We have tons of small, random events here in the offices every week. I have really enjoyed my time here, and we will have three baptisms this Saturday! Working with Élder Benson has been a great experience. Honestly, having a great companion makes all the difference in the world. Finally, I feel pretty used to the office life and working alongside of the president. At first, it felt strange to spend half of the day inside working with computer documents, but no worries. It is the best :). I still can´t believe how fast time flies, too! I will hit my year mark in two more transfers. Anyways, to give you guys some updates, here is a solid list of the random events from the past week:
-I had the opportunity to email chat with one of the área authority´s assistants in Buenos Aires multiple times this week. He is about 25 years old and helps us here with office work almost every day, making sure we enter in data correctly, verifying statistics, and checking up on visa and legal status of different missionaries. We might have a video conference again in the next feel weeks. :)
-Transfers begin next week, and we get to find out about a week early here since we have to use the information for the mission data and financial purposes. In other words, we have to set everything up a week in advance so that everything is in order when the missionaries move to their new apartments.
-The missionaries in the MTC have TONS of visa problems and over half of them might get reassigned to the states for a transfer or two! ugh.
-The president has a mission president conference with all the area authorities this week in Uruguay. He will learn and receive instruction there for five days!
-The Finaciero (financial clerk) got in a car wreck. . . . Luckily, it wasn´t his fault. Still, it will probably need some serious work in the shop before we can drive again. So my stick/manual excitement will have to wait for a while.
-My companion and I started running six miles twice a week in the morning. I never thought one of my companions would willingly run with me that far in the mornings. We went really hard this past week, running all the way from the mission home to the Rosario Airport, and finished at 6:45 pace. I started keeping an excel running log, just like the good old days. We will try to break 25 miles this week! Some mornings we can´t run since Élder Benson has to wake up early and head down to centro to start with government paperwork. Other than that, we get to run almost every morning. I need to take advantage of this while it lasts.
-We found out recently who the new secretary will be. In one of my last emails, I said something about Élder Benson´s time. He will finish the mission in two transfers, right about at my year mark, so he has to start training the new secretary. This training process takes about 4-6 weeks since the secretary has so many random duties for the president and with the offices in Buenos Aires. Hopefully Benson will stay for quite a while longer, but the new secretary will probably come in about a week or two, causing Benson to head out into the normal field in about a month or so. It all makes sense, though, cuz he has served as secretary for almost 7 months. He liked it a lot but is ready to go back to the normal missionary life at the same time. I lived with the new secretary at the beginning of my mission. He is pretty cool too! Little does he know of his new big job. He will be incredibly busy the next half year!!
-I want to call some of the missionaries from my group and tell them where they are going. Obviously that´s against president´s policy, even though we have the list a week early. It makes sense, so no complaints.
-We are gonna go hit the courts in about 30 minutes. I will probably get semi-slaughtered again, but hey, it´s just great. I love playing tennis, especially since my opportunities are pretty limited during the mission.
-The Financial clerk had to burn a wart off of his finger for the third time this week. He bought this liquid nitrogen spray. Watching him burn it off was crazy. He has a huge blister right now.
-I have already entered into the system and created accounts for 58 recent converts. I enjoy working with some of the spreadsheets and everything too, just to see how we are doing on the mission scale.
-I started writing this email in the morning. We just finished playing tennis about an hour ago. I lost 6-0, 6-4 this time. Not too bad, eh? :) The clay courts are AMAZING, and we are going to try and play at least every other week--if not more :)
-For general conference, we were able to watch almost all of the sessions on our computers here in the offices. For one of the Sunday sessions, we have to go and attend at the stake center since Elder benson and I had an investigator who wanted to see it.
-Yes, the rosario weather is FINALLY cooling off, which feels great. After walking seven miles a day in the heat, a little cold is better than ever.
That´s about it for this week. Everything was pretty routine. I hope you guys are doing great.
Elder Jones
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