Fiesta (office week 8)

There is always a party in the offices. Especially the week of transfers. Quick overview:

It all starts Sunday nights. At six o´clock the farewell fireside for the missionaries going home starts. The housing coordinator is in charge of the technology for said fireside. I get to set up everything to be able to show two video clips and make sure all the sound works. Well, I tested it all out before the meeting and there was no problem. So the meeting started and half way through came the time to show the first video. I pushed play and for some reason there were subtitles (the mission president had specifically told me not to put subtitles; and when I tested it before hand there weren´t any). Then, when I tried to turn the volume up I got some major feedback. The microphone wasn´t plugged in when I was testing it earlier. While I was trying to figure out how to turn off the mic, president came over and had me unplug everything and plug in his own speakers. That fixed the problem until I tried to show the other video clip a few minutes later. For some reason Windows Media Player froze and I couldn´t get the video to pause or go full screen or anything, but it kept playing (that´s what I get for using a PC!). So President made an announcement over the microphone, ¨fortunately I´m a scout and I´m always prepared.¨ He busted out his iPad and had me plug that in. That worked just fine. I felt like a failure, but afterwards President told me not to worry about it; there are always technical problems. ¨Always plan that everything will fail.¨

With that experience out of the way we went to the offices to work on transfers. Elder Nielsen made all of his phone calls, I updated the phone lists, the asistents did their thing, etc. At two o´clock we finally left to go get some sleep just to wake up at seven. We headed back to the offices to wait for everyone to get there. All the elders that are changing companions come to the offices to find their companions and then leave again. It is a crazy mess. I play church videos the whole time hoping people will sit down and watch them, but everyone just wants to talk to their friends (can´t blame them). There are a ton of taxis outside waiting for the elders to take them back home. Lots of missionaries taking the opportunity to talk to me to ask for things. Cell phones to change out, mattresses to change from one apartment to another, etc. Around three everyone had finally left and we were able to eat lunch.

There were six elders who were waiting for flights to either go down south or go to another mission; so four of them stayed with us in the offices. We have two bunk beds and two people slept on the floor. At four in the morning three of them left in taxis to the airport. The other one stayed with me in the offices the next day while everyone else was at the mission home with the new elders that just got here. It was a holiday so nothing was open and I didn´t have much to do except go through a box of electronics. Sadly, none of the 12 american elders that were going to come have visas, so we only got 7 latin missionaries. The americans should be here within a month.

On wednesday things were pretty calm. Thursday we had a zone conference and one of the APs left to go down south and another one came. O yeah, I forgot; there are two new APs with us. Both of them arrived in the mission the same time as Elder Kelly and I. Their names are Elder Bruce and Elder Beck (Elder Beck was one of my roommates in the MTC). They are both really cool and it´s lots of fun with them here.

Friday (yesterday) Elder Nielsen and I went on a road trip to the hospital. He had an eye accident a while ago and we just went for a check-up. Everything is great with his eye, and it was fun to see all the fancy machines they have at the hospital. It´s one of the best in all of Argentina. Today, p-day, we went bowling and then went to get some ice-cream cones. Bowling and ice cream, two of my favorite things.

As for preaching the gospel: we finally were able to figure out why this little girl doesn´t want to get baptized. She wants to, she was just afraid of telling her grandmom. So we made some plans for her to tell her grandmom, and she should be baptized this Sunday. We also have been teaching this 13 year old girl with a hard life. She has been going to all the youth activities and really enjoys it. So things are going pretty good there too.

Well, that´s about all the stories I have for this week. As always, life is crazy and I don´t know what is going on. But I´ve learned that is the way things normally are. God takes care of the rest of it. We just have to do the best we can.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Love you lots,

Elder Gardner

That´s what are apartment looked like the night after transfers.

That´s right. I won. Two strikes at the end to break the hundred.

Left to right: Elder Bruce, Elder Beck, Elder Nielsen, Me, and Elder Kelly

That´s a huge ice-cream cone. Way expensive but way worth it.

