Week 36 from Quito Ecuador

It’s been a busy week.  Monday we had a lot of missionaries in the office, since there were a lot of transfers in preparation for the new missionaries arriving Monday night and Tuesday.  Sister Richardson called and asked if I could prepare a video for the three departing missionaries for that night.  We had requested that they send in some of their favorite pictures but only one of them sent anything in.  Sister Richardson went through her pictures and sent them to me through Picasa and I went through what I had on the office computer and I came up with enough for a short, one song video that turned out pretty good, especially considering it was a last minute kind of thing.  I’ve gotten pretty good at using Microsoft Movie Maker and I enjoy putting these together.   Sister Richardson wants me to show her how to use it so we’ll have to find some time to do that.

Tuesday was a big day with missionaries arriving.  The big group of 22 came on the same flight, coming from the Colombia and Mexico MTCs at 10:30am.  Then we had one from Chile arrive at about 1pm.  These were very exhausted missionaries, especially the ones coming from Mexico, most getting by on no sleep for over 24 hours.  It took President Richardson two days to get all the interviews done.  Elder Kaneen helped with the Internet, the Nuttalls helped with the cooking class, Sister Allred did the clothing care class and I spent the afternoon scanning passports and visa papers and preparing the empadronamiento packets.  We had a few that didn’t have their visa papers with them the first day but we got them the second day and Lynn was able to take them all over on Wednesday afternoon to turn in their applications.  We’ve gotten this whole process down pretty well and have very few that have not gone through this process that is required by the government in getting the missionaries visas registered with the government.  It works really well to get this done before they are sent out to their assigned areas.

The welcome dinner on Tuesday evening turned out really nice and we enjoyed getting to know these new missionaries.  After dinner they had all the new missionaries share their testimonies.  Even those coming from the US bore theirs in Spanish and did a great job, even if they struggled to come up with the right words, they were able to do it.  I was impressed with this group of sister missionaries.  As it was time to clean up and put things away several of these sisters plunged right in and helped.  That doesn’t always happen.  They also gathered around the piano and sang some hymns.  It was beautiful.

I got brave on Wednesday and took the bus by myself.  I was in a hurry to get to the chapel from the office and decided to try it. Lynn was with the missionaries at the government office so I was by myself.   I have been hesitant to ride the bus because it tends to be really crowded and I’ve heard too many horror stories from the missionaries of things getting stolen but it wasn’t too bad in the middle of the day.

On Wednesday I was visiting with a couple of the sister missionaries who are from the US.  They were asking me about my family and I got the usual response when I told them we have ten children and 38 grandchildren.  Then I said, “And we’re not done yet” meaning that we still expect to have more grandchildren but they thought I meant that we expect to have more children.  I corrected their misunderstanding and we all got a good laugh. Now whenever I see them we share a special hug and they remind me of my little slip.

We have a new assistant to the president, making it a threesome.  With both Elder Dearden and Elder Rodriguez leaving in the December they need to do some training before they leave.  Elder Ospina is a top notch missionary and will make a good assistant.  He doesn’t speak English so that will be a challenge for me but I’m sure we will work it out.

We’ve gotten a lot of rain this week, usually coming in the afternoon.  As long as we have our umbrellas with us we do just fine.

We had FHE at Sister Platts and Sister Allred’s apartment with Sister Allred giving the lesson.  It was on receiving revelation and we had a very good discussion.  We also discussed plans for our trip to Baños at the end of the month and for doing a progressive dinner for Christmas.
Some of the senior missionaries had been to the big shopping center and said that they were already doing Christmas displays.  And I thought the US was the only one that starts with Christmas before Halloween is even here.  They do it here, too.