Ramos Mejia- Week #50

We all live in a material world...

Hey Everyone,

President Benton Quote of the Week: "If they find me dead, they´ll find an empty quiver - because I´ll have had given it all I´ve got."

Well, I just wrote a huge e-mail thinking that the internet was safe here in the offices, but unfortunately no it isn’t, because everything froze and shut off…so here I go again. Well, after one week of being here in the offices, I have come to the conclusion that I didn’t know there was so much work to be done in here. We have deadlines like crazy, and sometimes it gets a little stressful. Also, it is only my first week so I don’t really know much about the job yet. There are six of us here in the offices, the two assistants, Elder Pollock and Elder Woodmansee, who both were my zone leaders at one point in time, so I already know them pretty well. Elder Sabey and I live with them, and then there are two more elders, Elder Frost and Elder Varela who are in charge of the mission finances and the apartments of the mission respectively. My basic duties are sort mail, go to Capitál every week to pick up packages, (also thanks for the package mom and dad, it was great! I loved the videos!) I also have a ton of reports that I have to write up for President Benton about the divisions that were done between zone leaders and district leaders, all the teaching evaluations that were done, and the weekly letters that every missionary writes to him. I also go on a mail run every Monday, and deliver everything that has come in, so I basically drive around the whole mission every Monday, it takes a few hours. Another thing is that I call the distribution center every week to send orders for all the things we need like copies of the Book of Mormon or Bibles or DVDs or whatever. There are huge shelves in my office just full of cool church stuff. It is pretty fun. There are four computers here in the office and six elders so we have to share, but I basically can get on whenever I want, but not onto the internet or anything. President said that probably the most temptation is found here in the office because of the ease of access to the internet, but also said, “That is why only the most obedient Elders are called in to work in the offices.” I took that as an indirect compliment. He also called me in for a short interview last week to see how I was doing and see if I needed anything. He told me exactly why I am here in the offices, and it was just a really great interview. He said that my time in the offices “is going to be very special. Elder, when you get home, you are going to have to balance your time between studies, work, church callings, and a young family. For anybody, that is going to be hard, but if you use this time in the office to learn how to balance your time between the office work, the missionary work, and your gospel studies, when you get home, you will be miles ahead of everyone else.” So I am going to really try and use this time well in the offices. I am actually really busy today because the new missionaries are coming in like 30 minutes and I just took this small time to write, because basically I don’t have P-days anymore…sort of. I do, it is just, I have it unless something more important is going on. Elder Sabey is great. We are loving it here. When everyone saw us up on the slideshow together there was a general “noooo waaaaaaaay” that echoed throughout the room. We received various comments about how this will either be the companionship that gets the most done, or goofs off most. The revolution has begun…

So I went back to a baptism I had on Saturday, it was great. Matias was baptized. He is the son of Antonia and brother of Mikaela, who Elder Arriola and I baptized last transfer. Speaking of sons, my little boy is all grown up now with his second companion. Today he turns 2 months in the mission! He baptized Matias. Matias asked me to do it, but I remembered the vow I made 10 months ago when I first got to Argentina, that if I ever trained, my companion would be the one to perform his first baptism, so true to my word, we convinced Matias to let Elder Latorre do it. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, and the baptism was great. It helped too, that I disappeared one week before the baptism, and then just randomly showed up for the service. Anyway, it has been a really busy week, and next week I will be able to write more because we will have a normal p-day sort of, they told me that the first week of every transfer basically you don’t have p-day. So I will be writing more next week, and I hope everyone is doing well. I am just trying to make sure I don’t put the mission into debt by buying too many things…actually I inherited a small crisis…we are already at 131% of our budget used for the year…that is like 31% more than all the money I am supposed to use for the year…but we already have some plans to fix that…like raise the price of everything in the mission! But yeah…just everyday problems here…in the office. Actually this is just like the show The Office…because really funny stuff happens and it is almost as if it is scripted. I love it. I love you. I love Heavenly Father.

Love, Sean