We call it office ping pong.

The storm (offices week 7)

The mission president´s wife always calls the week of tranfers ¨the storm.¨ It started out a really boring week, actually. I had nothing to do during the day while I was in the office. That was just the calm before the storm. I´ll start with the spiritual stuff this time:

Sunday was awesome! We broke my personal record for the most investiagors in church. The best part is that the members brought them all to church. The family with this little girl that is awesome came to church. The mom who isn´t a member even came in a skirt! Kind of funny since the dad who is a member came in a t-shirt and jeans. At least he came. They really liked it. A member also brought a neighbor to church. The neighboor is a thirteen year old girl named Rocio.

After church on Sunday we went to visit Rocio. She told us that she has gone to our church before with cousins in another city. She also told us her mom got baptized, but had since passed away. Her life has been really hard, so we talked a lot about God and how He loves us, even though bad things happen. She said at church for the first time in her life she really felt peaceful. But when my companion told her he had a gift for her she said, ¨No, I don´t like gifts.¨ Then when he showed her the Book of Mormon she was like, ¨I´m not going to touch that.¨ Apparently the missionaries gave her mom ´gifts´ and the Book of Mormon and then she died shortly after. It was intense, but she ended up accepting our present and even read a little bit before we left. At the end of the lesson we taught her to pray and even though she didn´t want to, we helped her pray to our Heavenly Father. It was an awesome lesson. She is a girl that really needs the gospel in her life.

It was hard the rest of the week since we still have this elder with the hurt back with us. So to be able to go out to work we either have to have the car or need a member to do divisions. I called every male member of the ward probably three times throughout the week, but a lot of them are on vacation so it was hard to get them to help us. A few times we just had to pay for a taxi. It´s worth the sacrifice to be able to preach the word of God. But that´s all the good spiritual experiences for this week, now on to the office adventures.

On Tuesday I went with Elder Castañeda to go deal with a piano. Apparently over a year ago there was an apartment with a piano in it. The missionaries left to work one day and left the window open. It rained and the piano got wet and ruined. So the mission paid some guy to fix it. A year went by and the guy hadn´t fixed it yet so a month or so ago Elder Castañeda went to see how things were going. A week ago he called again and talked to the wife of the guy who was supposed to fix it. The piano fixer man had just passed away a day earlier. So we went to talk to the wife, picked up all the pieces of the piano (the pieces are fixed it just has to be put together) and dropped them off at the owner of the piano´s house. We also took the opportunity to give the wife a Book of Mormon. It was a pretty delicate situation, but Elder Castañeda is an experienced business man and handled it really well.

On Thursday I went with Elder Castañeda to go inspect some apartments and install smoke dectores in the walls. While I was there I fixed one of the fans for them. Then on Friday we had to drive to an area to drop of the injured back elder to be with another elder that is sick and can´t leave the house. We drove back and went straight to President´s house to help with transfers. That was an interesting experience. President opened the transfer board on the wall with all the pictures of the elders. He had already made a lot of changes and let us look for a few minutes just to see what all the changes were. He then started at one end and went through talking about every area and every elder explaining why he felt the change was necessary and asking for feedback. It was interesting to see what he was looking for; he analized each areas potential to baptize, each elders personality and history in the mission and potential to baptize. He was clearly inspired of God as he was deciding what to do with 180 missionaries so that the mission baptizes more and so that every missionary is placed in a area to help him grow personally. Mission presidents are awesome. Especially mine.

Well, that´s all the exicting stories. Except for one pretty important announcement I need to make. The senior couple that works in the offices is leaving in three months. The senior couple that is going to replace them doesn´t get here for four months. So there will be a month where regular missionaries will have to take over their jobs. President informed me that I will be taking over the husband´s job as financial secretary. So I will be in charge of all of the money of the entire mission. Kind of intense, right? But, the new senior couple doesn´t get here until the day I am supposed to leave. So President asked me to extend my mission and stay a couple extra weeks to be able to train the new senior couple on how to run the finances. Now, instead of coming home the end of June I will be coming home the middle of July. I hope that doesn´t ruin anyone´s hopes to see me; you´ll just have to wait two weeks more.

