The Goal

June 28th email

Things have been pretty crazy around here. We were suppose to have interviews with President Gálvez on Tuesday, but they got changed to Thursday. So Elder Centeno and I ended up leaving Golfito early Tuesday morning. Luckily, we got back to San Vito by 11 a.m. Elder Centeno got back from San José Monday night, and thankfully, he brought your package along with him. We had some urgent puchases to make, I´m not sure how much money is left in my account and I don´t want to pull out anymore money for fear of overdraft charges.

We´ve been working hard with one family we found a few weeks back. The daughter, Alondra, decided she wants to be baptized, and we set the date for July 10th. One of my zone leaders wasn´t too happy about that, he tried to push into baptizing her this last Saturday (June 26) so that the zone would make it´s goal for baptisms. He was pretty speechless with my reply. I don´t chop investigators heads like a lot of other missionaries do, but I have no problem chopping a missionary´s head for being a number cruncher. If they don´t have a testimony of the restoration of the gospel, I won´t baptize them. Especially when every baptism needs to help the branch GROW. We can´t afford that anyone falls away. My zone leader came back saying that it´important to focus on retention as branch president, but I also need to focus on missionary work.

...I was under the impression retention was PART of missionary work...

In my interview with President Gálvez Thursday I mentioned this to him, and he took my side which gave me a decent confidence boost. My interview with President was good. I ended up asking him a landslide of questions about what I should be doing in the branch. He gave me my objective: When I leave, the branch needs to have a REAL branch president, not a missionary. I´m all for that, it´s not the same when it´s a missionary running the show. We´re only around for so long, and then when the new guy comes, plans change, and you´re pretty much starting out from square one. There´s no real progress that way.
Along with that President gave me some advice on what we can do to prepare and strengthen the leaders. We´re going to be cutting church short one hour, starting at 9 a.m. and ending at 11 a.m. (Sacrament meeting and Sundayt school). No one sticks around for Priesthood or Relief Society, and until we get the few we have ACTIVE in the church, there´s no point in following through with that. We need to take everything back to basics. In Sunday school we´re already teaching Gospel Principles instead of the Old Testament. For mutual we´re using activities to teach basic gospel doctrine. In dropping the third hour, it puts more responsibility on our more active members to do their home and visiting teaching. It´s going to be a lot of work, but the hope is in doing this our one major candidate for branch president, the Hermano Chinchilla, will start to work more in the church.

Thursday after interviews we had divisions with the elders of Ciudad Neily. I was wih my district leader, Elder Sperry, in San Vito. I had to teach seminary and then the youth leaders didn´t show, so I directed mutual as well. Thursday nights have proven to be our busiest nights aound here.

Tuesday night I had a craving for banana cream pie, so I bought the stuff to make it. I just made the cream, didn´t want to spend my time on the crust. =P I can officially make banana cream pie now. I do think that is somewhat of an accomplishment. =D

Alright I gotta jet. I love you all and I hope you all have a great week. Take care, enjoy the World Cup, and I´ll talk to you guys next week. ¡Ciao!


Tu Hijo,
Elder Nunie