Alright, first week as a member of the mission staff!
It's been a pretty full week and probably was the fastest week in the mission until now. The hours fly by here!
So about my new comps. I'm in a trio right now and their names are Elder Summers and Elder Villas Boas. E. Summers is from Portland and E. Villas Boas is from the southern part of the state of Bahia. They're both really awesome and super easy to get along with. Its pretty funny, on my first day in the mission field it was Elder Summers, Elder O'Neill (my first comp/trainer), and me. He was there to watch me teach my first lesson and I'll be here to watch him teach his last! He's going home at the end of the transfer and I'll be the one to take his place.
In this past week, I've learned a lot! My schedule is much different too. Everyday we wake up, get ready and get to the mission office at 8:00 to study and plan for the day. Then from 10-6 we just work. After that, we go to our proselyting area to teach our investigators and stuff. Because the mission office is kinda far from our area, we get to eat at a restaurant everyday which is pretty sweet. There's this restaurant across the street which we just call "across the street" that we go to pretty much everyday. Its good, classic brazilian food and isn't too expensive either. But every once in a while we go to a nicer restaurant. This week we went to one that was 40 reais which is pretty expensive, but its cool because as a staff missionary you get a ton of money to eat. We had huge hamburgers and at the end I ordered brownie and ice cream. It was the first brownie that I've had since I've been here and it was so good!
So about what I do now. There are 4 secretaries and each one has a different job; 2 financial secretaries and 2 executive secretaries. I'm executive secretary A. One of the things I do is deal with off all the health on the mission. So whenever a missionary is sick of hurt (which happens A LOT) they call me and I tell them what to do. That includes calling hospitals around the mission and scheduling appointments for them. This eats up a big chunk up my time during the day! I'm also in charge of all the foreigners and their documents. So I have to work with the federal police here and renew visas and stuff. Its a pretty complicated process... I'm glad I still have 5 more weeks to learn! On top of that, I just deal with all the random problems that happen day to day on the mission. Like Elder Summers said "If we listed all the stuff that you have to do, we'd be here all day. You can basically sum it by by saying that you fix all the problems!" So if there's any random thing that needs to be done, it's my job. I also become the official IT guy of the mission. Whenever there's a problem with any sort of technology, it's up to me to fix it. So dad, I know what you mean now when you said that google became your best friend while you were learning how to do all the stuff with computers! President said that here in 5 or 6 months the mission is going to switch out our current computers for better ones and it's going to be me that is going to have to make all that work. So, we'll see how that goes! I'll have to study up a bit before that happens! I never knew how much goes on behind the scenes of in the mission. The secretaries do a ton! There's a lot that I need to learn and I'm going to stay busy during my time here for sure.
So, there you have it. I have to cut it a bit short because I didn't use the alphasmart this week but I'll write more next week! Its super crazy that Ty is done with high school...... It seems like just a month or two ago I was in the middle of my senior year!
-Elder Odom
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