Win. win. win.

How did he do that with his tie??

Elders Stott, Lobo, and Baldwin reunited.

Trying to figure out what to do with a starfruit.

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy everybody,

It has been a ridiculously long week.

Thanks for the updates on everybody. I was wondering how long it would take Preston to start getting goony. Well, he’s been goony for a long time, just not verbally. Thanks for the pictures from Alexander’s baptism, too! I’m glad to see the tie I sent to Dad actually made it there. I’ll have to send some more cool stuff for Christmas etc. I might just do a big box of stuff and cover everybody’s birthdays from November through February. It takes quite a bit of thinking ahead to get a package done here.

As for birthday stuff, don’t worry too much about it. You already had to go through getting stuff for a missionary who didn’t have all the shirts, ties, etc, but now that I have all that, it’s down to things like replacement razor blades and pen refills. So… yeah. Don’t worry too much about it. I liked Mom’s idea of depositing money in my account and then having me buy something I want sent home. Anything I could possibly want from the USA can’t be bought, so I figure any money would probably be better spent here.

I’m going to go through the week, because it was long, and I’m not really sure what else I have to write about.

So last week, we pretty much hung around for P-Day. That night, we had a lesson with an inactive member, Deco, who is really cool but works Saturday nights through Sunday mornings, all the way into church. After that, we had to get the pizza ordered for the Zone Leader Conference while going to pick up the other elders from Baixa (in Lisbon).

The next day, we had to let the zone leaders from the Azores and Algarve (including ELDER STOTT) and the AP’s shower before us, so we got downstairs late again, and then we had to go get ice cream and pizza, set it all up, and then clean up. That afternoon and evening, we got everything taken care of for area changes in the mission and all the changes in the houses, along with accounting for President’s purchasing card.

Friday, more office work, and then there was a wedding reception for Florina, an investigator of our zone leaders, who got married so she could be baptized. They’re from Romania, and they don’t really speak much Portuguese.

Saturday morning we painted the inside of a prédio for a service project with the elders quorum president. Then they fed us lunch, and they made us eat soooooo much. I don’t know exactly what it was (some kind of mashed-potato-like stuff and beef/chouriço) but we ate a ton and I felt sick afterwards. I’m pretty sure that’s against the Word of Wisdom. That night, there was the baptism of Florina, and it was really cool. Her husband, who has been a member for five years, baptized her.

Church on Sunday was good, and it really helped me start to figure out a lot of things that have been bothering me since getting in the office, which I will explain in a second. We talked a lot about service and the ways God answers prayers. After that, we had lunch at família Rau’s house, a Brazilian family that has four kids, Wendy is 15, Willian is 18, Wiwian (pronounced like “Vivian”) is early 20’s, and Wania (“Vanya”) is in her mid 20’s. They’re so much fun. They give ridiculous nicknames to all the missionaries that come. For example, Elder Croshaw is Pansy. And somehow I already got one: Fifi, which pretty much means “tattle tale.” Usually it takes a few weeks for elders to get nicknames, so apparently I should be proud of that.

Carla didn’t make it to church on Sunday! We need to get over there and explain the whole Sabbath Day commandment a little more clearly.

On Monday, President was finally in the office, so we got a ton of stuff signed off, transactions authorized, bills paid, landlords paid, reimbursements approved, month-end reports sent, and a bunch of other random stuff.

Yesterday was the Lisboa/Alverca/Sintra/Santarém zone conference (the one I used to go to because I was in the Sintra zone). We had to get everything ready that morning to get handed out after zone conference, and then we had to leave early to go get the pizza and ice cream for all 56 people.

And this is kind of where I start my rant.

Before being a missionary, I had missionaries on a pedestal. They set aside everything for two years to go serve the Lord. They kept themselves worthy, they studied like crazy, and they always had something awesome to say about any Gospel topic. When I got in the MTC and had to live with other missionaries, that image was lowered a little bit, but it was OK – they’re real people too. When I got to Portugal and started getting all the trainings from the financial and executive secretaries about how we needed to be the start of fixing the problems in the mission with money and baptismal forms, I couldn’t believe that missionaries would abuse the Lord’s money or not fill out a baptismal form. But the AP’s and the secretaries were so cool that the image in my head of the missionaries didn’t fall that much. Then I got my trainer, Elder Stott, who is awesome, but when we were with some of the other missionaries who didn’t really seem to try all that hard to do much of anything, I was shocked, yet again.

And now, as a financial secretary, I see a lot of the worst of the mission. We see all the medical bills (most of which result because of negligence), we see the abuse of cell phones, we see abuse of missionary support money, etc. We don’t deal with a lot of positive things – it’s not really our job. We pay for damages to apartments, we deal with the landlords when the missionaries won’t be responsible (such as getting yelled at for all the holes in the wall, etc.) and we just recently received the responsibility of inspecting new houses because of a few horrible choices.

Yesterday, at zone conference, we were working like crazy to get the pizza there on time and set up, and it seems like the whole Christlike attribute idea was on hold. It’s a lot like parking on the streets here: if you have your hazard lights on, apparently it means that you are exempt from all traffic laws.

I’m not a demanding person. I’m really easy to please. I never get angry. I’m a really flexible person because of all the bending over backwards I seem to do. I don’t mind it. I would rather help people all the time than keep to myself. But helping people who won’t admit they are being helped is something I can’t stand.

Being in the office has taken out all of the magic of the mission. I see how all the decisions get made, and though I know that the Lord has His hand in everything that has to do with His work, missionaries are not superhuman. We make mistakes. We can be pretty horrible people sometimes.

It’s really good motivation to get all of our work done so we can get out of the office and do work that actually brings happiness. I know that people have to obey the commandments to be happy, and I know I’m not as happy as I should be now because I’m being a dork and I’m just working – not serving. I’ve got to figure out what I’m working for here in the office. I’ll be here probably for six months – longer than I worked at StowAway2. I know at that job I had a ton of experiences that helped me, and that being like this in the first couple weeks is a reasonable start for an office environment. I know the Atonement can enable me to overcome all the negativity that is inevitably attached to anything worldly (like money, which is all we do). I know that living the Gospel is the ONLY way people can be truly happy.

I love you all and I hope everything goes well in this next week! I know your prayers really do affect the outcome of what you pray for.

Elder Lobo