Friday, April 1, 2011

Week 9 in the Mission Office

In which we get settled back in at home, and David provides a few international driving tips….  No pictures again this week Sad smile

Subject:  Okay, why does she even HAVE that lever?

Before I forget, I want to comment on Dad’s comment to me about Alma 57 when the 2000 stripling warriors were acting as a diversion. It reminded me of a true story I heard about an army battalion in WWII that was made entirely out of actors and artists. They had giant speakers playing various machinery noises and literally had inflatable tanks and jeeps to confuse German intelligence. Which not only worked, but it was a major factor in the success of D-Day. Look it up, it’s true. I’m not sure how that ties into the gospel, but maybe you could say that Satan makes “inflatable tanks” to confuse us in our lives, letting him win when our “D-Days” come. And then some other stuff could happen and it could be like the gospel. Whatever. At least it would make a good movie.

Since last week, not that much has happened, honestly. It’s been a busy week office-wise, though. We got new computers on Wednesday and upgraded to Windows 7, which is cool except that it means that my old software now doesn’t work. On Thursday, then, I was in super crisis mode trying to get my stuff done at least in a semi-working way, which I did, but it looks like I’ll have to put my programming knowledge to good use and recreate the entire system. That isn’t as big of a job as it sounds, and I was kind of planning on doing it anyway because the old system was super lame, but now I’m kind of forced to.

The Caminos family was cool, though. That’s the one where the husband wasn’t super on board with getting married. We found out that it’s because he was with his last wife for two years before getting married, and then just a little after they got married she cheated on him. Now he’s scared to do that again. But we had a family night with the Stake President, ironically enough named President Lopez, and it was super, super good. The only thing is that we haven’t been able to talk to them since, but they’re coming to conference, so we’ll see them there. It’s mostly our schedule, by the way, that’s been packed, not theirs.

Marleni did not get baptized, by the way. She passed her interview, but felt like she needs more time. So we set a new date with her for the 10 of April. We now have six dates for the 10th.

I am kind of really short on time today to write because a ton has happened today. Basically what you need to know is that I have been wrestling the last week or so with the El Salvador government to get my license. Everything should have worked perfectly, but hey, its bureaucracy. So I eventually gave up and went to the various places and did the driving test and two written tests necessary to get my license. Those were quite hard in Spanish, just so you know. But because of all that my time is running out fast for P-day, and I still haven’t bought anything, eaten all day, or really done anything else.

On that note, I went with Elder Huaman to drop some stuff off in Santa Tecla this morning. On the way back we got stuck in super, super heavy traffic. A couple blocks took us more than an hour. And it was a lot worse behind us. Throw in some round abouts, angry bus drivers, etc., and it was a horrible, horrible experience. We got through our Motab CD like five times. And when we got through, what did we see was the cause? Someone had gotten rear-ended, super minorly (I could hardly see a dent in the bumper) and they had decided to leave the cars in the middle of the road while they got out and talked about it. GAH! After we passed them, the road was almost deserted. Driving tip: Don’t be from El Salvador. Or a woman. Let alone a woman FROM El Salvador.

Mom mentioned something about working on getting back into a workout habit. And Julie mentioned something like that, too. So I figured I’d tell you that I also am doing something like that. Elder Oliverson got our hands on a workout program that helps you slowly build up to 100 straight pushups over six weeks. We’ve been doing that, and it’s hard, but it’s super satisfying.

Wow. My comp just kind of got up and started paying, so I guess that means we’re leaving. And we probably should, since we now have almost no time left in P-Day. Thanks again for all of your support and emails and such! I quite enjoyed all of them. I love you all!

Elder David Arrington

PS: I definitely didn’t know the twins got their mission calls. Congratulate them for me. And let me know what language they speak there.

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