Going Through the Change

I figure I have written about 90 of these blogs and it is getting a little more difficult to come up with new and exciting things to talk about.  We live in six week cycles or changes in the mission field and everything more or less revolves around this six week cycle.  Last week was change week and we saw the new missionaries come and the old ones leave.  This is always exciting.  I love to see the new ones come in.  They are all a little apprehensive.  Some seem to be very confident and ready to take on about any task.  Others are a little more hesitant.  I love to see how they change even over a few short weeks.  The confident ones tend to come back to earth and the hesitant ones seem to gain more confidence in what they are doing.

As always, the new missionaries come in on Tuesday.  They only had three flights to meet so it wasn’t as bad as some other changes.  Renee was busy all day Tuesday as they fed them lunch and dinner.  They always put on a really great meal, sloppy Joes for lunch and roast beef for dinner.  The roast beef is Uruguayan style including chorizos.  Tuesday afternoon the new missionaries receive training on the mission and seem to enjoy it.

After dinner they have a “cultural presentation” where they play a game about things that are unusual about Uruguay like the food, customs, soccer teams and things like that.  It is really fun.  To end the night they teach them how to milk alfajores.  This is a big tradition in the mission.  An alfajor is made from two cookies with dulce de leche or creamed caramel in between like an Oreo.  They are about two inches in diameter.  Most of them are dipped in chocolate.  You milk them by biting off a little from each end and then sticking it in a bowl of milk and sucking the milk up through the cookie.  After you have the alfajores filled with milk you eat the cookie.  The new missionaries usually get into it pretty good.  The office Elders soon forget the new ones and are off milking them on their own.  It’s pretty fun and it kind of shows the different personalities.

Wednesday they pair up the new ones with their new companions and send them off.  I got some pretty good shots of some of the missionaries leaving.  I am excited for them as we know their companions and kind of have an idea of what is in store.  I will say that the new missionaries are lucky to have such good trainers.

Wednesday is when the Valientes or missionaries going home come in.  I spent Wednesday morning hauling missionaries to the Tres Cruzes or the bus station and then taking some of them to their areas.  We also have “corto plasos” or young people from Uruguay that serve as companions when we have an odd number of missionaries.  I took one home named Pablo.  He was a great missionary and did a great job.

Wednesday afternoon and evening is one of the best times and hardest times.  The Valientes go to the Temple in the afternoon and then congregate at the mission home for dinner and testimony meeting.  It is real fun and also kind of sad.  We have great relationships with all of the missionaries.  With this group we were able to go on charlas and help fellowship investigators.  We have had some real special experiences with them so it makes it even harder.  Sister Perales and Sister Chadwick lived right by us and we served in Castillos with Elder Perez and Elder Bravo.  We will always remember their great examples and friendship.  I hate to single them out because we have had some great experiences with all of them. Thursday, the missionaries all went home the flights were on schedule and everything went off without a hitch.  We are going to miss them.

Friday it was back to business as usual.  We did inspections of the Norte Zone.  All four houses have grass that needed to be cut so we took the week whacker and got it done.  The houses were quite clean and taken care of.  We appreciate their hard work and they appreciated Renee’s cookies.

I’m writing this on Sunday morning as we wait for conference.  It doesn’t start until 1:00 P. M. so we have plenty of time.  Yesterday we had a good day enjoying conference with our new friends, the Duffins.  We are going over to their house again today to enjoy conference and have dinner.  Yesterday was a beautiful day but today it is raining.  I guess they have storms on conference week end in Uruguay too.

What can you say about General Conference?  The talks are so well done and gave us inspiring messages to helps us do better.  What a great opportunity.  It seems that a good share of the talks were about service and helping others.  They spoke to me about how we need to serve as the Savior served.  I am reading “Jesus the Christ” right now so that really fits in with what I am studying.  We are grateful for the Gospel and all the many blessings it gives us.  We love you all.
Love Gordon and Renee