Dec 6th, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

So another great and crazy week. This last Tuesday, the APs, secretaries and we had to prepare everything for ¨concilio¨ which is the once a month meeting of zone leaders to help imrpove the mission and that was nuts. A former secretary came as a zone leader so he had a license to drive and wanted to pick up the food. So, for the third time in three weeks, there was another crash! Now my companion crashed, President has crashed and a zone leader has crashed in the past three weeks. I am one of the only ones that hasn´t crashed yet and I drive the most. That kind of makes me prideful, humbling, and just weird at the same time. Kind of cool to see how my past skills have helped me here!

To add to that, we have a huge problem with water and light bills getting here on time because missionaries always forget and then the companies cut the water and electricity. That is literally a weekly if not daily occurance. So with help of my companion, and a senior missionary, I have tooken the initiative to change the whole system of paying the light and water bills, and my past computer knowledge is becoming a huge help in that. That is super super great to feel I am actually making a difference here in the offices. We have also changed a lot with the way we manage cell phones, thanks to our initiative, and still in process of changing the way we pay rent but we should be spending a lot less money pretty soon which is so great to think about. We have already gone over our budget for this year so we will see if we can´t change that for this next year. 

Another absolutely crazy thing is now I am responsibilities for the mission van since I am one of two missionaries who can drive it. So when I looked around in it, I saw the last time it had a oil check was about 1.5 years ago. But worse is it has gone 15,000 kilometers on this oil and supposed to only go 5,000. That is crazy it hasn´t exploded yet. Everyone got mad at me and my companion but we turned in the van right away which left us without a car but it was in bad shape when I started driving. One light doesn´t work, the right sliding door doesn´t work, the air conditioning doesn´t work which is killer right now with summer cooking us, there is really weird noises, and it has a bit of damage from the 2 accidents it has had recently. Kind of sad seeing how badly treated this van is. It will be even more sad seeing how much it will be in total when it is fixed. Sad to see church funds used badly but we will see what can we do to fix things! I am super excited to do my best to make a difference here. When I was first called to this assignment, I figured there was a mistake and I wasn´t fit for this but now I feel I am fulfilling my calling as best I can and will be able to help this mission. 

Overall it has been a very exciting week and even better because I also made the effort with my companion to leave and teach at night. Last change we couldn´t at all, but we changed responsibilities and I made it a goal to make time for proselyting and we are doing it. It is extremely hot and sweaty and we didn´t have too much success but we are leaving to work still even though we have so many respnsabilities. This week, we had a couple days where we started working at 8:00 AM and stopped at 12:00 at night to finish for deadlines. I am beyond exhausted but love being so busy and doing so many things. I hope we continue have great success and things start going a bit more smoothly, but we will see! Here is a couple awesome photos from this week and hope you all enjoy them!

I love you guys and hope all is well and are having a great christmas season. Hope you all share about the new initative from the church about ¨He is the gift¨. The church made an incredible video and it is a great time to share the gospel. I hope you all can have great spiritual experiences sharing it and remember the purpose of Christmas. Although this is such a weird Christmas here in South America. Instead of sledding and snow, it is a constant sauna. It even smells like one, and I am not exaggerating! 

Elder Moss