Hello!

June 4, 2016

Hello family!

  I´m glad you had fun at the family reunion and got my letters finally.  Thank you for responding to my request and getting me some pics of Bo and Myles:) 

   Well it´s been a really really really busy week.  Not so stressful though.  Just busy.  I´m kind of to the point that I know pretty dang well what´s going on for changes, what I need to do, what food to buy and when etc.  It´s just a matter of doing it.  It´s weird because these were President´s last changes.  He´ll leave in the end of July and President Brown will come.  

  So on Monday there was the BBQ for the zone that baptized the most per companionship at President´s house and that wasn´t too hard, I just had to buy the water and gatorade and coordinate the bus to bring the missionaries up to President´s house and pay it and give the missionaries a lot of reimbursements.  

  On Monday night the new Americans got here and the Elders stayed at our house that night (the sisters stay at President´s house).  Tuesday was crazy because the new missionary training meeting requires a lot from me and I also had to get ready for actual changes on Wednesday.  For Tuesday I had to set up the tables and stuff at President´s house, pick up the lunch (which I had previously ordered), give a presentation to the new missionaries on how to use their new mission debit cards, go pick up dinner (pizza from PriceSmart), which I had already ordered that morning right when PriceSmart opened.  Then on Tuesday evening we go to the office to do a lot of stuff for changes with the APs.  But... the power went out on Tuesday night so we had to improvise and go to a nearby church that had a family history center with computers we could use (and AC:) ).  Oh ya, and on Tuesday at like 4 PM we were in President´s house bringing in the Pizza.  I was in the kitchen with three other secretaries and suddenly there was like a huge bang and the whole house shook and the pots and pans and stuff in the kitchen were just shaking like crazy.  At first I though a truck or something had smashed into the house because it was pretty violent and only lasted like two seconds.  But it was just a really short earthquake.  It was really cool.  The people that were outside when it happened said everything, roads, trees, houses, walls etc. were just undulating and moving.  

   Then on Wednesday we had change meeting.  All the missionaries that had changes came in buses with their zones to a chapel in Managua, go to a meeting, get told which zone they´ll be going to, get on that zone bus and head out.  I had to pay all the buses that came in, help Elder Aitken get all the materials set up for the zones to take (mail, chairs, fans, tables etc.).  I also gave a lot of reimbursements for all sorts of crap.  I got changed again from San Judas III back to San Judas II.  It´s a bit disappointing to go right before familia Murillo and Kenia get baptized back to San Judas II which doesn´t really have any investigators right now.  In the office, Elder Jungers moved up to ZL in Carazo in the zone I was in while I was in Masatepe.  Elder Lim from the office also got changed.  Elder Diaz (who came with me and was in the MTC with me) came to the office and is now comps with Elder Aitken in the area I just left, and the other Elder Smith also came and is with the DL, Elder Hernandez.  It´s going to frustrating having two Smith´s in the office haha.  The other Smith does key indicators and weekly numbers stuff so on a board or something when people are writing our names, to distinguish us they right it like this:  Elder $mith (me) or Elder Smith #s (other Smith).  On Wednesday night we had the dinner for the departing missionaries so for that I had to go get the meat we ordered for the dinner, and pick up the flower arrangements for the table.  And I had to do it as fast as possible to keep the meat from getting cold in the car.  The other secretaries served the dinner while me and Elder Petty went back to the office to ingress baptisms from this month.  In the month of May the mission set a new record, baptizing 306.  Everyone was pretty happy about it because the previously monthly record was 275. But the General secretary has to ingress every baptismal record onto the computer and enter all of their information from the record to the computer and it´s a pretty slow process. So, being comp of the gensec (general secretary) I was recruited to help ingress for a long time.

  On Thursday I got to wake up at 3:15 in the morning to go to the airport with the departing missionaries.  Elder Petty helps them get through check-in and I just kind of stand there and pay the extra bag fees for everyone.  Then after they left President Russell took us and the APs to McDonalds and bought us breakfast.  Then we got to go home and sleep about an hour and then we had to go back to the office at like 11. This week we have Multizones, so it´ll be probably an even crazier week because there are three days of Multizones.  But on Pday there isn´t a multizone so I´ll be able to write you on the correct day.

   So now we´re just going to start contacting and find some investigators.  This afternoon we have a lot of hours planned to contact so pray for us that we can find some positive people that we will be able to take to church on Sunday.  

  I hope you all have a great week, remember that God loves us and needs us to always be ready and worthy to be an instrument in his hands.

Love,

Elder Smith

Mango an investigator gave us.  It´s HUGE.  But the pics don´t really do it justice.