More of the Same - Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009

We were pleasantly surprised when we walked in the office today to see Elder Clegg. He was there with two other missionaries. Their companions had gone up to the Capital to complete their residency. One week from today Elder Clegg leaves the mission. It seems impossible that the time has come. When we came in March, November seemed like a long way off and now here it is. Elder Kroff left something at home and had to return to get it, so Elder Clegg walked home with him. It was good to see him and have some time to visit this morning. It's been fun having a relative in the mission field with us. We will miss him.

Elder Kroff spent the day figuring out the ajuste or amount of money that the mission sends the missionaries monthly. This is different from what the church sends them. The President is adjusting that amount. He has them on a pretty tight budget and several of the missionaries are having a hard time making their money stretch. They only use it for food, cleaning supplies, hygiene items, and travel, but they always come up short at the end of the month.

I finished getting the letters printed for the 10 missionaries leaving in December. There are three - one to the missionary, their parents, and Stake President. I also printed the certificates that are presented to them by their Stake President. We mail them way in advance to the Stake Presidents so they will be there when the missionary arrives home. We are not sure how the Stake Presidents present them. Each probably does it a different way.

Some missionaries are slow to get their baptism registers faxed to me, so I have been on the phone trying to round them up. Since it is the end of the month, I have a deadline to get all who were baptized in October into the computer by the 31st. Well -- I do have a couple of days into the next month to finalize everything, but I don't let the missionaries know that.

We didn't leave the office as early as we wanted, but that was okay because we didn't have anything special on our evening agenda. I worked on the computer and Rich listened to a book on tape with earphones -- an Agatha Christie novel downloaded from iTunes. Wonder who gave him that idea? Doyles, of course.

This picture doesn't relate to any of today's activities. It is one taken in La Boca when we toured the place with Paul and Denise.