La Oficina

One place that I haven’t talked about yet is the mission office. This is where Chrise and I spend between five and eight hours a day five days a week. With two other senior missionaries we take care of the logistics of the mission, handling finances, immigration, missionary apartments, and a myriad of other responsibilities. Our goal when we arrived was to free all of the young missionaries from the office and within a couple of months we had achieved that goal. Another goal we have is to do everything possible to lessen the load of the mission president and his wife. The president would have to be the judge of whether we have been successful in doing that. I hope we have.

Even though we are working in the office spending a good deal of our time doing things that would not seem to be very spiritual, we have found a great deal of joy in that service. In the office we are able to consecrate our experience and talents acquired over many years in the service of the Lord. It is the center of the mission and we have many opportunities to meet the missionaries and help them. I always try to get up and greet them and make them feel special when they come in the door.

To be honest, I had some misgivings when we first received the call to be office specialists. It didn’t seem like missionary work. But I was wrong. Giving it our best, we have felt the Lord’s approbation, and as I said above, we’ve had a great deal of joy in our service. It confirms something that I have always believed that it doesn’t matter where you serve in the gospel, but how you serve.