New Mission President Arrives

The new mission president arrived yesterday.  He is very different from President Rappleye.  President Rappleye was a lot like my Grandpa Guffee -- he took no crap from absolutely anyone at all.  The new president seems a little more malleable to me.  We'll see if the missionaries try to take advantage of that.

I'm going to miss President Rappleye.  I think I learned more about effective leadership from him than any other person.

This past week was awesome.  We had an amazing activity, we did some sweet service for the members, and taught some awesome lessons.

One of our investigators is going to get baptized on the 19th of July.  Yesterday we helped out with a baptism and met the new mission President.  I am writing today because there was no time between the baptism, our lessons, and meeting with the new President yesterday.

Missionaries can't ever appear to be sad, or discouraged, or frustrated, because we are the people all church members look up to.  We have to be perfect examples of behavior at all times.  That is really tough.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a never-ending series of problems to be fixed, issues to be dealt with, projects to be implemented, forgotten about, and faded away.

Looking back on the past week right now, all I can think about is everything that we weren't able to do, everything we weren't able to accomplish.  But tomorrow is another day, so I'll keep working as best I can.
-Elder Crotzer

CHI CHI CHI! LE LE LE!

This past week, my new companion Elder Carlisle arrived in the office.  He took over half of my responsibilities, so we are outside teaching in the sector a lot more now.  We are teaching Gisela, and we think she's going to get baptized soon.  She bore her testimony in Gospel Principles class last Sunday, which was probably one of the coolest, most spiritually-fulfilling experiences during my mission.  She thanked us for giving her the time she needed to figure out this decision, the most important decision in her life right now.  I was so happy when I heard that, because it means that when she finally is baptized, she will hopefully be a faithful church member.

This entire country is going crazy with World Cup fever right now.  It's nuts.  Easiest way to start a conversation with anybody:  Ask them if they like soccer.  95% of the time, the answer will be yes.  Our President even gave the mission permission to watch the games in which Chile plays for the purpose of doing contacts later.

World Cup Story:  We were working in the office on the day that Chile played Spain.  I look out the window, and the usually busy street is absolutely, completely vacant.  There is nobody outside.  So we work for a bit and all of a sudden we hear just a ton of yelling and screaming, emanating faintly through the window.  We look out again and there are is still nobody in the street, but we figure out that the yelling is coming from all of the buildings around us.  Apparently, Chile had just scored a goal.  Twenty minutes later we were walking outside and the same thing happened, except this time it was LOUD.  Imagine if everyone around you in your neighborhood just started yelling at the same, and you just imagined Chile at game time.

This week has been pretty interesting.  There is a guy from Chile here that is helping us out in the office.  His name is Diego.  He put his papers in to serve a mission, but due to the fact he is a deaf-mute, the Church told him he couldn't serve a full two years.  President Rappleye heard about it though, and invited the guy to come to the mission office for a week or so to help us out a bit.

Did you know that there is English sign language, and then there is Spanish sign language?  WHAT!  I didn't!  So Diego has been teaching me a bit.  We communicate mostly through typing on the computer, but he taught me the words for "work", "How do you sign *blank* ", "thank you", and "see you later."  There is another missionary here that served in Diego's hometown, and he taught himself sign language in order to be a better friend with Diego.  Wow.

Tonight we are going to "heart-attack" a family.  They have been going through some rough times recently, and one of their daughters was diagnosed with cancer.  So they are in dire need of some support.  We got all of the church members in our congregation to write little notes of support and kindness on paper hearts, and tonight we're going to go tape all of the hearts to their door and ding dong ditch them.  I think I'm more excited about doing this than I have been about anything in a long long time.

Love you all!
-Elder Crotzer

Calendar Explanation

I wanted to explain a little bit about my calendar, and what some of the various labels mean, because I understand that "references" could be anything.  So let's go chronologically.

Sunday -

1. Church - yes, we attend church.
2. References:  To write down the contact information for references that missionaries want to pass to other cities in Chile.  If you talk to someone on the street in Los Alamos that lives in Santa Fe, their contact info has to get down to the missionaries in Santa Fe.
3. El Rescate bugs etc:  Someone has to relay improvement information about the website and program design to the administrators and creators outside of our mission.  You'd be surprised how many people complain about some feature, but then never ever tell anyone about it and then somehow expect it to improve.
4. El Rescate numbers:  Every week the stats for El Rescate get sent out to all of the Zone Leaders and the Rescate specialists so that they can better coordinate their efforts and how to improve.
5. El Rescate correlation:  A weekly meeting between the APs, a senior-couple missionary, and I, in which we coordinate the tasks and focus for the coming week, and we discuss any interesting developments, so that everyone is on the same page.

Monday -

1. Office staff meeting with President, for 15 min to an hour.  We talk about and plan cambios [changes/transfers], the work for the week, surprise-missionaries coming to the mission, and lots of little miscellaneous tasks. 
2. In the morning, we have a short Rescate correlation meeting with President where we touch the key points from the Sunday night meeting, and get approval and advice for anything we want to do. 
3. Banks:  Sometimes I get dragged around town to different banks by the financier, as he makes deposits and withdrawals.
4. Mission history:  Another of my roles is that of the mission historian, in which I'm supposed to note any significant events of each month.  That usually takes a few minutes a week, but this is the halfway point of the year, so I compiled everything we have so far and sent it to President for review.  I guess he wants to leave everything nice and shiny for the new mission President.
5. Placas:  I drop off and pick up orders for name tags for our mission.

