Sept 12, 2009

Elder T. my trainer of the office was transferred into the field here in Salvador and so officially Elder R. and I are responsible for anything that goes right or wrong here in the office, just in time for transfers :) Transfers are ridiculous here in the office. At the beginning, things were normal, busy, but not overly so, (as in working till 9 or more in the office after going in at 8 or 9 in the morning) but then we had to go buy tickets for people coming from or going to Salvador, take care of getting trainings ready for the "novinhos" and their trainers. Alright not so bad yet, but when we went to grab the tickets at the bus station, there wasn't any room left on the buses (because of a Brazilian holiday and everybody was traveling) we needed, so we went and grabbed some from another bus company and left, thinking the problem was resolved... That was where the real troubles began. After getting back to the office we realized that we were missing some of the tickets we had bought... the biggest problem being that we had paid for them but the lady hadn't printed them off and given them to us. So we went back the next day to straighten it all up, finding that somehow it never registered that we had bought those tickets, but that we had indeed paid the price for them, (still don't know exactly how that worked out) but we got the credits and bought the tickets we needed. Problem solved right? wrong again, we came around missing one more ticket and so we had to go back once again to the bus station and grab it (the interesting thing was that we had confirmed that we had the tickets, but somehow unbeknownst to us at the moment, it disappeared. As it turned out, the ticket had fallen into some dark abyss on the exec. secretary’s desk, only to be found after the day where we could grab the credits from a missed bus) All good, transfers go into action on time, with a couple calls from missionaries saying they didn’t have money to buy their bus tickets for transfers... easy fixes for the most part, they borrowed money from other missionaries who would be reimbursed later or make I made an emergency transfer to their account. Monday night came around and everybody gets off alright, later on (maybe 10 30 or so) we get a call saying that one of the buses with several of the missionaries (trainers and some of the transferred) broke down in the middle of nowhere, and would have to wait for another bus to swing by and pick them up. The poor elders were already uncomfortable as it was on a low class (think school or city bus) bus we had to get them as the comfy buses were all full with vacationers. 3 or 4 hours later than scheduled they get into Salvador, throwing the trainer's breakfast/training that would have started early morning to a brunch of sorts, leaving just the President and his wife free with us to go pick up the new missionaries while the trainers finished getting their instructions. We then took the novinhos to the office dropped off their stuff, walked to the presidents house, picked up the trainers, (leaving the novinhos there for their training) going over a few administrative things with them (the trainers) and then we had lunch at burger kings (I was still full from breakfast, barely ate a thing) only to return to the presidents place a little later to have them paired off with their new companions. That was a cool experience, topped off by an amazing dessert made by the President's wife (how do they all know how to cook so well?) then back to the office, gave a quick unforeseen training on money on the mission, and finally we sent them off to their areas. Quite a relief when that finished up and then there were the missionaries heading home.... needless to say, there was plenty to do.

Another crazy aspect of this whole office life deal is working out housing contracts in Portuguese. The church has done about as much as they can to leave it as simple as possible, leaving a prewritten contract to be used in each case, but when the house owners start trying to change it here or there, bring up the price etc. I guess I'll leave it at this; it’s a lot of responsibility taking care of the money in the mission. I'm learning alot about organizing and getting things done on a bigger scale, with a good bit of accounting for what I do, and I thought Paneras was stressful. It’s good though, I'm learning.

Recently I've had a great experience in watching someone go through a huge repentance process, and I testify through previous experience in my life, and through what I've seen here and what I've felt as I've seen it go on, is that repentance works, relieves, and renews, it’s never easy, but it’s always worth it. It requires sacrifice, trust in the Lord and a great bit of faith, trusting that in the confession that you will be helped, that the Lord never gives up on you, that we just have to meet His requirements and then, only then we can receive the promise of His comforting Spirit. Seeing this go on has brought a greater desire to grow closer to the Lord, do some repenting in my own life and seek to more fully yield to the enticings of the Spirit so that I can let the sacrifice of Christ take effect in my life. I know that is what He would have us do, and I invite each of us to look at what we can do in our lives today to bring us that much closer to our Father's presence. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amém.

Love,

Elder Jacob Pettit

PS great talk I found and want to share with you all, http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=32e62bce258f5110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1 ifice, trust in the Lord and a great bit of faith, trusting that in the confession that you will be helped, that the Lord never gives up on