Eleven Months - Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010

We started our mission 11 months ago today. A blessing, indeed!

Our mornings are always the same routine -- showers, scriptures, breakfast, lunch making, dishes, The Undaunted, prayer, and out the door. We are pretty much creatures of habit.

We took our umbrellas because the forecast had rain in it. We were never out in it today, but there were showers throughout the day from time to time. It remained hot and muggy, but we were cool in the office.

Not that I don't want the elders to baptize a lot of people each week, but I am grateful that I only have 15 baptisms to enter before Friday instead of 39 like I had last week. I don't have time to focus only on baptisms this week. I am swamped!! I have mail and orders for supplies to fill for four zones. Two zones on Thursday, and two zones on Friday.

A member of the Area Presidency and a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, Elder Aidukaitis (age 48) from Portugal, is touring the mission and speaking to the missionaries. He was made a Seventy while he was serving as a mission president in Brazil. Now, he is assigned to the Area Presidency of the South America South Area. He will meet with the missionaries in Buenos Aires at four zone conferences which will have two zones meeting together at each conference. I have to prepare the mail and pedidos to be taken to each conference. So today I filled nine bins to be delivered along with 5 boxes of copies of the Book of Mormon. This order is for the conference on Thursday. The President will come by tomorrow to pick them up. Then, Thursday after the conference, he and the assistants will bring the bins back to the office and pick up the load prepared for the conference on Friday. Same thing will happen for Monday and Tuesday.

Before I got started on all of this, Sister Argyle called to ask if I had a few minutes for her to show me how to get into the medical program on the computer. This is where I can log in a missionary's illness and what the doctor prescribed. Then, he can access it from his computer and nothing has to be forwarded to him through email or hard copy form. She was already on her way to the office so, of course, I became available. It is something I have wanted to learn how to use anyway.

I took a break to snap a photo of these two when they came into the office. Elder Fernandes on the left has just been made a new assistant. He is a sharp elder and a good missionary. Elder Riquelme, on the right, is the one waiting for his visa to go to Venezuela to finish serving his mission. He has been here six months already and we all want to keep him.

Filling the orders for the two zones in the first conference took me all afternoon. It was after six o'clock before I headed for home. Elder Kroff had his English class over in the church at 6:30, so he stayed for that. We had plans to leave the office at 4:00 so he could go home and rest, then eat some dinner before going to teach the class. But, that didn't happen, obviously. He had about eight people in the class again tonight -- some repeats and some new ones. He said it went well.

When Rich returned home at about 8:30, Melissa had just called on skype, so we had a nice visit with her. She is becoming adjusted to living in the Denver area and likes it a lot. She likes the availability of the many things around her and the ability to use public transportation to get to other areas if she desires. We are glad she is happy.

The evening went fast because we weren't home as early as usual. Rich is in bed as I finish up this entry. More of the same tomorrow.