s 10am so prepare yourself for the adventure to start.”  Sure enough within a short time the missionaries started arriving and the office a buzz of activity.  Lynn and I worked all morning to get all the information together for the visa waiters so Paulina could make their appointments, which they got for Wednesday.

When President Ghent came in he was asking about how things were going with the visa waiters.  As we were going through the list I had on the wall to update him on the statis of them he asked, “And how about Sister Cerrado?”  I looked at the list and said that we didn’t have a Sister Cerrado as a visa waiter.  Then it dawned on me what he was referring to and everyone got a kick out the fact that he had teased me about it.  Evidently, the AP’s had told him about it and now it’s a standing joke in the office.

We could hear work going on in the remodel for the new mission office, even though it’s on the 7th floor and we are on the 2nd.   It’s scheduled to be done by the middle of June and then we will be going in and preparing the office for the new mission, on top of our regular duties.

A week ago Friday, as we were leaving the office Elder Hassell got a call that the sister missionary that had not come with our April 9th group because of visa problems would be here on Tuesday evening.  And then on Monday we got word that an Elder was coming that we had pretty much given up on.  He had so many change forms come in for him, saying that he was delayed for one reason or another.  He is now here.  He arrived on Wednesday.

Because of all the leaving visa waiters and these two newly arriving missionaries we had several changes in companionships.  Because of this Wednesday was like another Monday at the office.  These missionaries were meeting at the office to make the exchanges and it was pretty busy.  

On Wednesday Lynn and Elder Kaneen took bus rides out to one of the areas to look at an apartment that the mission was going to get.  It was quite the adventure for them.  While they were out there they were able to see three volcanoes from that vantage point.  Since Elder Kaneen was gone for lunch time I went to lunch at the Subway with Sis. Kaneen.   We got there just before the big rush at 1pm and had a great lunch.  President Ghent, the AP’s and Elder Papworth and Elder Hoffmann came in as we were finishing and had to stand in a line to wait to get served.  They had Victor with them also.  He is our regular driver, to take groups of missionaries to various activities or to pick or deliver missionaries to the airport.  He was also the one that took our group to Mitad de Mundo in March.  He was there to take the Elders to the airport to pick up the new elder that was arriving.  He is not a member, which was surprising to some of us.   While they were waiting for the time to leave they gave a missionary lesson to him.  He had attended the General Conference broadcast at the church the first of this month and has shown an interest in the church.   Elder Papworth says that he may be baptized in a couple of weeks.

Thursday was President Ghent’s birthday.  Sister Ghent brought brownies into the office to share.  They were great.  Later in the evening I went to the Kaneen’s to participate in the the Spanish lesson with Elder Sego.  At this point I think my pronunciation is improving but still not able to communicate very well in Spanish. We’ll just keep working at it.  It would probably help if we spoke Spanish in the office but it’s so much easier, since we all speak English to just stick with English.  We have so much to do that we just don’t have time to struggle with the language.

This week President Ghent called four sisters to the new position of Sister Trainer Leader.  This was announced by the Church the week before last and we are now using them in our mission.  These two companionships will each be over the sisters from districts in several zones each, dividing the zones between them.  What used to be called the Zone Leaders Council, that is held the first Wednesday of the month, will now be called the Mission Leadership Council and will include these four sisters.  We will be holding our first one under this new title this next Wednesday. We will probably be getting our second set of AP’s and office elders, also, who will be getting trained for the new mission.

We have been getting requests for Book of Mormons and sadly we had to tell them that we were out and have been out for a while.  Sis. Platts, who is the one who orders them, finally called Salt Lake to see if the orders she had sent back in February had been shipped and found out that they all our orders were being held in Salt Lake since we are having boarder problems which was preventing them from being shipped.  Ecuador customs can’t believe that these books are being given away and they want to make sure they get the money they think they should before releasing them or letting them into the country.  It’s pretty sad for the missionaries not to be able to have Book of Mormons to give out.  Brother Gonzalez, who is the one in the building over material management, said that he could get us about a thousand from Peru.  That sounds like a lot but with over two hundred missionaries that’s only about five each and they can give those out pretty quickly.

Saturday the missionaries had an open house in our chapel in the morning.  They had asked that some of the priesthood brethren go to help the missionaries in getting people to attend.  So Lynn and Elder Kaneen went.  They were to go out on the street and invite people to attend the open house.  They were able to get about 15 who attended and showed an interest. It was pretty successful.  While he was there Lynn talked with the bishop.  The bishop told of when he had just come home from his mission and was called to be a counselor in the bishopric.  He reminded them that he wasn’t married.  They said that could be remedied fairly quickly, since he had a girlfriend, didn’t he.  So he and his girlfriend hastened up their plans for marriage and solved the problem.  Ever since then he has served either in the bishopric or on the high council all their married life.

This afternoon was our senior FHE group at Sis. Thomas and Sis. Platts.  We shared again our favorite conference talks.  We always have such a great spirit as we meet together and many experiences are shared.  We love meeting with them and learning from them.  As part of our discussion we were talking about the new leadership position for the sister missionaries.  Sister Kaneen told of how sensitive Elder Burr, who is one of the AP’s, is of the feelings of the sisters.  This last week a couple of sisters had a cat they had come upon that needed some medical care and they didn’t have the money to pay for it.   Elder Burr tried to help them understand, as gently as he could, that they were not responsible for the cat.  Sister Kaneen said she would have just told them to forget about the cat and not worry about it, but Elder Burr said that you just can’t tell them like that because it would make them cry and you don’t want to make the sisters cry.  He will make a great husband and church leader some day.  He has the sensitivity beyond his years.  He’s a great leader.

That’s it for now and we’re on to a busy week.