Flashes (offices week 6)

Well, this has been an interesting week. There are always things going on...

So Sunday was alright. Most of the people we are teaching didn´t show up to church, but during sacrament meeting (we have it after the classes here) two 25 year old women showed up and sat in the back row next to me. After the meeting I talked to them and it turned that they had been invited by one of the members. He is a taxi driver and on the way to the hospital he showed them the church and invited them, so they came. We got their address and set an appointment for later that day. Turns out that they don´t live in our area, they live in the APs ward, but that´s ok. The APs went and had a really good lesson.

Sunday night I was in charge of calling all of the zone leaders to get the numbers of the weeks since Elder Kelly and Elder Nielsen were busy calling people about a flash. So Monday morning some elders came here to meet their new companions then leave. Tuesday night we had to set up another flash. I don´t know why they happened (it´s not my place to know), but I learned that it really throws a wrench in the missionary work when they happen. Just things like paying rent get messed up because we had to take money of off the elders accounts and put them on the other elders account. It was kind of complicated, but it worked out in the end. Things always keep going forward, no matter what.

Also, on Thursday an elder flew up here from the south. He apparently had scoliosis before the mission but it never developed into anything so the doctors told him not to put it on his mission papers. Well, a couple months into the mission and his back starting hurting really bad. He talked to President and asked if he could go get it checked out by a specialist. Two days later he was hit by a car while crossing the street. Luckily he didn´t break anything from the accident, but it made his bad back even worse. So he flew up here and is spending a little bit with us. On Friday we went to the church doctor and he gave him some drugs. Basically, unless these drugs create a miracle and things get better really fast, he will be going home to get surgery or whatever he needs and probably won´t be coming back. At least not to Argentina, hopefully he will be able to finish the mission state side.

Other than that things have been pretty calm. I got to drive this week because President went down south and left us his car to be able to drive. It is a really nice car. Today in the morning I was driving and there was a bus next to me that apparently wanted to get into my lane and didn´t care that I was already there. Fortunately all it did was nick my side-view mirror, and it didn´t leave any marks. So still no accidents. It´s alright though since President´s car is already really beat up. It has a big scratch on the side from when a motorcycle ran into it and it has duct tape on the bumper from when it was rear ended a week or two ago. The fun adventures in Buenos Aires.

Well, that´s all the fun stories I can think of. We are still preaching the gospel in the night times. It´s going well. This week will be crazy because it is the week before transfers. So much stuff to do... You´ll hear about it next week. Hope everyone has a great week and invites someone to church tomorrow.

Adios,
Elder Gardner

Offices, week 5

Wow. What is going on? I used to think that time was going by fast. I heard that it goes by faster every transfer, but I never thought it would be this fast. It is already February (yes I typed febrero into google translate to know how to spell that in english). Things are just too crazy. I´ve been here in the offices for over a month and it just feels like a week or two.

One of the funnest parts of a new month starting is rent payments. Every month we have to pent rent within the first ten days of the month. With over 80 apartments it gets kind of complicated. We used to pay most of them electronically but a few months ago we had to change the system because of tax issues. Lots of people avoid taxes here, and if we do it electronically the church has to get involved with their tax situation. So most people now ask us to do it in cash. So every month we put the rent on the elders credit cards and they go to a bank to take the money out and pay the rent. We have to make sure that everyone really payed it, which can be fun. Hopefully I don´t have too many angry land lords calling me this week...

