News from Sister Dannee E. Clay: Elder Clay turns 21-Happy Birthday!

I love my family, día 578, Week 83, 19 Months, 21 years,

Every week is different. I am getting more and more used to the office lifestyle and all of the things that I have to be juggling. It is quite the load. We're supposed to help/manage the office Elders, take care of whatever Presidente asks us including preparing presentations, giving him drafts of proposed changes in the mission, go run errands, and we have our own area and our own proseliting to be doing as well. We're expected to have success in all areas all at once too! This week Presidente worked us like dogs.

Sunday was a long day. I finally feel as though I have a pretty firm grasp of the area and that I am getting to know the important people. It's taken a bit longer than usual for the limited amount of time that we are in the area. After church we leave our suit jackets (and suit pants) in the house of the other Elders in the area and then go to eat. In the afternoon we visited some recent converts and members that usually help. We talked to people in the street and put some appointments for the future. One of the great things about this ward is that the members give us dinner every night. One of the projects that we've started on is going through the 655 person ward list to determine who's moved, who's dead, and who's less active. That's going to take a bit of time. During one of our important visits we got a call from the secretary of the mission who'd been borrowing our truck for the weekend. He wanted us to drive him back to the office so that we oculd get the truck and he could get his car. We were a bit bugged because he could have just parked the truck and driven us the keys, but whatever.

Desk in Mission office

Monday was a fun, fun, day. After getting all of the mission's dats put into the spreadsheet we started preparations for the dinner in the night that we were bringing to Presidente's house. Elder Moore and I had a meeting with Presidente. We talked about lots of things. It was funny to watch how the conversation changed as we were interrupted. We talked about the Mission's baptisms for the year, goals for 2013, plans for 2013 and also we talked about some potentially terrible situations going on with some sinful missionaries. He asked us to work on a Misison plan for our mission. I'll send it along to you once it's 100% complete. I did it in English and Spanish. Thursday we had ZL Consejo and we made some changes and I haven't updated it but I'll get that to you soon. After the meeting we started cooking stuff up in the office. Presidente also told us that as we'd requested and he wanted, he hadn't told his wife that we were coming over with dinner and he wanted to keep it that way, so instead of cooking at his house we went to the Uyuca Stake Center (my old chapel) to make the pies. In the end we baked 7 chicken pot pies. They were amazing. It was the first time that the other missionaries and Presidente and Sister Hernandez and their family had ever had it. We were at Presidente's house until almost 01:00 in the morning.

Tuesday it was back to work. We had to get things ready for Thursday's ZL consejo. Tuesday was one of the best days for work because (as we should) we were out of the office by 15:00 to be working in our area. For the first time in a long time we had correclación with our ward mission leader. Now, he hasn't come out to work with us yet (since I've been here), but step by step. I feel like I'm getting a good feel for the area. I don't want to slow down the pace that I had in Las Minas so things for the APs in this ward will improve.

Wednesday was a Presidente day. In the morning we got to the office early to be able to work on several projects. We didn't have too good of an idea of what we were gong to do in the day because there were a few final interviews for 2 sisters and one Elder who went home on Thursday. Presidente put the time for the interviews at 15:00, the time when we're supposed to be leaving. So just in case we'd made plans for the day and finished up our projects for the day to be out by 15:00 but when Presidente came in he told us to stay and to stay for the dinner later that night too. We were fine with that! So we continued with projects while waiting for the interviews to get finished. The Elder who went home happened to be a computer expert so we had him work a bit on the computers of the office. The interviews finished at like 18:30. We dropped suitcases off at our house, put an order in McDonald's for Thursday morning's 32 plates of food for the consejo. We then were invited by Presidente to go to Ruby Tuesday's. It was amazingly rich food. Wow. The coolest part of the night was going to Presidente's house afterwards to have the departure devotional for those three missionaries. Those sisters came to Honduras with my group of missionaries so they're special to us and it was weird to see them go. The devotional was special. Both Monday night with New Years and with Wednesday night and the devotional it was great to be able to listen to Presidente and Hermana's counsels and advice. We didn't leave their house until 23:30. We had to quickly run to one of the ZL's houses to pick something up for one of those sisters. We got to bed by 0:30. It was a short night of sleep because we had to take the sisters to the airport early.

Thursday we were up by 04:00. The sisters were in the airport and we were back at the office to get the things printed and copied for the consejo by 06:40. We dropped off the secretary who came with us at the house, picked up the breakfast from McDonald's and then went back to the office to open up for the cleaning lady. We got back to Presidente's house and ate breakfast and then started the ZL Consejo. It was a long morning! The consejo was great. It was different being their as AP. After the consejo we had to go play referee at the office and attend to all of the needy ZL's. We did finally get back to our area and had an interesting lesson. We contacted Glenda in the street on Tuesday and she'd told us to come back on Thursday. When we got there it was just her hubsand who was telling us that we'd talked to her the week before , that she'd been out ot town for a long while, etc. So intead of just blowing up on him like I wanted to (for lying) I decided to be nice and we actually got in and taught him a bit. He seems to be very receptive to the gospel and we're excited to teach him with his wife. He did say that he know that the best thing that he can do for his family is get them all to a church. By the time the end of the day rolled around we were exhausted.

Friday was a busy we were able to get the truck taken in in the morning for a bit of repair work, then we went to our Taller de Zona with our awesome ZL's (one was in my zone before and the other might be a future roomante (he come home in august)). We went back to the office for a bit (after lunch, of course) then we had to pick up the truck. We were in our area working by 16:00. We were still super tired so as we were going through the ward list with a member it was hard to keep the eyes open. We visited one of our families and I decided I'd been here too long without enough direction towards or away from their baptism so we challenged them. They've been through a lot with the other Elders but they did come to church for the first time on Sunday which was awesome. We also visited another longtime investigator family to see if we could get them to come to church. They said yes, but we'll see.

It was a good week. Elder Moore tells me that before they didn't really plan or study that much so that is going to change starting on Monday. We're going to plan and study in our house (not in the distracting office).