the happenings Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Hey there sweet cheeks (I will not specify who this is, you know who you are),

It has been a good day. We got to go to the mission home for a zone pday which is always sweet. They mission home is in the ritz of Madrid. No city noise. Makes my volume levels seem a lot higher than usual, well, so says the zone.

Quick interjection: I just had a funny quote experience come to mind. It comes from one of the sisters in our district. We were in the middle of our coordination meeting with the mission leader and we were chatting about an investigator who had some problem or other. Amidst the exchange of warm fuzzies and hopeful prospects for this investigator, one of the sisters piped up during a silent pause, after not having said much of anything, and said, “bueno, si Dios le quiere.” Now keep in mind this sister has a heart the size of a small utility vehicle stuffed inside her small, childlike frame. Her american accent made it come out a lot more sarcastic sounding than usual which made me lose it. I was laughing so hard. There is a term that is used very often that goes “si Dios quiere” = “God willing”, but when said “si Dios le quiere” it then becomes, “well, if God loves em.” Get it? Hmm, well, now that I read over it, it is not as funny.

Dang.

So back to the point at hand. The happenings.

To answer your question about the moving of missionaries, there is reason to the madness of it all. There are a lot of missionaries being taken out of pueblos to meet greater needs (more on that in a moment) so they are getting shut down. Our situation had more to do with the fact that before I got here there used to be 8 missionaries in the ward. They lived in the middle of the area but when the numbers dropped they went ahead and moved in with the other ward’s missionaries. Only thing is, they live 30 minutes out of our area. Very crummy. So they had us find one that would be central for both of us. Oh, and it is sweet. It has now been tagged as the best in the mission (more on that another day). But as for the removing a missionaries, it is sweet. President Watkins is so cool. Aparently the focus of the last mission president seminar was on the need to work where the gold is and focus on going from the inside out. Like starting where there is a strong base and working out from there. Not just sending out randoms to wierd places and hoping they build from scratch. Well, we are only getting 2 missionaries per unit, but there are some that have too much for just 2 and other that are dead. President wrote an email to all stake presidents telling them what was up. He pretty much just said that if there are no meetings taking place, no mission leader, no ward/branch missionaries, and no ward support for the missionaries, then they will lose said missionaries. It has been intense. 4 places have had the missionaries removed. My favorite part is that success has nothing to do with it. Baptisms change missionary to missionary and depend on the Lord, but support is something that is always under the control of the members. There were a couple places that didnt surprise me that they lost missionaries, but there was one that has had a bunch of baptisms in the last couple months and still lost the missionaries. There is not support and no help for the missionaries so they lost them. Of course, there is alot prepared as far as still helping the wards that dont have missionaries, but in the short time I have it will have to stay at that. As you can imagine, all the units have boosted up their meetings and support in the last few weeks. Super sweet.

Before I forget, could you give me jasons current email. Something he will check. I have a bone to pick with him.

Oh yeah, cool story. Well, before that, I gotta tell you something I think was funny. So my companion looks a teeny tiny bit like Jude Law. Of course, I have taken the liberty of reminding him of that every single day. He has denied it a lot, well, until now. The new sherlock holmes movie came out and there have been tons of posters everywhere of Jude Law. He was trapped, but I didnt expect to be pulled into it. We came home one day and one of the other Elders said that he saw our companionship at a bus stop. We didnt ride any buses so I was lost, but then he told us that it was on a picture. He said that our companionship is totally the sherlock holmes duo. Me, apparantly, as Robert Downey Jr. and my comp as Jude Law. Even better, the members at church all commented on it too. I found a small picture in a newspaper so we cut it out and we put it on the door to our room. So, since I have been failing at sending home pictures, you can assume that is how I look now.

Alright, back to the cool story. This is kind of funny too. I am now illegal in the country. There has been a hold up in the office on the renewal of papers and my card has expired. Luckily, I am not as bad as my companion. He visa waited (also in chicago) and got here a couple months late. He has been forgotten about. We got a call about it the other day and had to go to the police station to take care of it. They said that it was their fault in the email and they would go ahead and get his process started right away (and then me in a few weeks). So, we went off to go get him fingerprinted. I love going to the residnecy office, there is such an interesting feel to the building. All those immigrants hoping to make it through the system as soon as possible. A strong sense of hope and fear, similar to what we all feel about baby Casen. Anyways, we got there and they sent us up to a special room and I took seat and let my companion go take care of it. Well, we got a bad one. The lady we got would love the DMV. Very disrespectful, and just horrible all around. I was enjoying all this from a nice, safe distance. It then got a little bad, she saw that his passport had expired and refused to attend to him because he had not followed the guidelines. She sent him off. We called the office and they said to try again and show her the info they sent us. She refused to look, refused to listen, and threatened to kick my comp out. He tried again, and she sent him to her colleague who was just as bad. He came back, a little confused and a little scared, looked me in the eye, handed me his papers and said, “we are calling in the cuban.” I had been preparing myself for such a thing to happen, but when he said that, I lost it again. So when I was done laughing I trotted on over to the that wicked old witch and ask if I could just ask her a quick question. She started to rant at me and I just let her roll. Then when I got a second I gave her the speal, not really sure what I said, but it was mostly just along the lines of just apologizing for being dumb americans and asking to just look up the info, it was all there that they made a mistake. She started saying no mistake was made, we were lost, and she was done. Then I went way american on her. I asked if we could speak to a supervisor since she was finished. I got to him and gave him the speal, pretty much just letting him know she was done with us, which was wierd because she never even started. She started yelling to him that there was nothing for us. I told him, “I am positive we are not lying, but I would love to be proved wrong and get out of here.” He took the paper, typed in a number, the info came up and he took care of everything in about 5 minutes. She didnt say a word after that. It was super fun. Stuff like this keeps happening. It was cool being able to go into such a crummy situation knowing that we were right, not becuase of the papers, but because I know we are supposed to be here.

Alright, gotta run.

Love you bunches,

Elder Sky