So exciting things this week... We have been working alot with this family I mentioned last week that moved here from another ward. They are really cool. The parents didn´t go to church last week, but they let the primary president take the daughter to church. She really liked church but still doesn´t feel ready to be baptized. We´ve gone by their house almost every day this week trying to help her feel ready. She is really smart for a nine year old. We were reading something about baptism and she was like, ¨I really like the part where it says to be baptized in the name of the son. It says the same thing in this other part I was reading the other day.¨ She then showed us another part she had read. Pretty much she understands things better than most adults we teach do. I´m sure she´ll be baptized, it might just take a little bit longer.

As for the office work, I had some fun times. We were really close to getting a new apartment for an area but at the very end the housing agency refused to make any changes to the contract. And I didn´t like the contract all that much, so after a little bit of argueing I told them we wouldn´t sign and we wanted our deposit money back. The day after we went to pick up the money I got a phone call from the land owner where the elders were living and she told me we had to leave the next day. Apparently she had told that to my last companion before I got here, but I didn´t know about it. And we didn´t have a contract with here since she´s a member so there was nothing I could do about it. So after trying to find another house on super short notice I decided to move them in with some other elders for a week or so until I can get a new apartment. There is a member that has a place available in the area, but he is on vacation. When Argentines go on vacation it is often for a month or so, so I don´t know if I´ll be able to get that place soon enough. We´ll see. For now they are just living four people in a small apartment.

So, that´s all the fun stories I can think of. And we need to go buy some groceries. So I´ll talk to you all next week. Don´t hesitate to write me a letter or anything like that. Have a great week!

Chau,

Elder Gardner

Mission Tour (Offices week 3)

Well, this week was a lot calmer than the last one. I´m not sure if there is even anything exciting to write about. I´ll probably just end this letter right now...

The biggest event of the week was the mission tour with Elder Foster (of the 70). President was down south from Sunday until Wednesday with Elder Foster. The office is a lot calmer when President is in the south. Even though he is never in the office, he calls several times a day to have us do stuff; but when he´s in the south he doesn´t as much. But it also makes my job hard because President has to sign all the contracts, and I had four contracts ready to sign on Monday. So I had to tell all the housing agencies that ¨el señor Gulbrandsen¨ was out of town and that he would be back on Thursday. But he didn´t have any time to sign contracts Thursday or Friday so I had to explain once again that we would have to wait.

Wednesday President got into the airport around 7:30 pm, so we had to leave around 7 to get there on time to pick him and Elder Foster up. At about 7:15 we were at the gas station filling up the car when President called to tell us his plane had landed and now they were just waiting for baggage. Uh-Oh, we still had to drive to the airport! Fortunately my companion Elder Nielsen is good at driving really fast on the freeway. Unfortunately, I was sitting in the passenger seat. It took a lot of effort to not scream out of fright, he was driving so close behind the other cars at such a high speed. But we got there safely and so did Elder Kelly in the other car. President called right as we pulled into the airport to ask where we were. President drove his car and took the Fosters home, so we missionaries drove home by ourselves; no chance to chouffer a seventy.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we got a new car! Our minivan was way beat up and president wanted a nice new car for the mission tour. So the area offices delivered us a two month old 2011 minivan. It is way nice, lots of sweet technology, really shiny, easy fold down chairs; the only problem is that it is a stick shift. And I don´t know how to drive stick shift. President was actually kind of mad when he found out, he doesn´t want a stick shift since lots of Americans don´t know how to drive one (like me!). But almost all of the cars in Argentina are stick shift so the area offices say there isn´t much chance of us getting an automatic any time soon. So it looks like I won´t be driving a whole lot any more. I should have learned to drive a stick when I had the chance, Rachel was going to teach me....

