September 10, 2011

Dear Friends and Family,                                                                               September 10, 2011

What a fun week we had! Monday we spent in final preparations for change week getting ready for the 15 new missionaries and getting ready to say good bye to five who were finishing their missions. The office elders work so hard to be ready ahead of time but there are always things that need to be done at the last minute so this week is always packed full from early morning to late at night!

Tuesday we received nine of our missionaries but due to some flight problems four more came at midnight and two the next day. We ended up making five trips to the airport counting the trip to say goodbye to those leaving on Thursday. It made orientation and training a bit strange but it all came together in the end. We have to live by the saying, “Blessed are the flexible for they will not be bent out of shape!” here in the mission. We are planners by nature and have had to learn that at times things beyond our control change our plans and schedules. We just shift gears and keep going and get things done just sometimes in a different way or order. Pretty much flexibility is an important thing for all missionaries to learn.

We try to have fun as we change plans and still accomplish our goals for the week. While waiting one of the times at the airport I had a nice chat with a man from one of the indigenous tribes who was telling me that he speaks Spanish , Guarani and another language of his tribe . I hadn’t heard of that language before. I’ll have to do some research on that one. People from his tribe are always at the airport selling jewelry and beads and bags. I tried to ask a question of a woman who didn’t understand my Spanish because she spoke German. When we didn’t understand each other we both just laughed! I’m here in Paraguay speaking Spanish to a woman who is also here and only speaks German! There are quite a few Germans who live here and it always surprises me, especially when they don’t speak Spanish.

Once we finally got everyone here and oriented they were united with their trainers. The process for getting everyone legal seems to change here every time they change the personnel in the immigrations office so that was a bit different this time also. The new missionaries have to sign some papers and recently they have needed to be fingerprinted also. The church hired an attorney who deals with all of that but it is still a step in the process before the missionaries can go out to their areas. Usually everyone is off to their areas by 10:30 am but this time the group who arrived late were still signing their legal papers until the afternoon and then headed off to their areas by late afternoon. The missionaries who arrived were good sports about the delays but they are always so excited to get out to their new areas with their trainers! It looks like another good group and we are excited to have them here to join with our other missionaries.

Friday we took our office elders for a quick lunch and had a meeting to discuss change week and analyze how we can improve things for next time. The office did a great job but there are always things we can all improve on. It’s fun to listen to their ideas and see things from their perspective. This week end I’m looking forward to our ward Primary program. The Stewart family in our ward, whose father works at the US Embassy, has been in Paraguay only about 4 months. They have two children in Primary. They were excited to tell me last week that they will both be giving talks in Spanish so I’m excited to go hear them.

Hope you all have a great week! Love, Mark and Sandy