What A Special Time

Hey everybody!

I realize that you're probably a little confused. I seem to send an email every 5-12 days and it's pretty inconsistent. Sometimes I send it out on Monday, other times on Saturday. So when is my actual pday? Truth is... it's on Saturday... but only sometimes. We frequently have random things to do on Saturday and simply work so much that we run out of time to have pday. For example, the Saturday before Christmas I was in Ciudad del Este doing a Christmas conference. I got back late Saturday night completely exhausted. We took pday on Monday but I had so much work that I just worked for the first half and then we did our shopping and basically only had pday for an hour. Then we took pday again on Saturday, only 5 days later, but in reality I hadn't had a real pday for a couple weeks. So if my email writing is weird or inconsistent, sorry haha.

Anyway... I have had some crazy weeks. During the whole Christmas conference and end of year period, I got pretty busy. Like sit at my desk for almost a week straight from 7:30am until 9pm just swamped in things that needed done. Of course, I wasn't actually just seated here at my desk for all that time everyday, but I did spend every moment possible here. We had conferences and meetings and district council and a couple trips to the hospital. But other than that I was just stuck here. I think all my work tripled. The church makes a bigger effort in posting on facebook and getting people to meet with the missionaries during the Christmas season. So I, being the referral manager, had a lot more referrals to work with. We also had transfers which always leads to a lot of work, and the Christmas conferences and the end of the month and year. Each one of the Christmas conferences was about 3 days of making videos, and setting up decorations and planning, and after the conference editing photos and videos of the conference and the talents. It was just a lot of work. And at the end of the month I always have a baptismal video to make, our leaders conference that we always do, I have to make a little document that just records the history of the mission like what conferences we had and things. And the end of the year just meant a lot of reorganizing. Every folder or file or Excel sheet that we have was suddenly out of date or needed reorganized or remade completely.

We also had this big insurance problem where the hospital stopped accepting any payment by insurance. That was not fun. After many calls and emails and dealing with many angry people. They finally fixed the problem. Or at least they said they did but my missionaries kept getting denied at the hospital. So I went through the whole process all over again.... and then again... and finally, after way too much time spent, they resolved all their problems. I felt really weird during that. I was a simple customer of the insurance company trying to solve the relationship problems between the insurance and the largest hospital chain in paraguay so that I could get some service.

Anybody else want to be registrador? Nah I'm kidding. I'd never give up this position. I love it too much. Sometimes I really like writing emails like this because it reminds me of everything good that I do haha.

I know that maybe this email is already a little long, but I got something else I want to say. In the office, your comps don't change a whole lot. It's pretty normal for people to stay in the office for almost a year (I'm coming up on 6 months) and so it's normal to have the same comps for a super long time. Well, very recently the entire office staff (there's 4 of us plus 2 APs) rotated out except me. I am now the elder with the most time in the office and also with the most time in the mission compared to the other office elders. My comp who most recently left is Elder Gunther. He was my comp for 6 months. He is incredible. I have never seen anyone so devoted to becoming more like our Savior. He is a stud through and through. In the office, he was the executive secretary. He single-handedly did the job that, in other missions, is done by 2-6 different missionaries. He was secretary during a change of mission presidents, and essentially taught the new mission president how the mission works. During his time in the office, the mission average for baptisms every month went up by about 60 baptisms. I don't think I ever saw Elder Gunther put anyone down. He knew how to find joy in Christ and share it too. I love all my new comps, but I will definitely miss him. He did everything he could to give me the best example of how to become more like Jesus Christ. I can truly say that I am a changed man because of him.

I love you all. Have a great week!

Elder Blacker

Pics include Elder Gunther next to our office Christmas tree, Elder Eastmond (who replaced elder Gunther) taking a 4 hour nap on pday (he's still getting used to the office sleep schedule.... or lack thereof) and the meat I ate that was a little too red for my taste (I don't trust the quality that much, but I'm not sick yet!)