Tuesday -

1. We travel an hour for district meeting out into the country each week.  It doesn't really make sense, but it probably won't be like that for a while.
2. Mail:  We pick the mail up from the mission, and sort it into zones, where it gets sent out to the zone leaders.
3. Baptismal Records:  Every time someone gets baptized, a white piece of paper gets filled out with their information, and then that paper gets sent to the office.  Then their information is entered into the computer, and they are registered on the rolls of the church.  My favorite part is reading the handwriting.
4. Ward Council:  I went on splits with the other office elders and we attended ward council, because they don't have a ward mission leader, and their bishop is kind of new and he needs a lot of support.

Wednesday -

1. I answer the door at the office, and attend to everyone at the front desk.  Some days it's frustrating because I have a lot to do, but people keep showing up that need to be helped, and by the end of the day my to-do list has gotten longer, not shorter.
2. Mission numbers:  Once a week, I collect the key indicators for the mission, and put them all into a nice excel file with cool graphs after verifying that they're correct.  Numbers like lessons taught with a member present, other lessons, references received, etc.

Thursday -

1. Plan Zone Leader Council presentation:  Every month all of the zone leaders and the Sister Trainer Leaders get together at President's house and they discuss President's plans for the coming month, and any challenges or special topics.  I give an El Rescate presentation for about 10-15 minutes every time at the beginning. 
2. El Rescate - measuring success, etc:  In my presentation, I wanted to ask the Zone Leaders if they thought El Rescate was working.  Even though I feel personally responsible for the program, I don't want to waste the mission's time if it's not an effective use of time.  So I was trying really hard to see if it was having a positive impact on the key indicators of the mission.  And... I can't tell.  You can make numbers say almost anything you want them to say.
3. In the office, you get to run a lot of little emergency errands.  Like that day we had to literally run to the Mission home to get an Elder his certificate before he missed his flight.

Friday -

1. Zone Leader Presentation:  Bright and early at the Mission Home.  Sometimes I get a little flustered, because my Spanish is still not the best and it's been slowly degrading in the office, and all of the zone leaders are veteran missionaries with about a year and half of time.  So sometimes we all have a good laugh at my mistakes, but I don't really mind, as long as the message of the presentation gets across.  This last week, we talked about the importance of the assignment program, where missionaries give simple assignments to less-active members to prepare them to receive a calling, and how to best implement that with El Rescate.  The problem is, missionaries haven't given the emphasis to assignments that maybe they should have.  Last week, there were only 17 assignments given in the entire mission, and 6 of the 14 zones didn't even send in an assignment report.  I think President made a couple hearts stop when he brought that up.  So we had a good discussion about some of the challenges facing the assignment program, and how to best move forward, and we came to a conclusion on a plan of action.
2. Later that day all of the zone leaders come by the Mission Office, and it's Crazy Zone Leader Madness!  Twenty-four old missionaries, packed into our little office, taking advantage of a little opportunity to chat.  I give them mail for their zone and any request they have for materials, and the financier usually has his hand busy with a bunch of reimbursements.
3. Then I got to work making the new assignment sheet that we're going to use in the mission.  The point of it is to excite the missionaries to give more assignments, and to record and track the number and success-rate of the assignments better.  And it basically came down to everyone giving all these great ideas about how we could improve the program, and then poor Elder Crotzer was the one saddled with implementing said ideas.  But we got it done, and it looks good.

Saturday -

1. Saturday is our P-day, but I spent most of it training El Rescate specialists.  I think this will be my last 6 weeks in the office, so the Rescate knowledge needs to get spread around the mission before I leave if there's any hope of this thing continuing to function.

Well I got a little carried away with that, and now I'm out of time.  I hope it's not too dry, even though I know it is.  Have a good week!  I love you!

-Elder Crotzer

Editor's note:  Thomas sent the following explanation of the picture of Elder Linford in the hospital picture of last week:

Elder Linford, and many gringos, don't react well to flea bites.  Usually it's just a bit of inflamation, and scratching makes it worse, but for some reason Elder Linford's bites got badly infected.  Like, his entire ankle all the way to his toes was a swollen purple.  So he spent a few days in the hospital and they pumped him full of antibiotics.  Not a pleasant experience for him I'd imagine, so missionaries took shifts keeping him company.  

I've never had a flea bite show up on my body, and I don't believe I've never been bitten by a flea.  Maybe I'm part Latino.
-Elder Crotzer

Meetings and Computer Work

I don't have much time to write, I'm sorry.  I don't have much to say spiritually-wise either.  Unfortunately, we haven't taught a single lesson this week.  As the time gets closer and closer to when we get a new Mission President, things get crazier and crazier in the office.  I didn't really take a P-day today either, and I'm typing this out in between Rescate training sessions.

I DO have a calendar where I kept track of my activities this week, so you can see a little more of what I do.

Basically, my life is meetings and computer work.  I don't resent it, because I feel like I'm serving from my strengths, but it does sting a little bit when I write home and tell my family I didn't even teach a single lesson this week.

Six more weeks at the most, and then I'll be out of the office, and back to teaching full-time.
-Elder Crotzer

Editor's note:  Well, we see from the schedule that Thomas sent that Elder Linford has suffered some sort of injury and is in the hospital and that Thomas and his companion are helping to keep him company in the evenings.  We don't know whether Elder Linford had an unfortunate run-in with one of the many dogs on the streets, or if the injury was from something else.  We'll ask Thomas next week what happened.