Monday was a busy day as usual. As you know, Monday was April 1st. One of our missionaries decided to pull an April Fool’s joke on his mom and emailed her that he had broken his foot but was doing OK. The mother wrote to the mission office to check on how her son was doing. We hadn’t heard of any injuries so Sis. Thomas called the mission nurses to find out if they knew anything. They also hadn’t heard anything, so they started the process to get him x-rayed and checked out. When he was called to confirm that he needed care he confessed that it was only an April Fool’s joke and that he was OK. The nurses did not think it was funny nor did his mother when Sis. Thomas called her to tell her that she had been April Fooled. The zone leaders also said that they were coming down hard on him for all the trouble he had caused. I’m sure that years from now it will be a funny story in the family but was not too appreciated at the moment.
Monday we received notification that a new mission office couple are arriving in July. Even though their call is for our mission we are pretty sure that they will probably be arriving to help with the new mission. This will add to the large number of missionaries that are arriving over the next three months.
Tuesday I had been reminded that Wednesday was Zones Leaders Council and that there was supposed to be a report prepared for the zones on where they stood as far as having problem or missing fichas [what they call baptismal record forms]. These are the records that the missionaries are to turn in that gives all the necessary information about the person that was baptized so it can be recorded and a membership record initiated. Since we still had a stack of them that had been turned in the previous day that needed to be processed it took a while to try and prepare the report. Then, when I tried to reconcile what had been turned in with what was reported by the zone leaders I ran into some problems and things just weren’t matching up. Since Elder Vega was coming into Quito for the Zone Leaders Council, being a zone leader in one of the far outlying zones, he said that he would come directly to the office from the bus terminal after a long 5 hour bus ride. On top of that he was sick so that ride was miserable for him. He wasn’t going to able to be to the office until after 5:30pm so Lynn and I stayed to wait for him. He found a lot of problems with the excel sheet that needed to be fixed and by the time we finished what we needed to do for Wednesday we didn’t leave the office until 9:30pm. It made for a very long, frustrating day.
Even with all the problems of the previous day it was great to be with all the zone leaders at the council meeting. Since the Kaneens and us needed to present parts of the training and Sis. Ghent needed help with preparing the breakfast we were able to attend and be with the zone leaders. As part of his presentation, Elder Kaneen shared an interesting analogy. He started by saying that he has had an interesting experience being here in Quito. Whenever he approaches a lighted intersection the light will turn green and there will be a chirping sound. The chirping sound starts chirping faster as it’s ready to change to red. He said that you then know that you need to lengthen your stride and walked more quickly to cross the street. Since cars don’t seem to give preference to pedestrians you know it’s really important to get out of the way. He compared this to how the growth of missions and missionary work is speeding up and that we need to lengthen our stride to keep up with all the changes and work that needs to be done. The Lord is hastening His work and we, as missionaries, need to work harder as we are accomplishing the work of the Lord. We see this as we are preparing for the mission division and all that is needed to be done to prepare for it.
As part of the meeting they had a group of the zone leaders who sang a beautiful special number. One of the missionaries sang a solo as part of it and it was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. It definitely added to the spirit of the meeting. The Kaneens and Lynn and I left right after that since we needed to get back to the office to get some work done. As we were in the taxis we passed several cars that were for those driving to get their professional drivers permit. The taxis driver said that they have to take this year long course in order to drive professionally like driving taxis. When asked about the requirements for getting a regular license he said that it cost about $50 and the course was for about 2 weeks and you had to be 18. He said that in order to get a license at the age of 16 you had to have a learners permit for one year, could only drive with a licensed driver and it cost $5,000. Now that sure would be a deterrent for having too many teenage drivers on the road.
As I’ve mentioned before we sometimes have missionaries that just don’t seem to get it and don’t always follow the rules. Wednesday, as we were visiting with the AP’s, after they returned to the office after the zone leaders council, Elder Hassell related how you just can’t hide the truth when you are disobedient. One Elder had been in the office, when, I guess, no one else was around, which was a little unusual. He needed to take a picture of a reimbursement form so he put it in between the keys on the keyboard to in place while he took the picture. It was then downloaded onto the computer so it could be sent to the financial secretary. The problem was that on the screen behind the reimbursement form it showed that he was on Facebook with one of the other elders in the mission. It is against the mission rules for missionaries to be on Facebook. Later, when the AP’s logged on to the same computer the picture that the elder had taken popped up on the screen, showing the Facebook page in the background of the reimbursement form. They printed out the picture and showed it to the president. The missionaries were called in and interviewed separately. They both denied being on Facebook. In the presidents usual, casual way he thumbed through his papers, brought out the picture and showed it to them, asking if they recognized the picture. They then had no choice but to acknowledge that they had been disobedient.
As I need to print out lists of missionaries for various reasons I’ve had one missionary that has shown up that didn’t seem to belong to our mission. He showed up as being in our mission but when we looked at his profile in IMOS, which is the online program the church and the mission uses to keep track of missionaries, we could not figure out why he would show up at all. In his companion history it was showing that he was in a companionship with a set of missionaries in our mission back in Nov. 2012 but then in December it showed him with as a companion with a missionary and in an area that are not in our mission. We didn’t have any paper trail to show him being here. We suspected that he was probably one of our many visa waiters. When I called Salt Lake to see if we could get him removed I was told that he indeed had been temporarily in our mission in September and had been sent to Argentina for his permanent assignment. After talking with a couple of people I was told that our mission president was the only one who could request that he be removed. I proceeded to send President Ghent the information and what I had learned requesting that he follow the instructions that we had been given to remove the missionary from our mission. I had no sooner sent the email then we received in the Inbox an email with a change form for the very same missionary showing that he was transferred to Argentina in Dec. 2012. When I then tried to find him in IMOS he was not there. I guess in all my efforts and whoever I talked to found that there was something that hadn’t been done before that was supposed to be done and it was then followed through on and solved the problem. I thought it was funny that it happened so quickly.
This weekend was the Nelson Family reunion at Bear Lake from Thursday to Saturday. Jarom’s family was in charge and he arranged to rent a very large house. Our son, Kaleb, Skyped me and gave me a tour and I was able to see most of the family. It was a bit hard to not be able to be there for it but we know we are where we are supposed to be right now. The grandkids had a ball with all the play equipment throughout the house. There was a slide from one floor to the next, trampoline, basketball half court, video games and a whole lot more.
Thursday and Friday we’ve been busy in the office getting ready for the 26 missionaries and 1 visa waiter that will be coming on Tuesday. Also, on Friday, the Kaneens and us helped with the breakfast for the verification meeting. These are the ones that came the end of February and were tested on how well they have learned what they are supposed to. They also made the trip to the Panecillo.
This weekend we listened to General Conference over the Internet. Even though it was a bit choppy now and then it was great to be able to hear the talks. They were great.
I got sick Sunday night and was not able to go into the office. I had diarrhea and an upset stomach all day and felt a bit dizzy every time I stood up. I guess I got whatever bug Lynn had last week. Elder Phelps came over this evening to help Lynn give me a blessing so I should be able to go into the office tomorrow.
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