Last week! And the week before that - Living in the office is definitely interesting.
Thanks to the almost continual movement, we haven´t done much preaching-wise. But, we did get a new companion two mondays ago. His name is Elder Doxey, and he´s here to replace Elder Dugan. He´s my new desk-mate, and he´s a good friend. He´s fun to have around.
Two weeks ago, as we were planning transfers, we got a notice that 4 missionaries would not be coming to the mission. It was very sad. And then, two days later, we got a notice that three of them would be coming in - AFTER we had planned everything. President came in and decided instead of trying new travel and companionships, he´d put all three of them in trios. My only part was trying to find beds for them - without letting their future companions know anything. Totally not a suspicious phone call when a day before transfers the oficinistas call wondering how many can fit in your piso. But it all worked out. Then we stayed up late planning things, got up early to take people to the airport, ate great food that Hermana Pack and Hermana Larsen gave us, and then fell down exhausted. AndWednesday morning I remembered that along with these changes, I´m district leader - and I had to plan a meeting on the fly. But it went great. We had an awesome discussion about who we are. It stemmed from a conversation I had with President during an interview. (That´s a fringe benefit of working in the office. We´re blessed to work with President a lot.) We were discussing the troubles a certain missionary was having when he commented, "I think the root of the problem is that this missionary just doesn´t know who he is. If he really understood his calling and what the Lord had called him to do, this wouldn´t be a problem." How true that is. Elder Peterson asked in the meeting why we didn´t explain the how - the process, the tricks and tools. That´s important, but the focus of our meeting was that when we actually truly understand who we are, then tricks don´t matter, because "your confidence [waxes] strong before the Lord".
Anywho, back to transfers (I know that´s the most interesting part of my week). I spent a good chunk of time creating an excellent way to check if apartments have room - it involves an excel document with key data info of ALL the apartments linked back to one big report. The idea is that, using this, I can quickly make reports to President about which pisos could expand and include other missionaries. I was very pleased with myself until Elder Regehr commented that I did something similar (but not nearly as easy) the transfer before - and President had looked at it, studied it - and put missionaries in apartments that were NOT on my list. I learned that although information leads to inspiriation, revelation does not limit itself to what a report says.
Not much else to report. We´ve got one landlord calling his lawyers, trying to force us to do needless repairs to an apartment, another who refuses to put his information in the church system even though it´s how he´ll get paid, and some missionaries who, while wrestling, broke the sink off the wall. I don´t even want to know how. But, all is well.
Elder Maxfield
