"Want No Excuse"

Ah!

This morning, Elder Palfreyman and I had to wake up at six in the morning to head over to the office for training. The Church is putting on the mission office systems for the Church completely online, so we're transitioning into that program, and we had to be at the office to receive training from Church Headquarters in Salt Lake. It was all very informative, but it was tiring, and we were hungry. It was all good fun overall.

We've had a pretty busy week in the office! There has been much to do, especially since we're starting on getting the office ready for the next mission president. President Skelton has just under five months left, but there is much to be done. In addition, we had a mini-emergency this week. Our office couple, Elder and Sister Palmer, are scheduled to return home on March 1st. But, up till yesterday, we had no idea who was going to replace them, so they were starting to teach me and Elder Palfreyman how to do their jobs, (a.k.a. the finances, travel, and records for the mission). Fortunately, we received word yesterday that a new couple will be coming mid-April! President Skelton is trying to get the couple to come earlier, and the Palmer's have agreed to extend for a whole month! We've extremely grateful to them for doing that! We would be so lost without them! But, we're still going to have to learn what they do so that we can help the new couple transition, so there's much to be done! We've been going through old document files, and some go back to the seventies, so it's pretty amazing to skim through these old historical records. Unfortunately, we're just going to have to shred most of them. President wants everything to be spick and span for the new man.

Aside from that, Elder Palfreyman and I spent the whole of the afternoon yesterday cleaning out the storeroom that we share with the distribution center upstairs. It was heavy, dirty work! But, we managed to arrange it all and take an inventory of all our supplies. It's pretty crazy to see what some missionaries have ordered, along with how much they have ordered. In some cases, they've ordered thousands of certain items that we really don't need! Crazy missionaries.. haha. Anyhow, we've found a bunch of old supplies that we can use, so that will definitely be helpful. The old set of office Elders never didn't place an order for last quarter's supplies, so we had to do an emergency order, and hopefully that will come in the next few days, as I already mentioned last week! We have a few other projects to work on, including tracking men ordained to the priesthood, and members who can't be found. We're going to be busy, and that's wonderful!

We had a new couple from Heber, UT, come in this past week. Elder and Sister Spanos are an amazing couple. They have already served two missions among the native tribes in Canada, and among the Zulu people in South Africa. We enjoyed our week with the. They helped a ton, and bought us snacks. :)

The week went pretty well in terms of missionary work. We had a bunch of visa runners come in, so we were able to teach more lessons, and split up to teach more appointments. Unfortunately, we had to drop a few of our investigators because they have not been progressing. They are all really nice, but just not too ready yet I guess. We met a man from Myanmar named Soe who met up with us just a few days later, and we had a good lesson with him. Angelina is progressing well and is on track to be baptized on March 15, so that is definitely something exciting, and we are looking forward to it.

Our mission did wonderfully well last year, with over a thousand baptisms. We are so happy and grateful for that, especially since we averaged 12 baptisms a missionary, including senior couples! We hope to be able to keep up the trend as we humble ourselves and rely on the Lord as we put in our best effort.

We received a wonderful Zone Training from the Zone Leaders yesterday, about accountability. It really got me to think about just how accountable we are for ourselves, and for all those around us, especially as missionaries. The Zone Leaders quoted Elder James E. Talmage in his analysis on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where he explained that the reason why the Samaritan stopped is because he "wanted no excuse" to not help the injured man on the side of the road, while the other two supposedly holy men did not stop to help. The Zone Leaders went on to talk about how we need to not make excuses, and go and do the work because we want to! We have a couple of good appointments coming up in the next few days. Of course, the best lessons come from member referrals, and we're having one of those tonight, so that will be wonderful.

So, I hope that we will all "want no excuse" as we do the Lord's work! Take care!