Goodby Elder Hales - Friday, August 13, 2010

Rich had to be the first one in the shower today so he got up at 6:00 and I stayed in the warm bed until he was through with the bathroom. It was nice to turn over and know I had a few more minutes to sleep.

Elder Peterson was picking Rich up at 7:15 to accompany him to meet Elder Smith at Immigrations in order to renew his visa. I thought it strange that they were going for only one elder, but this was a rush job to get Elder Smith in because his visa was going to expire after today. If that occurred, it would cost more money to renew it. So off he went after getting ready and eating a quick breakfast.

I leisurely got myself ready and maybe too leisurely because I didn't even leave home until a few minutes after 9:00. Oh well, I walked in before Elder Hales and Elder Paz arrived, and the phones weren't ringing off the hook, so no harm done.

A fair amount of medical calls came in this morning -- some I could handle, some I called the doctor about. He is so good about having missionaries come in to see him if they are in the area, and I had two missionaries that I felt the doctor should see. He was most accommodating. When Dr. Snell leaves on September 2, I will really miss him, but we hear that the doctor replacing him is wonderful as well.

After entering a couple baptisms, I spent most of the remaining hours of the day working on getting the garments documented and ready to return to the Distribution Center. I don't know why it took so long, it was frustrating.

Elder Hales was putting finishing touches on getting his processes typed up and organized on the computer for easy viewing. It was so professionally done and a click of the mouse revealed anything and everything to do with his responsibililties. Elder Paz will take over on Monday.

We pose with Elder Hales for the traditional picture we take with those leaving the office. He has been so fun to work with and we are really going to miss him. He has made great strides in getting the missionary housing cleaned up and organized. In doing so under the training from President Argyle, he has learned business skills that will can be applied to his future life.

Elder Hales is a good missionary, dedicated, and obedient. He is being made a District Leader in the Norte zone and we are happy he can now resume preaching and teaching on a full time basis. He is happy about it although he says he enjoyed his life in the office.

At lunch time, Elder Hales and Elder Paz joined the Assistants in having lunch at a Peruvian restaurant a couple blocks from the office. The Assistants found it a few weeks ago and have been raving about it, so they wanted Elder Hales to go there with them as sort of a farewell lunch. I encouraged them to go reassuring them that I would be just fine alone in the office until Elders Kroff and Peterson returned.

When those two did arrive back at the office, the three of us had leftovers from the food supplied by Sister Bolentini. There was enough for three to eat so Elder Peterson shared with us. He is conscious of our every need.

Elder Hales wanted a picture of the "transition team" as we were labeled by President Argyle some months ago. Did we do our job? We are being split up so I guess we accomplished something. These are two fine elders and two of our best friends. How we love them!!

This crazy weather has turned bitter cold -- just when we think it will start to get warmer. So when we got home around 5:00, we couldn't muster up the energy nor desire to go out again for shopping and McDonalds. Just couldn't do it! So we had some left overs in the fridge and called it good.

That was a good decision or we would have missed the skype call from Paul and Denise. We haven't talked to them for several weeks so we had a lot of catching up to do. We discussed more in depth the visit of our daughters on the buddy passes being supplied by them and the possibility of needing to change the date by a week or two. She gave some good suggestions that I will present to the girls.

During our evening home we received a phone call from the Tigre sisters asking Rich if he could baptize one of their investigators tomorrow. They said this man had been attending Elder Kroff's Gospel Principles class that he taught on Sundays in Tigre and now is ready for baptism and wants him to do the baptizing. We can't place the name with a face, but Rich is happy to be of service. We are glad they called. Before that appointment, we are attending the baptism of four people in the San Fernando ward. The Assistants cover that ward area so they must be pleased.

It is interesting that we didn't have anywhere to go or anything planned for P-day tomorrow. We couldn't come up with anything that sounded fun to do with the weather being so cold. This is probably the reason -- we had to support baptisms and we are thrilled to do it.