Transfer Week - Monday, May 31, 2010

We woke up knowing this would be a busy week with transfers and that the President wanted everything to go smoothly so we would all be prepared to handle everything for President Gulbrandsen on his first transfer in the middle of July.

My duties during transfer week are minor because all my work is done prior to the time. Since the end of the month is here, my focus is on getting all the baptisms and confirmations that were held this weekend into the computer by the deadline date which is the 7th of the following month. I also sent a few welcome letters for the missionary applications we have received for October arrivals. We won't get to know those missionaries very well as that is the month we leave for home.

Elder Kroff was anxious to take a trip up to the banco to see if his personal debit card which he realized he left in the ATM machine on Friday, had been sucked inside the machine. Sometimes the ATM's at banks shred the cards as they suck them in. He was hoping this machine wasn't one of those. He was going also to make a deposit and when he got to the window, the teller knows him and had his card ready to give to him. Thankgoodness!!!

She had a stack of 75 cards that have not been picked up. He didn't know how long they had been holding on to them. But, she recognized his first name, not remembering his last name, so held that card out to see if it belonged to him. It was such a hassle the first time we lost it at a grocery store ATM many months ago, so our anxiety level over the weekend was high thinking we would have to go through that long process again of getting a new card sent to us.

Elder Peterson had the most to do today to get ready for the week. As always, the President has last minute changes to make in switching companionships. No one is notified if they are staying or going until Monday night when the Zone leaders go to the internet to retrieve the information that is emailed to them by the office. Then they make the calls to those in their zones, and everyone starts packing that is being transferred.

This transfer, two who are going South were probably up most of the night packing because the remise from the Area Offices was picking them up at 7:00 to get them to the airport for their flight.

The President doesn't want the missionaries notified until the night before in order to keep the work moving along. If there is too much time involved, the missionaries spend time running around saying their goodbyes to members, and he also doesn't want any "farewell" parties planned for missionaries who are moving on. So, a quick exit and entrance is his style, and it works well.

The first page in the new missionary binders is a picture of President and Sister Argyle with a welcome greeting to the incoming missionary. It is a nice beginning to the book. The office staff prepared the page for the Argyles when they came. They had about 400 printed to last the three years. So we decided we had better get busy and create one for the Gulbrandsens. The only thing to change is the picture. So Rich has been working on getting one typed and loaded on his jump drive to take to a printing place he found a few weeks ago. He took it today to get some printed and we were glad we decided to just get 50 done right now in case the new President had another picture they wanted to use. Why? Because they printed it on an odd size paper - No. A4. That is what they mostly use down here, not 8 1/2 by 11 size. Now, we have to take them back and see if they will redo them, or just reorder being more specific with what we need.

We enjoy coming home each night and checking out the progress being made on the torre that is going up across the street from us. We watched them tear down an old dwelling board by board and then build this new apartment building from the ground up, layer by layer. It will probably be at least five stories tall. It has been interesting to see how they do it with manual labor -- no machinery involved.

At home this evening we had a couple of tacos to finish up the fixins we had on Saturday. Then I wrote yesterday's entry -- will I ever get caught up???