Thursday the conference was in capital so we stayed in the offices and worked. Pretty uneventful. But on Friday the conference was in our chapel and we went to be part of it. It was a really good conference. Elder Foster is learning to speak spanish, but he gets his point across well enough. He started by dividing us into four groups, one group was stake presidents, one group mission presidents, one group missionaries, and one group members. He then talked about a problem we have in Argentina and it seems like world wide. Using a specific stakes numbers: in 2005 there were 497 people attending sacrament meeting. In 2010 there were 452. So he turned to the stake presidents: ¨What happened? Why did you lose 43 members?¨ He then said in those five years there were 343 baptisms; so he turned to the mission presidents, ¨What happened? Why are none of those baptisms attending church?¨ He asked each group who is to blame for the problem, and each group blamed a different group. So then we counseled together about how to fix it. It was really interesting. Elder Foster didn´t give us a direct solution, he just said we need to work more with the members and help them do missionary work and coordinate our efforts together.

The ward were I´m at is amazing. I´ve never seen a ward (branch) in Argentina were the members work so much. The elders quorum president called us to ask the address of the man who got baptized last week so that he could assign home teachers. That never would have happened in any of my other areas. So we are doing pretty good here. The majority of the recent baptisms go to church every week. And the members help us a lot as we look for more people to baptize. This week we have been looking hard for new people to teach, and we found a few. Hopefully they will progress in their testimony and love for the savior.

That was about it for the week. Now we are here writing the family after attempting to go fishing. I need some more fishing practice before we go to one of the big rivers in Argentina to get some big catches.

Hope everyone has a great week. Talk to you next time!

hasta luego baby,

Elder Gardner

It was really bright.

I was getting ready to go body surfing...

Me, Elder Nielsen (in the chair), Elder Johnson (left), Elder Unrau (back)

Ward activity. Open house in the church.

Baptism!

This is what happens when you´ve been in the offices for too long...

An investigator gave me this shirt as a present when I left Loma Hermosa.

My Christmas present to myself, anyone surprised?

Christmas phone call home. I figured this would be the closest we have gotten to a family picture in the last four years.

Yeah, I was kind of bored while my comp was talking to the family on Christmas.

Baptism of Miguel (this was December 23)

This ones just cool looking.

This is me and Elder Carroll bowling. Yeah, we´re that cool.

That´s Elder Stronks bowling. Pretty legit.

Transfers (offices week 2)

Hello family,

Well, it has been a pretty intense week, I´m not going to lie. Definitely the week where I´ve gotten the least sleep in my mission. I´ll try to be really descriptive and detialed in my descriptions of the week. That way all the females out there will be happy. Guys you can just take a quick nap.

Last saturday, after I wrote home we had an activity in the church. It was a special open house thing that a senior

missionary couple is trying to get working in Argentina. Pretty much we set up a fake statue of the statue of Christ in the Salt Lake visitors center in the sacrament room. The visitors would sit there and listen to the same recording that is played in Salt Lake. Then there was a little display where sister missionaries taught about the gospel. The senior couple tried this a month ago in a different church and it totally failed; Only ten people entered. So president was determined to make it work this time, and so were we. We invited all the members and their friends and then when it started we all stood out on the street corners (the members too) and invited everyone that passed by. I was out there for about two hours and didn´t get a single person to go inside. Finally I saw some teenage girls walking my way so I thought, ´sweet, this should be easier.´ I guess they thought I was cute or something cause when I said I would go with them to the church they agreed. They told me they don´t believe in God, but they went through the tour. My comp and I then got some fourty year old women to go, then another elder and I got an old man with his little puppy to go in too. In the end it was a success.

On Sunday church was good, but then came the fun part: transfers. We had to make sure all the zone leaders knew what the changes were so they could tell their elders. We had to call everyone who is flying south or coming up from the south so they knew their flight plans. We had to update all the systems with the changes, update the baptismal information, etc. Let´s

just say Sunday night we left the church at 2 am. Then monday all the changes happened. All the elders came here to the offices, met up with their companion, then left. Well, two elders took their cell phone with them from their old area to their new area, one cell phone got stolen and two got lost. We added elders to three areas, none of which had enough beds for more people. People showed up late, others early, others left stuff at the church. Finally at 3 pm we were able to eat lunch. Also, two of the APs went home, and the two older office elders both left. With just a week and a half of training I was left to run the apartments by myself. (The elder I replaced was trained for a month before the other elder left.)

