The Rolla Holla! Saturday, March 7, 2009

Well, this week, it´s time for a more in-depth description of…¨The office.¨ We wake up at 630 like everyone else in the mission, unless we happen to have been up to 2 or 3 the night before working on special projects for President in preparation for zone conference or special changes, or whatever the surprise of the day might be. We are basically his helping hands, his running feet, his delivering wheels, and his typing fingers. I eat, exercise, shower, practice the piano (yeah, cool, I almost have Called To Serve down and plan to keep learning, hopefully one day to be able to just site read music). Then, we do an abbreviated study, to get into the office by 8:30, and work according to a personal plan and a very independently motivated environment.

The Officinistas live in a house of 4, my companion, the secretary, me ¨The Clerk, ¨ Elder Davis, the Fichero (document guy), and Elder Guest, the Financiero. It has been great to learn from each of them and there examples. My companion is kind and loving and very willing to help with everything. He keeps the office running and reminds us of our deadlines for President. He knows how to do missionary work and speaks excellent Spanish. Elder Davis is tall and lanky and almost an exact replica of Napolean Dynamite. He dances and has a guteral goofy laugh. One day as he leaned over Elder Guest´s desk spinning scissors on his fingers, Elder Guest told him he was going to poke out his eye. His response was, ¨come on Elder, I spin Frisbees all the time,¨ which it turns out he does every night, and did in the high school talent show. The kid is hilarious. Elder Guest is loud and goofy and some think he is very obnoxious. I love him and, though occasionally frustrated, do a pretty good job of showing it.

As the Clerk my primary responsibilities are: taking care of ALL mail and packages for 140 missionaries, organizing their cell phones and keeping an updated list of who has which, organizing and executing marriages (with a Paraguayan judge), doing all cleaning, maintenance, and reparation on mission vehicles (or taking them to get done), creating the Going Home Video for missionaries who are going home, and making the layout and content of the monthly mission newsletter. Yup, keeps me pretty busy. Most of all, I love the creative jobs that I have. Designing and even writing some content for the newsletter has kept me excited and allowed me to do a little writing, which I love. Meanwhile I feel I am learning SO much to prepare me for what I hope won´t be a too-long-delayed jump back into the field. At the end of each day, I lay in bed, happy with the hard, mentally tiring office work, but overjoyed with the success that we are finding in our area, rich and more stubborn as it may be.

We found a man named Derlis. He has set a goal to be baptized the 11th, which will break a yearlong streak of no baptisms in this area. It turns out that past office Elders haven´t taken their out-of-the-office work as seriously. Derlis is excited and reads well and understands the principals that we teach him. His family of 7 is going to be coming from the Chaco (or the huge northern part of Paraguay where very few people live in a desert-jungle like terrain). He says they are excited to hear our message and would like to follow their father into the waters of baptism as well.

How exciting is this work! I love it so much. Thank you all for your love and support.
See ya in the blink of an eye!
Elder McCarty