Circunvalacion 1 - Week #9

Oh Happy Day!!!

This week put in a nutshell could be put as "non-stop paperwork". Until today I think I've been away from my computer for about a total 4-5 hours in the time I've been working on office stuff. INSANE!!! ¡Estoy volviéndome loco!

An unannounced "mission business" trip was planned and finalized during this week without advising the office until Wednesday afternoon. President, Sister May, and the assistants are in a remote part of the mission and decided that they wanted to keep this little adventure top secret... the idea worked pretty well until they started asking us to prepare things for them to take with them (remind me to tell you next week where they went as I can't right now because they won't return until Tuesday). Needless to say, until more details were divulged, Elder Young and I were very confused as to what we were doing and why.

Today was a bit of a relaxing day, despite the fact that we are controlling the mission right now... the last in the line of authority for the weekend. We were able to go up towards Los Andes a little bit and look around up there, all in all it was pretty chill. I can officially tell Grandma D. that I have seen some pretty Chilean country. Unfortunately we are now in smoggy Santiago again and back to the daily grind. Tomorrow ought to be fun as we have to play shuttle to some of the mission technological equipment and run it between 2 different meetings here in Santiago, with 2 different zones/stakes... ahhh, fun times, fun times!

The office move is rolling right along, SLOWLY, but rolling right along nonetheless. We calculated up the other day how many processes we have left to write and we determined that we are about 1/3rd of the way done with the project... the only downside with that is the we are 2/3rds done with the amount of time that we have to complete the project!!! AHHHH!!! I'm getting into my stressed out mode again and I'm not handling it very well. I'm tired!!!

Our investigators are doing alright. Actually about 4 of the 5 don't have much interest anymore, but Jennifer is catching on to the Gospel real quick and loving every minute of it. She has had a pretty tough work schedule this week, but we've been able to share a few times, and even though she has to work tomorrow she is planning on going to Sacrament Meeting first!!! YAY!!! The 3 guys in the house have turned out to have a few problems with a couple of the commandments, problems that will keep them from progressing much at all...

Sounds like work is going well for everybody, even Gabe. He's surviving still so that is a very good thing! I'm excited to hear that all of the problems at the house "should" be fixed, and that ya'll should be moving in "soon". Is my room going to be set up how I wanted? Not sure I'll be using it for too long, but still... LOL

On Monday we had a mission sports activity (divided into 3 groups), where we celebrated having met our baptismal goal of 80 for the month of January. It was pretty fun! President & Sister May showed up early to ours and we played a little bit of broom hockey, we completely demolished the brooms, and President announced who the new mission president will be. It looks like Salt Lake gave specific instructions not to announce who the new mission president taking over at the end of June would be until it was published in Church News, apparently it was on Monday and we now know that President & Sister Essig, from Logan, UT, (surprise, surprise) will be joining us here in the Chile Santiago North Mission at the end of June to begin their 3 years of service. I believe that President Essig is a lawyer and is currently serving in a bishopric there in Logan.

Not much other news from the Southern Hemisphere. We heard yesterday from the other missionaries in the ward that somebody vandalized the church building, but we still haven't confirmed that, it would kinda suck though... We've got high hopes again for church tomorrow, and I'm currently trying to devise a plan that will allow that I don't have to lead the music, somehow I got out of it last week! Our ward leadership has been getting shifted over to the stake recently, so we've had quite a few changes on the ward level and are once again, after a lapse of about 3 weeks of the contrary, are without a ward mission leader again! The work WILL progress, if only we can find time more time to do it. Does anybody have a recipe to add more hours to the day?!?!?

I love ya'll bunches and miss you too! Tomorrow I complete a year and a half in the mission!!! Yay me!!!

¡Todo mi amor!

-- Élder Todd