On Tuesday the new elders flew in from the states. So we spent the whole day in the mission home (president´s house) helping out with that. During that time one of the new elders had his luggage get lost in the flight, one of the elders coming up from the south missed his flight and so did one of the elders that was going home to Chile. So Elder Nielsen made lots of phone calls while I sent emails to the new missionaries parents so they knew they got there safely. Tuesday night we drove to the airport at midnight to pick up some elders coming up from the south. The flight was delayed by an hour so we went to get some McDonald´s, but it was closed, and it was raining. We got to bed around three.

Wednesday things mostly calmed down. I was able to get some work done with the new apartments we are trying to rent. In the night time we went to pick up another elder from the airport at midnight. When we got there the flight had landed half an hour earlier but the elder wasn´t there. Almost an hour later he still was no where to be found. We searched the airport inside and out (fortunately it is pretty small). Right as Elder Nielsen dialed president´s number the missing elder showed up out of nowhere. Close call. This time I got to drive on the way home. My international drivers license came and now I can drive. Sometimes it is scary. They d

rive like maniacs here, but it is fun. I had forgotten how much I enjoy driving. We got to bed around 2 again.

Thursday was nice and calm. We had interviews with President. It was a good interview. He shared a scripture with me in D&C 33:16 and promised me that if I focused on the gospel and on teaching that the spirit would ´quicken´ the office work. That night was the first and only night of the week that we got to sleep at 10:30.

On Friday president´s promise about quickening the work came true. We have been waiting for new cell phones for over six weeks. And on friday one of the APs cell phones stoping working right. President likes to say things like, ´we need that done yesterday.´ That means you get it done NOW. But the person I have to work through at the area offices for cell phones has never really pulled through for me on short notice. This time I sent him a few emails, made a phone call, and within an hour the APs phone was working and the new phones were on their way in a taxi. That was as quick as you get.

The best part of Friday was afterwards though. Even with all this craziness happing, we had a baptism. He is a 70 something year old man named Roberto who is probably one of the most humble and nice men I have ever met. He is the friend of a lady who got baptized about a month ago. He got baptized by a 21 year old kid who

got baptized a few months ago and recieved the priesthood last sunday. It was one of the best baptismal services I have been part of. It helped me remember that I am here to teach and share the gospel. Sometimes it is easy for me to get lost in the office work, but the whole reason I do the office work is so that the spreading of the gospel can go forward. This is God´s work, and it will not be stopped until it covers the whole earth. It is awesome to be able to be a part of it.

Friday night we were in the offices until midnight working on things for a mission tour next week. Elder Foster (a member of the seventy in the area presidency) is coming on monday to tour the mission. So the mission president is pretty focused on making it a good tour. Today in the morning we went over to his house to eat pancakes (yumm, real maple syrup) and work more on the mission tour. So that was this week. Just one more week in the offices. Things should calm down soon, they say transfer week is the worst part.

I hope everyone has a great week and is enjoying all the fun activities. Make sure to study your scriptures, pray, and go to church.

Love,

Elder Gardner

The Offices Week 1

Hi family! I hope everyone is doing well. This week has been crazy, mom asked me some questions, so I`ll answer them and try to explain what it is like here in the offices.

Here is a normal day: wake up, do some exercise, shower. So far pretty normal. Then we study for about an hour before we head over to the church to work in the offices. Get to the office and check the email to see if anything has happened (usually by now some of the elders have already called about some problem with their fan or their cell phone or their bed or what not). If there is nothing to do yet I go through my checklist of apartments. I have a list of every apartment that we need to renew the contract, change apartments, find a new place, etc. I look to see if there is anything I need to do with these apartments or if I am waiting for the other people to respond. If I need to do something, I call or send an email to the housing agency about the contract. That`s the most common thing I do. Call and email housing agencies. I guess I can explain the steps to getting the apartments.

