Looking back on this past
week, I feel more like a glorified secretary than a missionary. Tuesday we
spent 2 hours trying to fix a report we got from the office to give to the
Stake President here in Kennewick (he's the man over all the members in the
city of Kennewick; there are bishops – most similar to a pastor – that’s over a
congregation of about 150 members and then the Stake President is over 8 of
those congregations) in a meeting we have once a month to let him know how the
missionary efforts are going here in this zone. The meeting went well but it
was just a pain and a half trying to fix the report. Thursday was pretty cool.
There was a set of sisters in the next stake over (Kennewick East - we are very
original in our naming protocols) who wanted to get baptized, but they speak
Spanish, and since there wasn't anyone that could speak Spanish and was allowed
to do the interview, they normally default to our APs, the only problem is they
were on exchanges with some zone leaders up in Othello so they asked us to do
it, since my companion and I both happened to speak Spanish. It was a neat
experience going back to Spanish mode (haven't completely lost it yet) and
helping these people make the last step towards getting baptized.
Friday is when the true
craziness began. That morning my companion and I spent two hours planning for a
meeting we had to give with all the District Leaders in the zone the following
day before going to an appointment that fell through, only to return home and
start our weekly planning (where we discuss what we are going to do the
following week and the needs of the people we are working with) just in time to
get a phone call from some missionaries that needed a ride somewhere for
something (we give a lot of rides seeing as we don't have a mile limit; they
all just fade into a giant blur), and then return home and start planning again
only to turn around and head to an early dinner to be able to be on the road
down to Umatilla, Oregon. There was a similar situation happening down in
another zone across the way where they were in need of another Spanish
interview and since the APs were in Moses Lake this time we got to make the
trip down across the river into Oregon to make this interview happen. There was
some intense fog on the way down but we made the hour drive safely and
relatively uneventful only to come back up for yet another meeting, this time
for the high councilor over missionary work and the JustServe committee. JustServe is the new
initiative that the church is starting to get members and missionaries more
involved in the community so each stake has a representative called to that
position to be in charge of making things happen. The representative for our
stake has done a good job thus far in making things happen so we met with him
to discuss the finer points of a project coming up this week. It’s gonna be
cool. Anyways by the end of the night my companion and I were dead tired
(sitting in a car is surprisingly exhausting) so we decided the only logical
solution was to go get a shake.
And then Saturday started. We
had the aforementioned meeting with the District Leaders followed by lunch at a
mexican restaurant (trying to curb my need for handmade tortillas; it didn't
work) followed by even more planning since we weren't able to get to all of it
on Friday like we were supposed to. We had a baptism to attend a few hours
after we started planning for some of the missionaries in our zone which was a
good problem to have and afterwards we were so sick of
planning and sitting around we gave up trying and just went to work. From there
it was a relatively normal night. We had correlation with our Ward Mission
Leader and then a lesson with our recent converts and then came home to finally
catch a breath. If nothing else, I've been sleeping really well the past few
days.
So the quote for this week I
think originally came from John Bytheway but a missionary - who had got it from the member he lives with -
handed it to us as we picked him up for a meeting this past week, and I think
it is known as the unofficial '14th Article of Faith' but is very fitting to
the events of this past week. Just a little background really quick for those
of you who may not know: Back when the Church was first reorganized in the
early 1800s a newspaper asked Joseph Smith to write a quick article summarizing
the beliefs of the Latter Day Saint faith. The article - 13 points stating our
beliefs - then came to be known as the 13 Articles of Faith, which do a very good job at describing in simple terms
the basics of our beliefs. And with that in mind, this is the very unofficial
(like so unofficial this is a joke; don't take this seriously) 14th Article of
Faith:
"We believe in meetings
- all that have been scheduled, all that now are scheduled, and we believe that
there yet will be many more great and important meetings. We have endured many
meetings and hope to be able to endure all meetings. If there is a meeting, we
seek after it."
And with that, I wish you all a very tired goodbye until next week.
Elder Kupferer
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