My Brother is Amazing

Pizzurno, the road I live on. You can actually find it on Mapquest (although google maps probably works better in this area).

Here's my house. It's big. (Side note from Lisa - The basket on top of a pole in the middle of the picture is for trash. They have it elevated like that so the dogs don't get into it. They had those in Uruguay too.

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your e-mails!!! Well, let's just say this was a pretty interesting week as far as weeks go. It all started when President came over to talk to me and asked to meet with me for a moment. It turns out he had a meeting coming up in which he had to present a few graphs in front of 8 Stake Presidents, 1 District President, an Area Authority, and one of the Church's regional doctors. As soon as I could, I got all the graphs ready using the numbers of baptisms from last year as well as October and November's numbers. The graphs were meant to show progress towards a goal set by the Area Presidency, basically asking each stake and district to double baptisms. The letter quoted President Hinckley and said "we have not been heeding this prophetic council in our stakes or in this area." The Area Presidency will have to report to Elder Richard G. Scott in April 2009 about how everything is going on reaching the goal. Needless to say everyone is feeling the pressure. Well I prepared the graphs so they could be edited to follow the progress from here on out until we reach the goal in the stakes and in the mission. President had me go over to his house from the offices (I don't know if I mentioned this before but the mission president's home is a good distance away from the offices where we work) in order to show him and explain all the graphs I made. After explaining it for a while and showing all the ways to present the graphs President said, "I have an idea, you could explain the graphs, Elder Williams." Needless to say I was taken a little aback by his request. I hadn't imagined being in front of an Area authority and all those stake presidents presenting the numbers. Well, that was Saturday afternoon. The meeting was Sunday morning. I've definately had better nights of sleep before in my life. I did some minor tweaking to the graphs and everything and even printed out handouts for everyone in attendance and then got ready for the meeting and made sure my suit was clean. I woke up extra early to prepare everything and to get ready and at 8:30 or so President Lindahl picked me up for the meeting. President drove me and Doctor Cook to Guaymallén where the meeting was being held and asked me more or less how to get to the Guaymallén chapel. To make a long story short, we got a little lost on the way but we found some members on their way to church and they gave us directions to the chapel. Fortunately we still got there early so we didn't have too much of a problem. When we got there we shook hands with all the leaders there and found our seats in the high council room as the meeting was about to start. They talked about various subjects such as helping the wards and taking care of the chapels. When it came time for President to present his part of the meeting he turned the time over to me and I plugged in my flash drive to start the presentation. One of the stake presidents was kind enough to offer to pass out my stake president's handouts (since I didn't know who anyone was) and I started with the first graph which was of the mission as a whole. I then went stake by stake to show how many people had been baptized and how many people we would need to reach our goal for the year (October to September of next year). I showed the monthly average and pointed out that the Excel graphs I made were editable so they could track their own progress and see how things were going. They asked me to e-mail the graphs to each of them so they could use them and I could e-mail the monthly numbers so they could follow along. I was a little nervous but everyone was very nice and there weren't any major problems. Afterwards I sat down and just listened for the rest of the meeting since there wasn't anything for me to participate in as they were discussing addiction recuperation programs. Afterwards I shook everyone's hand and President and I had to leave since my companion, Elder Miles, was basically doing divisions with one of the ward members while I was gone. One of the stake presidents had brought a GPS for President that guided us back home so we could pick up Elder Miles and go to lunch at a member's house. I had to switch the GPS from Spanish to English (and the voice from British to American English) so President could understand it easier but it worked really well for being in Argentina with a lot of small streets most map services wouldn't find. Fortunately the stake president who gave President Lindahl the GPS had loaded all of the chapels in the mission as well as President's house and the mission offices. If I'm ever rich and famous, I'll get a GPS :) . That was basically the big highlight of the week. It was a really amazing experience because I really got to challenge myself. I can't think of too many times in which I could prepare for a presentation like that. I am pretty glad it's over though. Hopefully the graphs will help the leaders of the church in our mission see their progress towards the area's goals and give that extra bit of work we need in the mission. It was a really fun project though (just the presenting it part freaked me out a bit).

Oh, and I do remember Elder Barrow from the MTC! He wasn't in my zone but he was on the same floor in the MTC classrooms and our teachers would have us switch classrooms and teach each other. His teacher in the MTC sung in the April General Conference while we were at the MTC so that was pretty cool. Tell him hi for me! Tell him he only has to baptize all of Southern California (that's not too much to ask is it?). I'm sending a few pictures too and they're of outside! You'll get to see a little of what I see everyday. I love you all and I can't wait to hear from everybody again!!! I love you!!! Bye!!!

Love,

Elder Williams

P.S. Hermana Lindahl's Razor cell phone broke...mostly broke so she's having me fix it and I found out you could use it as a cellular fax machine...that was interesting