First I go online and look around for an apartment, then call the agency and set up an appoitment to see it. I send the missionaries that live there to go look at the place and take pictures, which they then email to me. I then have to show the emails to the senior missionary that works in the offices who is in charge of the money, and he approves or rejects the apartment. If he approves it I call the agency and tell them we want to reserve the apartment, then I call an ex-bishop guy we use to carry money around for us. I give him the money and the paperwork and he makes the reserve for the apartment. Till now it has only been a day or two. Now I wait (I mean call almost every day and bug them until they do it) for the agency to email us the contract. When I get it I send it to the church area offices so the legal guys can look at it and make any changes they feel are necessary. I wait (I mean call and bug) for them to send it back to me then I send it back to the agency and tell them to make the changes on the contract. If they accept the changes then everything is great, if they don`t then I get to call and argue and negoitate. This whole contract part can take weeks. Once the changes are made I print out the contract and go with the mission president to a notary place where he signs the contract. Then I give the signed contracts and a lot more money to the bishop guy who goes and gives it the agency in exchange for the keys. Then we give the keys to another guy who works for the mission as the handy man. He helps the missionaries move then fixes up the old apartment to get it ready to give back to the other agency. If all goes well the agency gives us back our deposit, if not I get to call and argue some more. Then I update all of the records we have in the offices and finally am done. It`s pretty intense. As of right now there are about twenty apartments on my checklist. It`s a lot to keep track of.

That`s usually what I do all day. On top of that, if anything breaks in any apartments or if something happens to a cell phone (like robberies) the elders call me and I get to deal with it. And I get to keep track of people paying rent. We just recently changed the way we pay rent, we used to do it all through computers electronically with no hassle. Because of legal problems we have to now give the missionaries the money and they pay the rent in person. So that`s always a big mess because for some reason or another they don`t end up paying the rent. Jolly good fun.

Then there are other random things that pop up randomly. For example: on Thursday we recieved an order of carbon monoxide detectors. I called the mission president to ask how he wanted to distribute them, I thought the easiest way would be wait till transfers on monday. President replied by saying, ¨not to put any stress on you elder, but if you don`t get them all out today you are personally responsible for anyone who dies tonight.¨ Let`s just say I called some taxis and got those detectors out as fast as I could. It took a while though, I had to call alot of companionships and figure out when they would be home to meet the taxi.

Then things like last night when I was on the phone talking to the owner of an apartment for about 15 minutes. Basically she is just old and wanted to complain about how she doesn`t like the elders that are living there. Not much I can do about that.

So sometimes it is kind of stressful, but I am really enjoying it. I get to play around with google earth a lot. We have a map of the whole mission with all area limits drawn in and the apartments marked. It`s really cool. And I`m learning a ton. I think it is a lot more like a real job than normal missionary work is. At five thirty I have to leave the office and go teach. Sometimes it is hard for me to stop thinking about the stuff going on in the offices and focus on the people we are teaching, probably similar to coming home to a family after a long day at work.

This has already been a really long letter. But I still need to answer some of mom`s questions. As of right now there are four elders in the offices, while both the current office elders are training their replacements. For sure one of them leaves on monday (it`s transfers), but we don`t know yet if the elder I`m replacing is going to stay another week to help me out or if he is leaving already. There is also a senior couple that works in the offices with us. As well as the APs (there are four right now after monday there will be two, one of which is my MTC comp) and another senior couple that come and go all day. Us four office elders live together, right now there is another elder living with us while he waits to go home on monday. In the ward (it´s actually a branch) there are the office elders and also zone leaders. Another ward meets in the same chapel as us, and the APs are in that ward.

So I think I answered all the questions. This was a really long letter. Hope you liked it. If you have any more questions, tell mom and she can ask me. If you ask soon enough today I might even answer you today. Have a great week everyone!

Les amo,

Elder Gardner