Hello everyone! So, this week I worked like normal I would
say. It was week three of the transfer and week three is always the slow
week. The transfer stuff from last transfer is all done and the stuff for
next transfer doesn’t need to be started yet. Some of you might be
saying, “Well you could just do it anyway if you don’t have anything to do.” But
this kind of thinking is not logical because then I wouldn’t have anything to
do in week four. It is a very measured type of thing. There is a
season for everything. So this week I have been mostly having long
discussions with Elder and Sister Hawkins to make sure they understand
everything and to answer their questions. Sister Hawkins would rather I just be
able to tell them everything they are going to do in detailed procedure lists
but that isn’t really possible in the type of work I do. Though I have
written some procedures (reminding me of my seventh grade science class when we
would write procedures for everything, and then usually not follow them; but at
least we wrote them) about some things like how to navigate the hard drive to
find all the stuff she is going to need. There is just a lot of stuff I ended
up doing that I just had to learn how to do on the fly. Sometimes, she
will ask me how to do something and I will have no idea but I will go there and
just figure it out. She will then say that she didn’t know how to do that.
I will remind her that I didn’t either. I guess that seems a lot like
bragging, but that is probably the thing that I am most proud of that I learned
in the office. I learned how to learn how to do new things. That means I
am already better than a computer because computers can’t do that. Perhaps
someone will tell you that their computer program can but they are lying. I
believe that it is a fundamentally impossible thing for computers to do.
However, that is neither here or there.
The other thing that changed about me in the office (and I guess
on my mission overall) is that I actually like talking to people now. I
went and got my haircut and I actually preferred talking to the barber to not
(by the way, barbers are way better here). As Secretary, I actually am
constantly telling everyone to call me, not to avoid calling me.
Communication is actually really important.
There was also a cool miracle that happened. We went to
visit a recent convert and she was pretty down. We just kind of were talking to
her and one of the things she was down about was that her camera was broken and
she couldn’t see the pictures nor take more. My companion, Elder Kimura,
offered to try to fix it so she went and got it. He messed around with it
for about 30 seconds and ended up fixing it. She was very happy but what
she didn’t tell us until later was that she had been about ready to decide that
she wasn’t coming to church anymore because of all the bad and annoying stuff
that was happening with her, including that her camera wasn’t working.
The day before we came there, she had said a prayer and told God that she
wasn’t going back to church. Then she saw her camera and added that she
would go back to church if her camera started working again. The next day
Elder Kimura fixed it. This is even more amazing because Elder Kimura
breaks everything! He almost broke the office at least three times and he
accidentally wiped his last companion’s external hard drive (which he was able
to restore at some large cost), so it really was a miracle!
I guess I will end with that and with a picture of my district
with some visitors (a zone leader and an assistant, there are really only three
elders in the actual district) I love you all!
Elder Russell
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