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25 de Abril Bridge in the Fog

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HEY EVERYBODY

I just got back from the most amazing haircut of my life, once again. 10€ for washing my hair before AND after, and he did a perfect job.

Anyway, last week we cleaned the apartment like crazy, and I didn’t really take any pictures during that time.

Attached, however, is a picture from crossing Ponte 25 de Abril on our way to the Zone Conference in Miratejo (Corroios to be exact).

The other picture is one I just took. Crazy.

So I really don’t know what to report this week.

After about 5 weeks or so of Carla not answering the phone and not being home (or not answering the door, because we’re sure somebody was home at least a few times that we passed by), we finally got a hold of her. She still hasn’t been coming to church and hasn’t been keeping commitments. However, she said she has been having a bunch of problems at home and seems to think they correlate pretty well with not going to church and not reading etc. She has arrived at the point where many of us have (repeatedly) that we know what we have to do but ignore it so that we can blame it on something besides ourselves. We can’t do anything for her but keep encouraging her to take actions necessary to qualify for baptism and live a life worthy of the blessings promised to her.

We have a less-active member we have been working with (who has also not been answering calls nor going to church), and we stopped by his house (again) and he wasn’t home (again). We talked to his cousin for a little while, and then we went back up the stairs to leave. But we stopped halfway and thought that there was no reason not to teach him. So we went back and asked him, “So has Deco talked to you much about this church?” He let us in and we ended up teaching a complete lesson about the Restoration. He’s not really interested, and like every other Brazilian in this country he works all the time with crazy hours.

That’s pretty much the only progress we have made as far as the missionary work goes. Last week there was so much to do with zone conferences and visa stuff that we didn’t get out to our area except on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s been pretty hard to deal with. We got a call from a landlord who said that she wasn’t paid for the first month after the elders moved in – two years ago. So I went all over in the old records we keep, and I found a lot of horrible, horrible mistakes. I got really, really frustrated that night. There are a lot of things that frustrate me, but I usually don’t worry about them until I figure them out.

It’s crazy that here in the office it is so much easier and more immediately rewarding to do a bad job than a thorough one. So many people who have come into the office just wanted to learn to drive stick, take time off of missionary work, play around with the computers, call people (we have unlimited cell phone time), take pictures for the Caravela newsletter, drive all over the place on P Day (which was taken away just before I came in), and feel great about themselves.

I realized, whichever night that was, that the better job I try to do, the more frustrated I get, the harder it is, the more I worry about everything I do, and the more nitpicky and annoying I seem all come with trying to do a better job. However, if I do a great job, it will just wither away with the next secretary. After the mission was audited last year and many erroneous practices were corrected, it all reverted to the slacktastic quality just two secretaries down the line. It all settles to the path of least resistance, and that is of poor quality and lots of fun.

I ranted at Elder Christensen (my district leader – I also ranted at the AP’s because they have a big sway on who comes into the office) about this, because he does my “indicações” (a report on how I’m doing, strengths, weaknesses, etc.) and I made him promise that he would write something about how ridiculously concerned I am that this job is treated way too lightly and nobody (nope, not even me) ever really learns how to do it completely right.

I won’t repeat that rant, but I have heard the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” quoted frequently about gaining new leadership positions that you’re not familiar with. It has definitely applied to secretaries in the past.

The bottom line is that I’m doing everything I can to ensure that this job is simplified and is made so easy that it would be a challenge to not do it right. We started outlining every step of everything we do to make it so clear what we do and why we do it all.

It’s been a big struggle for me. When I worked in offices before, I had escapes – even while I was working. Music, breaks, photoshop, email, etc. But there is no escape. I escape the office to go get yelled at or waved off by old Portuguese people. My time is devoted to everything and everybody but myself, and even during lunch and dinner time I would rather spend that time enjoying the company of the other office elders – it takes priority over my “me time.” There is so much I would love to do – and a lot I’m sure I really need to do to stay sane as a human being – but there just is not enough time to do it. I can’t seem to keep myself sane during the office time – President is rarely in the office, and we’re in such a mess with waiting on our new housing contract to be approved by the church office in Germany and with tons of missionaries moving around houses landlords need to get paid so they can get the keys, but they can’t get paid without President’s codes and things, so we are stuck in a mess we can’t pull ourselves out of.

When I used to prioritize my time and efforts, I used to be able to do it by my hourly wage versus how much it would gain for the company. For the job as the financial secretary, however, there is no hourly value of time, so my brain assigns equal value to everything. I know it’s not all equal in value, but I have no reference. So I freak out equally about everything. I’ve said this tons of times before, maybe not in letters but to other people, but I wish I could just turn my brain off sometimes. I can’t just sit back and relax.

It’s funny because all of the stress releases I had before are not allowed now, and I can easily track my increasing amount of stress since entering the MTC. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, but what relieves stress for everybody else in the world doesn’t usually relieve stress for me.

Things that relieve stress for me:
Music, writing (on the computer – I can’t write by hand fast enough), photoshop, photography, piano, guitar, walking around aimlessly at night, etc.

I’m not a huge fan of Mo Tab, though it is good, and most of the music that would do a lot for me does not follow the mission guidelines (focusing my thoughts on the Savior, on the work, etc). We can’t use mission computers for unauthorized purposes, and we can’t write to other people on any other day but P-Day. One hour for email, also, is the exact amount of time so that I hit my writing groove with about 10 minutes left. Always stressful. Photoshop isn’t going to happen. Photography is cool, but it best involves getting far away from just about everything. Can’t play piano except for a few minutes after church, but even then my time would be better spent talking to the members. I’ve forgotten too much of guitar for it to be relaxing. And I can’t walk around by myself aimlessly at night.

In the end, it all comes back to the same fundamental problem, though: creating desire.

When I’m stressed and read the scriptures, I am reading for the sake of reading. I am reading just because I know it’s a good thing to do. My mind isn’t focused. It’s not hugely tranquilized. To reap the blessings of reading the scriptures, I’m pretty sure you have to read for the right reasons. And I’m sure that my stress and everything is because I’m doing everything for not quite the right reason. But how do I change that? I have no idea.

Life goes on.

It’s the kind of thing that I could try to learn to deal with it and possibly conquer it, or I could forget about it and be content with a pretty constant level of craziness. Either way, I come out in the end with a measurable amount of craziness.

I love you all and hope all goes impeccably.

Go BYU.

ELDERLOBO