Sunday, October 26, 2014

September 27, 2014 - Transfers and Mission Conference

Ola Pessoal!!

This week was crazy!!  

Sunday!  Transfers were announced and I was the first to know about it all!  I felt pretty special, haha but it was really good!  With both of the Assistants to the President going back home, President Cabral had to call new ones and he ended up calling four which was a a big surprise!  
 
 To announce the transfers, I go to the mission home and call all the mission leaders from there.  The best part of all was that Kimberly (President's daughter) was making a snack for everyone there.  It smelled super ridiculously good, but I couldn't figure out what it was when I first got there.  I passed the whole transfer still smelling and salivating because it smelled so stinkin' good!!  When I left the office part of the house, I walked into the kitchen and there it was........Cinnamon Rolls!!!  I nearly cried I was so happy!  I wanted to give her a hug, but I just gave her a good firm hand shake instead hahahah. When we all sat at the table to eat, I don't think I have been that trunky about home in a long time!  It was like Grandma Hancey's cinnamon rolls (they weren't at the same level), but after a year of not tasting or smelling anything with cinnamon and sugar, it might as well have been sent from HEAVEN!!

Monday!  My best friends left to go home from the mission!  It was so busy because of the transfers that I didn't get to take a picture with them, but I did get to say goodbye!  I called Elder Parrella's mom to pick up some information for him and I think we talked for like 5 minutes about Parrella then she asked me when I finish my mission. I told her I have a year left and then she said, "Alright, in a year and a month you are gonna come to our house to stay for a little bit!!"  It was cool.  I told Parrella and then he said, "Well, my mom said it so you have to make it happen." hahaha  
 
Tuesday!  The new missionaries came and I am in charge of them hahaha (kind of). When they come, I make a power point of the trainers and the newbies!! 


 
 
After, the new assistants and I were still there and none of us had eaten yet so Sister Cabral told us we could eat there.  
 


 
It was great, but the rest of the day was super stressful getting ready for the mission conference.  I was at the office printing and putting packets together for President that he asked for that night  until probably 12 at night. It was long.

Wednesday!  Conference Really Good.  Rocked a Pink skinny tie to the best of my abilities!!!   President talked about dating on the mission and how we have some missionaries that still don't understand this concept, so we took a good solid chewing out.  
 


Thursday!  Normal of work except I couldn't get authenticated copies of passports done for some Americans for the association and I payed for it.  I got a call from São Paulo how I need to do a lot better on that stuff so I learned my lesson on that.

Friday!  Zone meeting!  As a zone we are going to try to focus a lot on getting the estudos (studies) for Sister Cabral done in this transfer so we won't get so far behind!  Did a lot of stuff for the assistants.


Saturday! Today.  Its raining and its pouring, but I'm doing well over all.

Love you Guys


Elder Chase Thurgood!!

September 20, 2014 - A Week of Craziness - MS Excel Style

Hello Family!  

I hope you all had a good busy week!  From the looks of all your letters, you all said something about how busy everything is!  I had a pretty good week!  I officially have served more days now in the mission than I have left to serve!  Its crazy how time goes by soooo fast!  In the house that I'm living in there were 4 of us in the same group on Thursday night!  So we all took pictures together and hopefully I can send them to you when I get them from the other Elders.  The majority of these pictures were taken in front of the flaming white shirts that two of us burnt...I was not one of them!  But it still was pretty cool, I also lost faith in white shirts because if I ever get set on fire já era!  Its over!  I think the whole shirt took about 4 seconds to be lit completely in flames.

The email is called week of craziness because of all the time I am spending in Microsoft excel.  I think I made over 80 graphs with a ton of different data, then what really made this night crazy was last night I was just about to leave the office when President called and asked for a new set of graphs. We absolutely had no information so I had to gather all the information from the missionaries.  This is what I had to organize and put together.  President called around 6:45- 7 o'clock last night and wanted me done by 11:30 this morning.  The problem was that I had 80 wards to get all of this information from. It was a little difficult to say the least. I worked until 11:30 then got up early and got to the office to try and finish. It didn't work too well and then I was working this morning on pday which meant I wasn't the happiest camper, but it turned out to be good for me.
 
In English.....
Stake  Ward  #members  Attendance in July 2013 Baptisms in a year, reactivation of members in a year. The fubecas or slackers of the ward, they will go to church and give a lesson and then the next 2 weeks they went to the beach. That sort of thing.  People who moved.  Attendance in July2014  % that the attendance went up.  Converts that went to at least one Sunday after they were baptized.
 

The highlight of the week I think was yesterday morning.  Elder Parrella and I always joke about who would beat who in certain sports and everything.  He's already beat me in jiu jitsu and long distance running.  I beat him in sprinting and jumping, but  he wanted to see if he could knock me out in rugby.  He's gotten really excited to play rugby and says he doesn't want to play football because its a game for girls hahaha. He just says all that stuff to get me going, but we decided that we had to stop the talk and walk the walk hahah (mom's quote).  So for our morning exercises, we got up at 5:45 with some of the other elders in our house and went to a field to play.  We had some people chicken out because it was slightly drizzling, but in the end it was so much more fun with the grass completely wet and all of us dirty and muddy.  The first 2 minutes, everyone was a little hesitant about tackling and actually making contact, but then my team started losing and I went hard......hahah. I trucked two elders then scored.  Then everyone freaked out and it was so much fun. I'll send some pictures if I can.  We played until 7 then went back to get ready for the day.

Transfers are gonna happen tomorrow!  The only thing that could change for me is maybe I move wards, but I honestly don't think that I will.  Comps may change as well because Debaltzo is leaving and Kocinba is going to be training someone to be the next financial secretary.

Have a great week!

Love you guys so much!


Elder Chase Thurgood