Ipads, Transfers, etc.

I don´t really know how to explain this last week. Really though. There are days when I feel like I just got hit by a ton of bricks trying to take in all of this knowledge. My office trainer (Elder Clark) finishes his mission this next week.  This means I will not be able to ask him questions about how to do things after he leaves, which is a scary thought because there is a lot of things that we do. We have to work a lot with the government, even when they are not feeling very cooperative, and we buy tickets. Oh buying tickets. Our mission is one of the biggest in Europe, and the biggest in Spain. Which means trying to get people from one side of the mission to the other during transfers is absolutely nuts. Completely. But we work it out. That´s part of the job as the travel secretary of the mission. We got the transfer report from President Deere on Thursday and have been working like crazy to plan out where everyone is supposed to go and to how in the world these people are going to get to their new areas. But those are the details of the job which are probably pretty boring. 

More exciting news-THE IPADS HAVE ARRIVED! Which is a huge change for our mission. HUGE. This is really like a pivotal moment because it will be when our mission goes digital. They arrived in literally the least useful time. We had scheduled to have all of the new missionary trainers come down on Tuesday to receive training from President and Hermana Deere, and everything was going as planned. (Well mostly everything. Apparently the brand new travel secretary bought the wrong ticket for one Hermana so she ended up coming in about an hour later than she was supposed to. Gosh, somebody needs to fire that secretary :) ) Anyway. so amid the panic of trying to find out where that Hermana had gotten off, we get a call from Apple delivery telling us that the ipads were on there way. When we asked when was the expected time of arrival, they told us in about 20 minutes. Which totally threw everything out of whack. But it was fine. The missionaries that were in Fuengirola were able to help us bring them into the office. It was crazy. But the ipads are amazing. We will help distribute them to the west side of the mission, which means we get to drive to Sevilla again, and then down to Cadiz, which is the other big zone center for our mission. It will be fun. We are working on getting our Spanish drivers license. It´s different here than from the United States, and costs so, so, so much more. But we´ve started our classes. our teacher is from the UK, and he´s pretty cool. Unfortunately, the text that we have is a direct (and literally a DIRECT) translation from Spanish, which is fine, but it makes it so that the syntax of the sentences is really off. A lot of the time the sentences don´t make sense.

I want to share one quick miracle that we had. We don´t get a lot of time to proselyte. Which is the hardest thing for me about the office. I miss it so, so, so much. It´s hard, but we all have to work where we´re put, no? Anyway, we did get an entire afternoon to go out, and we received a reference from Chile of all places that told us about a member who has been dying to get to church. When we got out there, she was waiting with her children and they told us a little bit about their story. They have wanted to get to church so badly, but because of a number of reasons, they have been unable. Which is hard for them, but when we called them, they took it as a gift from heaven. So cool. They are coming to church this Sunday. 

Well. I´m sorry this is so short. But hey, it´s been a great week. One thing that I´ve learned is how even though we´re not in our ´ideal´ situation, we can still have a lot of success if we´re working hard and that everything happens for a reason. So if something is hard in your life, if things aren´t going exactly as you´ve planned, and maybe you´re not in your perfect situation, you can still do your very best and that´s what matters. That´s what makes it a great day to be a missionary. 

Love,

Elder Weenig

Office Elders:  Elder Weenig, Elder Clark, and Elder Fife