Week 16 from Quito Ecuador

This has been a busy week.  Monday was its’ usual busy at the office.   With nine missionaries leaving, including Sis. Morris, who has been the mission nurse for the last 18 months, there were a few tears and goodbye hugs shared.   With this change Elder Papworth was moved out to work in Santo Domingo Zone his last six weeks of his mission.  We will miss having him in the office.  We were also busy with the last minute plans for the new missionaries arriving.  Down to the last minute we were unsure of a couple of the missionaries, as to whether they were coming or not.  One missionary came as a surprise.  We
thought he was postponed but he came with the group from the Colombia MTC.  With the group from the Peru MTC we had six sister missionaries and one elder arrive, all from the United States, speaking very little Spanish.

Sis. Thomas with Sis. Morris

Elder Papworth off to his new assignment

We also got the meet the new AP’s and new office elders.  Great young men.  It’s going to be a bit crowded in the office but we’re glad to be working with them.

The missionaries came in three separate groups, with one missionary coming in on Wednesday.  The main and largest group came from Colombia at 10:30am.  Then we had the small group from the Peru MTC at 1pm.  The last group of two missionaries came at 3pm.  It was a good thing we had the new AP’s and office elders to help.  President and Sister Ghent greeted the main group and came to the mission home with them.   Lynn and I along with the Kaneens and the two new office elders were at the mission home to be the first to greet the missionaries as they got there.  The AP’s stayed at the airport to greet the next group and one set of AP’s came to the mission home with that group and then Elder Burr and Elder Deardon, one of the new AP’s, stayed at the airport to greet the last two elders.   It took some real coordination to arrange for all the transportation and to make sure that we got all the missionaries to the mission home.

Elder Morton and Elder Cantera, the new office elders.

The Kaneens and Lynn and I spent the whole day Tuesday at the mission home.  With 35 missionaries arriving, Pres. and Sis. Ghent needed lots of help.   Sometime during the day the missionaries are allowed to send a short email home to let their families know that they had arrived safe and sound.  Usually they just have one computer to have to take turns on.  With as the number of missionaries we had arriving this time I suggested that I bring our small notebook computer as an extra one.  The Kaneens decided that they would bring their two computers.  That gave us four.  We set the three laptops on the dining room table and it gave us a regular Internet café.   Sister Kaneen used a timer and they all had five minutes to write home.  We reminded them that they would have two hours on Monday that they are allowed to email so this was just to send a short note home.  This proved to be very successful.  We were able to get through them all in a relatively short amount of time.  We will definitely do it this way next time when we again have a very large group coming on July 2nd.  Of course Lynn and I will not be part of the greeting party since we will be starting the new mission by then.

Our mission internet café

The Kaneens and Sister Ghent preparing lunch.

Ironing lessons

Elder Burr with Elder Deardon, on of the new AP's
along with two of the new missionaries

Elder Burr doing clean-up duty

Some really tired missionaries

Last time they only had half as many missionaries and it took the whole day for everyone to have a turn.  The timer helped to give everyone an equal amount of time.  While some were on the computer others were getting cooking lessons from Sis. Ghent and ironing lessons from their maid and I was taking all their pictures.  I would take one with a smile and made sure their name badge was visible. We will probably use these for the Christmas card that will be made for Christmas.  The other was taken without a smile so that it could be used for their visa renewal when the time comes.   Lynn was responsible to make sure that we collected all their passports, visas, and other important papers that we would save in the office for them.  I had prepared large envelopes with their names on them so that everything could go into it and would not get lost. Sister Ghent was very pleased with how well everything went.  We had it so well organized and everyone did their jobs.  She said that one of the new AP’s commented that when he came about a year and half ago with a group about as large as this group everything was total chaos.  The big difference was that President and Sister Ghent and their maid were they only ones greeting the new missionaries.  They didn’t have the senior couples to help.  It really makes a difference to have the extra help that senior couples can giv

Wednesday was the orientation meeting for these new missionaries.  It is also when they are assigned to a trainer.  We had a large number of sisters with this group.  The challenge that President Ghent had was most of his sister missionaries have only been here a few months and he had no choice but to use them as trainers since that’s all he had.  But, we have some great sister missionaries and they are up to the task.   The English speakers were assigned a non-English speaking companion.  They will learn Spanish fast.

New Sister trainers

New missionaries

New missionaries with trainers

I spent Thursday and Friday scanning passport and visa pages and going through each of the missionaries papers and getting them filed.  We keep their passports in the safe.  Our next challenge is now to get the empadronamientos for all of these new missionaries within the next thirty days.

Thursday Lynn and I got a glimpse of the new office since it’s on the way to the lunch room and the door was unlocked.  It looks like it is about done, just needs some finishing touches and furniture. It looks really nice.  It’s reception area is about half as big as our present office.  It’s going to be a challenge to keep the missionaries from congregating there on Mondays, since there won’t be the room that they are used to.

Friday was inauguration day for the Ecuadorian president who was reelected in March, which made for another holiday so the church office building was closed but work as usual for the mission office.  It started out very quiet, since the Kaneens and Sister Platts had gone to the Guayaquil temple with the ward group on Thursday night and Friday.  It was the Kaneens anniversary so it was appropriate that they get to go. Since we can’t all go at the same time Lynn and I will go another time.  The President and Sister Ghent along with the AP’s were supposed to be meeting with one of the zones in the Colon chapel.  But, with all the inauguration activities they weren’t able to get to the chapel so they moved their meeting to the office building.  That brought a lot of activity to the office that would normally not be there as the president was doing interviews, Sister Ghent was going over their area books and the AP’s were doing some training.

Sometimes on our walk to & from the office we see some
interesting things.  As we stopped so I could rest a bit on
the way home on Friday I noticed a tiny flower, Lynn said it
was a weed growing out of the stone wall we were sitting on.
It's a survivor.

This afternoon we met at the Kaneens for our Senior FHE group.  They had us choose our favorite hymn and share it with everyone.  We had such a great spirit, which always happens when you have the right kind of music.  I love these get-togethers.  We up lift each other and strengthen each other.