Week 43 Antofagasta

Jan 2, 2016

This past week was one of the craziest weeks of my life. As the "Comisario" of the mission, I have to buy all of the transportation within the mission. So that means that when we have transfers, I have to buy all of the bus passes and coordinate who goes on what bus. It is really difficult because we want to avoid missionaries traveling alone. The good news is, we didn’t have any problems regarding busses. Normally something goes wrong but this time everything went alright. I had to go with Elder Morales to take all of the "dying missionaries" to the airport to go home. Elder Malan was in that group so I got to see him again haha. We had to get up at like 4am to be at the airport. Later that day, we had to get everything prepared for the new missionaries coming in. I am responsible for ordering the food and preparing everything. We had empanadas for when they got here and the following day when they received their trainers and first sectors, we ate pizza. As far as other responsibilities I have.... I make the mission news letter every month, I make all of the memory books for the missionaries leaving, and all of the welcome books for the missionaries arriving. I am in charge of all of the supplies of the mission so like Books of Mormon, pass along cards...etc. I manage all of the numbers in the mission like how many baptisms we have, new investigators...etc. I also have to manage all of the cell phones in the mission. Any references from missionaries that come in, I have to assign them to the designated sector. Basically, the list goes on and keeps getting bigger haha. It is very stressful but I kind of enjoy it. It is very different but I do truly enjoy it. We have time to work in our sectors everyday so its not like we don’t get our time to be normal missionaries or anything. Things are finally starting to settle down now and I’m finishing up the news letter for January. Yesterday we were invited to the mission home to have a BBQ with President Dalton and Sister Dalton. We ate cheese burgers and funeral potatoes! That is definitely a perk to working in the office haha. President shared with us the process of how one is called to serve as a mission president. I now know without a doubt that he has been called of god. He shared many things with us that I had never thought about before. My understanding has changed tremendously. Yesterday we had a lesson with some investigators that aren’t really progressing that much but I had the opportunity to share my testimony and it was amazing. I felt encircled about by the spirit and I had absolutely no trouble saying what I needed to say. I was completely lead by the spirit in that moment. As many missionaries know, the mission is a rollercoaster. One minute you are having an incredible spiritual experience and the next a gay guy in the street is hitting on you hahaha. We were walking and saw a guy sitting down waiting for a bus so we went and talked to him. His first words were "Ill tell you guys right away, I’m gay" and then he said if you guys want to keep talking, awesome, if not... don’t worry. I’m used to it. We continued talking to him and he kept saying how we were super good looking and how can we possibly be single hahaha. It was a super interesting experience. Elder Morales and I are trying to be 100% obedient so that we can find, teach, and baptize. Elder Maki leaves soon and I will be officially done with my training. Christmas was awesome, new years we didn’t do much because we had to be inside our apartment at 10pm. I cannot believe I have almost been out in the mission for almost a year! Time goes so fast in the mission. I know everyone says that but its true. Anyway, that’s the update for now. I love you all and ill talk to you next week!

Elder Spanbauer

(I really didn’t take any photos this week so next week!)