March 19, 2011

Hola Familia!

Sister Despain, my companion, is working on passing off Spanish so I have to "help her" get back into it so I decided that I am learning it to. Against the rules but gotta love loopholes. Anyway this last week was a blur but the Square is getting busier and the excitement level for conference is starting to build. At Guest Services we are starting to get a ton of phone calls about tickets (come on people; go to your bishop) and we are starting to schedule many tours for Welfare Square and Temple Square. Big tour groups are starting to request tours as well. It is going to be a really busy summer and as I look at the list I have no idea how only 200 Sister Missionaries can handle all of this. The Church has asked us to start helping with Youth Conferences - talk about a headache. President Holmes stopped by our cave... I mean cubicle...I mean office and was looking at our schedule on his IPad. I told him that we needed one of those to do our job better and he ignored me! He was wondering how we are going to get all of the logistics down for the summer. We are going to a staff meeting tomorrow morning and go over new protocols and need-to-know information. We mess up a lot down there but I have learned how to grovel and so I am still alive somehow. The only part of Guest Services that makes life stressful is that we have to baby-sit Sisters aka calling them the morning of tours to make sure that they remember them. Or Sisters decide to take another tour when they KNOW they have a scheduled one. Oh well, that part is out of my hands so I sit back and pass blame to someone else (love it).

Since we are there all day we get to call lots of people or have people call in to meet with missionaries. Then we get to teach them until the missionaries come. We have so little time to actually call them back but we have managed to have one guy meet with missionaries. He is Seventh Day Adventist and when we called him back to address whether-the-Sabbath-is-on- Sunday/Saturday issue he said that he knew the Book of Mormon was true because the missionaries showed him where it was mentioned in the Bible. I asked if he prayed to know if it was true. He just answered well it is in the Bible so it is. Um.... great but BAD. Not the point. He needs a testimony not passiveness. We also have a new investigator who is a little slow. We weren't planning on sending his referral through but he said he was going to save up money to buy clothes for church and so we saw that as a good sign. We taught him how to pray (yes we do pray over the phone and yes it is awkward at first but a mission is one big awkward moment so you just get over it) and it was really neat to hear his sincerity over the phone as he talked, maybe for the first time, to our Heavenly Father.

But annoying people call in ALL the time for prank phone calls. One kid called in saying he was Chinese so he asked for a Chinese speaker. This was his 100th time calling in so we all knew that he was faking it. I had the phone and said, "Hold on, we do have someone who speaks Chinese." *pause* I said, "Ne how, it ban Mormon ging ma" He was silent and then started saying "Ching chang chung chou ting!" Then hung up. We were all dying of laughter. I'm glad I have learned some Chinese; it comes in handy when dealing with annoying 15-year-old boys.

Oh, so we did service yesterday at Heritage Park and guess what we got to do? Inventory for the Gift Shop. I couldn't believe it! I can't get away from doing inventory. This was old school; we had to write everything down! No scanners! Whatever, we revolutionized how they will forever count every ball of chocolate. We just weighed it and then subtracted the jar. We finished in 15 minutes rather than 2 hours. Life was good. But anyway we have lots to do to get ready for Conference and lots of people to talk to! I can't wait. Oh and lucky me - I get to watch General Conference when I have to be in Guest Services! And I get to go to one session... but I kinda don't want to if I get to watch two sessions in my cave. Anyway, I am just thinking. But Sister Despain and I are still working hard and trying to exercise for an hour every day! Until next week!

P.S We got to see the new version of the Joseph Smith movie yesterday! We had a mission meeting at 6:50 a.m.- killer. It is much more missionary friendly and it goes into a lot more details on gospel principles and basics. Can't wait to see if we have more success with it. Also I have a BAPTISM today! Her name is Molly. She is from Maine and I have been working with her for 3 months. She is facing a lot of opposition from her family but she knows that it is true so she is going through with it. Hopefully she can send pictures and then later I can photoshop myself in.