Soooo, it happened. We officially have a new mission president, President Chase.
He is so awesome. I know that I say that everyone is awesome, but he is super awesome!
I´ll try to walk you through it...
So, there we are, having our last dinner with President and Hermana Bowler, it was a very good day, but very sad. It was obviously hard to say goodbye, but their time has come to end serving their mission. We didn’t know what was coming of course. But we always remembered this, we knew for a FACT that President Bowler has been called to be our mission president during this time of this mission, and if we believe that, we must also know that President Chase has been called by revelation to be here at thisss time. And so that gave us confort. You guys cannot imagine the things that President Bowler has done for this mission in the past 2 years. This mission is completely different to the way that it used to be, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! And we were/ are excited to see what comes next, what the next step is.
And so we say goodbye to them on Friday night, and we go home.
The next day comes around and we wake up ready for action! We know that finally, after all of these days and weeks of continuous preparation, the day has finally come. We go to the office to prepare a few more things, while the Bowlers are picking up the Chases.
And then we receive a message:
So there we are at the chapel/office, anxiously looking out the windows for about 30 minutes straight waiting for them to show up
here we were, ANXIOUSLY waiting for their arrival... we took shifts to stand guard haha
Then a vehicle came into the parking lot and we were all freaking out! Once we were in our positions, we realized something..... they werent President and Sister Chase!!
At first we thought it was them, until we saw the old guy with the cane. Then we said, there is no way!! haha
And finally they come.
And we say our ´Hi´s and our ´Hola´s and we realize how awesome he is! He has a lot of energy, has great Spanish, and is willing to work! The next day we take them to church, but they do not know how to get to church! So we swing by their house and pick them up and go to their church. (So we didn’t go to our own ward this week, all of the members think we are inactive because we are barely in our area now and didn’t go to church, oh well! Haha) After the sacrament meeting we go to office to have at least a little meeting on how some emergency things that we had to take care of soon… 5 hours later we leave the office! Haha (and it was fast Sunday…) But that’s okay, we were carried away talking about the mission, everythingggg about the mission. The next day we had a big office meeting and we each went over our roles and stuff just so that we can get rolling. Its really funny and interesting for us some of the things that have been happening. Of course we have a new mission president and so that means lots of changes! Well, what I like about President Chase is that he is trying to do it in a very smart way. And you know what is really interesting…. What he is planning for the future, we have already started. For a lot of things. While I´ve been here in the office, ive made a lot of changes in the mission with my companions. For example, usually we have a verification in the Leaders Council, and in that the Aps usually go up and show the leaders how the mission did, we put up a graph of how we did and say a couple stuff, ask what the zone leaders and district leaders think and that’s it. And then we say, see ya next month, hopefully it goes up! Well, we decided to change that up. We made it more specific and had the people more involved. They were shocked when we had them stand up and go into groups depending on the regions of the mission that they were in and discuss together how they did and what they can do better, as well as putting goals together and working together. Which we will verify in the next consejo de lideres. We have also had the idea that we wanted to have the Leader´s Council be more of a leader, and not a smaller zone conference. (There was usually no change.) And so I did some research, and it shouldn’t be that way. It should be more of a council in which everybody talks and we discuss how we´ve been doing and how we are going to progress. So those are just some things. And now, imagine a new mission president showing up to your mission who LITERALLY has the same ideas that we do. It was insane. He would mention some things or ideas that he has, and then my companion and I would look at each other, and say Wow! We were actually thinking that earlier this month, we even taught a class about exactly what you said. We´ve had many experiences like these that have really helped us realize that President Chase has been called at THIS time of the mission. He is ready, and so are we, to help this mission go to the next level. The foundation is set, and we are going to use that foundation to go another level.
Anyway, where were we? Monday right? So we had to take him to a couple places to get him well situated here in the country, to the bank, and show him around. Towards the evening, we went to Pricesmart (which is the equivalent to Costco) and helped him sent up the membership card and he did some shopping.
We had to walk through and tell them, “don’t buy those, these are good, never buy those,
these are only okay if…, yes those are okay, I don’t even know what these are!”
Then we went to a restaurant later that night, and were waiting for our food, and during this time, we are of course telling them about the culture here, what to and not to do here, what happens here, and what is normal. Our food arrives, and almost immediately BOOM! The light goes out… they just kind of look at us (I think, I couldn’t see) and say “Im guessing this is normal”… the response of course was, Yes. It was a lot of fun the first few days showing them around. I felt like a parent.
We were really nervous the first time we gave them permission to go the grocery store ON THEIR OWN! Ahhh!! But they did good, they catch on really fast!
So, this week we had two zone conferences, the first one was on Wednesday for the city, and Friday for the south. So we had to drive down to the South on Thursday and stay the night, have zone conference, and then come back on Saturday (a couple hours ago).
Since we couldn't leave them alone, we had to stay at the hotel as well! It was awesome! #HotelRivera
The really interesting thing is that President Chase is a really hands-on type of guy. He had us set up divisions to go out with the missionaries after the conferences! He wanted to go out there and meet the people! And meet the missionaries! He is ready to work! The zone conferences went great! All of the other missionaries finally met him and it was a lot of fun. By the feedback from the missionaries they really liked our class. And I loved it too! We felt that we had to teach on a class called “Conforme A Vuestra Fe”, which is based on Matthew 9 and the importance of setting goals. We went over all of the different types of goals in life, in the mission, and what happens without goals. It was really funny because we all obviously know what a goal is, and I know that at first the missionaries were saying in their heads “We already know these things”, but then, we told them that, we knew these things were basic, and then we asked them to raise their hands if they have set goals as a zone. No one raised their hands. If they have set goals as a district. A few hands were raised. If they have goals as a companionship. A few more hands. If they have personal goals, More hands, but no where close to the amount that we should have. It was an eyeopener for the mission. If we want to progress and meet the monthly goal each month (Cada Misionero, Cada Mes) we must start small, and set and reach our goals. Like ive mentioned before a few weeks ago, that I used to listen to motivational speeches to get me through really tough times in my life (Like wrestling season). And I´ve always had the goal to help others reach their dreams as well. Well, once again, I was able to do this. One of my favorite speeches ever is by Les Brown called “Believe motivational speech” ive not mistaken. And we can see that as we used the same example in our conference, the missionaries were very motivated. This is somewhat what we shared:
Before 1954, there was a common believe, a universal believe, that the human man cannot run a mile in less than 4 minutes. It was impossible. Many of tried, and all have failed. The people believe that is the way it is, and that is the way that it will always be, it will never change. Until, Roger Bannister came along, and he broke that 4 minute mile. Since that time, over TWENTY THOUSAND people have broke that record, including highschool students. What changed? They knew that it had been done, and because it had been done, there was a new believe about that unbreakable mile. When the people got on the track they realized that someone out there reached their goal/dream, why cant you? We have goals in the mission that seem unreachable, but “according to our faith, it shall be done unto us”, we can reach them if we have faith and we do our part and work hard. Here are some pictures of the presentation:
When we went to the south we kept the tradition of going to get frozen yogurt!
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