Elder Zachary Gehring: The last two weeks

Dear Mom and Dad,

First off, it was a little weird seeing all those photos. It seems like she didn't even leave. Here in the offices I have to send the old missionaries home and I've gotten used to it. But it was a little hard seeing Chelsea home and with the kids. These past 2 weeks have been the craziest. I dont even remember what happened 2 weeks ago.

This week that past we had transfers. Ive never been so busy in my life. First of all, the asistentes y el presidente hacen los cambios y después, los secretarios llevan a cabo lo que el presidente y asistentes hicieron. Estoy encargado de toda la transportación, vuelos, hojas de cambios (se los voy a explicar después), y lo que los demás secretarios no hacen.

1. Transportation. Usualmente lo que hacemos es enviarlos en taxi. Siempre gastamos mucho dinero, a veces misioneros se quedan solos, y en el fin hay problemas. Esta vez le dije al presidente que deberíamos cambiar la manera de transporte. Pensamos mucho y en el fin decidimos a tener un micro. 1 micro para todos los misioneros. Había 4 paradas. Cada uno fue una capilla central de las zonas en Santa Cruz. Empezando a las 9:00am, el micro pasó por cada capilla. Los misioneros solo tenían que esperar hasta que llegara el micro. Lo subieron y bajaron según sus áreas nuevas. Todo salió bien. Lo vamos a hacer cada cambio desde hoy en adelante.

2. Vuelos. I have to make flights, find transportation for them to and from the airport, and then change the flight mondaynight before cambios when president makes more changes.

3. Hojas de Cambios. This sheet is the one way that we let the zone leaders know who has transfers, where they are going, flight information, and everything. Before we used a transfer sheet that years ago was made by some of the secretaris. It was so hard to understand. It took so long to fill out and it was so hard to catch mistakes. All around it was just poorly made. I took it in to Presidents office and he told me ''I dont even want to look at this'' and I agreed. We decided the night before changes that we were going to completely redesign and reformat the whole thing. It took us a while to change the format but then filling the new sheets went way faster. President liked a lot the new ones. The day of transfers, after sending the hojas out to the Zone leaders, we hardly got any calls. (thats a good thing)

Also the beginning of this week we had leadership conference. So to add to our level of stress and work, we had to fly in all the leaders for monday night and tuesday morning. Then Tuesday night we had to be done with transfers. We had several nights in the offices way late. Then the cambios past and then we had to deal with the antiguos. We spent hours and hours in the airport. Also I made a few phone calls to parents to let them know their missionary´s plane was delayed. I don't like those phone calls very much. I think they don't too.

My favorite part about this week was spending time tuesday with all the new missionaries. They are great. Its weird to see them and to think I was one of them just a few months ago. They don't speak any spanish and I know I was just like them. Its amazing to see how excited they are to work. They are so happy. They thought it was so cool that we had a bus to pick them up, they were so excited to eat at the restaurant close to the offices, and everything we did with tramites and visas was so fun to them. I remember when I first got here, I felt like that too. I love being able to teach them, help them be excited, and be the first one to help them start the mission. They are all great missionaries and will be leaders soon. There were 8 that came in.

So this year of 2014 is the year when the church has been here for 50 years. In the beginning of the year President put the goal of having 1450 active converts or rescued by the end of the year. These last 2 months of the year we will be focusing on that. (2014 50 años) As part of our plan to meet this goal we started a '40 day' fast. We arent actually going to fast for 40 days but we will be purifying ourselves through our actions. Every day we drop one attribute bad and replace it with something better. 40 days is the exact number of days in the transfer. At the beginning of this transfer we read stories in the scriptures about the number 40 and what it represents and then we are mirroring the saviors 40 day fast and purification. I have already seen the miracles come.

During transfers the secretaries are in and out of taxis traveling here and there. We have a ton of time to contact and talk with people. We took advantage of that this week. Out of everyone there were only a few that lived in our area but there is a guy named Mauricio. We haven't actually visited him yet but tomorrow we will. We had just gotten out of a taxi When we saw him wearing a shirt that said ''Elder'' so we had to talk to him. We starting talking, walked with him a little while, and he invited us to come back to his home. I´m not sure what will come of it but I know it was the start of the miracles that will come during this time and this 40 day fast.

I love all.

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Gehring