November 6, 2009
Hey hey hey:
Say goodbye to Elder Royal, financial secretary. My days as the mission money man are officially over! We had a good run. So, here’s how everything went down. This last week was as busy as ever. It was the last week of this cambio, and we hit transfers this coming Tuesday. Monday was a day of zone counsel – so that kept us busy most of the day. I started feeling nervous on Monday, just had a feeling that I had a change coming up. President Chipman likes to do things differently than President Solis. I figured that I would be here in the office during an entire cambio with the new secretary to train him (which is how I was trained), but that isn’t how things are gonna happen this time around. President Chipman told me Tuesday morning that I would be going back to the field next week. We discussed how that would be possible – and the only way is to have me stay here in Piura to work and come in on probably a daily basis to make sure that the new secretary is getting along fine and understanding it all. He didn’t tell me exactly what I would be doing or where I would be going, but I found out later that night that I am going to be a zone leader here in Piura Central So that kinda freaked me out. It is not something that I feel at all ready for at all. Life is gonna be nuts!
Now, I wasn’t supposed to find out about the details of this new change until later in the week. But, circumstances got the information to me earlier than planned. It was kind of funny. I went to the mission home with Elder Velez de Villa and another elder who was going home the following morning, and was getting interviewed by President. He called us in and asked him to accompany him in giving a blessing for the other missionary. That was a very cool experience to be side by side with President Chipman as he gave a blessing. And really, while that should have been the highlight of the night, I realized at the end of the blessing that I was in the office with the “wall of missionaries” displaying all the changes for the upcoming cambios. I looked at the board and started looking for my change. I found it and then Elder Velez de Villa yelled: “Elder Royal! You can’t see the board!” Too late! (What did Elder Velez de Villa mean? Of course I could see the board. It was right there in front of me.) So that’s how I found out my next challenge in mission life.
This entire week I have been trying to get myself ready for change. I have never been great with change. Ím freaked out to be a zone leader, but it will be a good experience, and it will be good to get back to the field and get working. Apart from that, the thought of how I am going to train the new secretary is interesting, too. I will be really close to the office, the Piura Central Zone – and I think I will be coming in every morning of this change to train him and help him get used to it. Ya know, it was always a joke when I got to the office that I would leave and go to Piura Central - just because now I will have been in the three zones here in Piura, thus far living and working my entire mission in about a 12 kilometer radius. How many miles is that? It’s okay. I love Piura.
So ends Elder Royal’s tiempo as the financial secretary. After five transfers of receiving angry, whinny phone calls, dealing with all kinds of problems, I will be leaving to be a zone leader – and will probably still get angry, whinny phone calls. Dang. It just never ends. But that’s fine with me. But we are opening up a new chapter here, as the mission continues to get more and more interesting. I had a love/hate relationship with my office responsibilities, but I really enjoyed my time here in the office. There are some extra high quality missionaries here right now and I loved being among them. So while I see some personal struggles down the road, as change (at least for me) can be pretty difficult at times, I don’t feel as concerned with my personal success as I do with the success of our zone now, and I want to be able to help the missionaries by the example that I set for them. By the way, my new comp is Elder Guerra. He is from Peru - not sure exactly where yet - and has been out 19 months. Elder Guerra has been serving as zone leader over the Piura Central Zone for the past two cambios, so I am very glad to be assigned to someone with that kind of experience. So I will be here in Piura until at least December 23rd.
By the way, how was Halloween? It gets celebrated here. Lots of people, pretty good decorations, somewhat similar to an American Halloween. We attended a baptism last Saturday and they asked us to play a song. So, Elder Escobar and I left (because they asked us just as it started) to get my guitar. We thought of something we could do and then left to play the song after half practicing it once. We played Families Can Be Together Forever with a nice guitar part that Elder Escobar made up. It actually went pretty well for winging it again. Only problem with that, when we wing it we are more hesitant to sing/play loud and I’m not sure how well it gets heard. But, we received compliments later, so I guess it was fine. But, I love the fact that we can have guitars. I think that is the case because there are so few pianos here. I wish there were more pianos. It would be nice to be able to practice but there are like three in the whole city. No joke. They are hard to find and I hate playing keyboards - but even those are hard to come by.
Sorry I feel like this is kind of a boring weekly report. My Prep-day will change back to Monday, but you won’t be hearing from me until the 16th I guess, because I won’t be writing again in two days. You can start using Dear Elder and stuff again I guess because I won’t be here to check the email whenever. Quick thought on that, Dad, with the Dear Elder letters. If you could mark them with page numbers that would be great, because I get them all out of order and when you send me a huge letter that takes like 4 or 5 pages, it’s hard to piece it together sometimes...so just a little reference at the top to help me out. Um, yeah, and we will go from there.
I'm really excited for what the future my hold for me here in the mission. Its cool to be getting back to the field. I loved the office, I must say, and I will miss it. I love being a missionary, love the experiences and challenges that come along with it, and I love the missionaries. Almost all of them :] I think there are a few that will be glad to hear that I will no longer be the financial secretary. I was pretty hard core and some people are just not down with that. Haha. But, like father like son, and I shall teach the new secretary the strict financial law and how not to get taken advantage of by people. Love it. I grew a lot in the past seven months. This job really taught me a lot. Okay, I’m out for realz. Thank you everyone for your support, love and prayers – I might need even more pretty soon here. The Church is absolutely, positively, most definitely wonderful, glorious and true!
Love, Elder Royal
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