The Last Week of March

March marks the end of our first full month in the mission. I was "snowed" under at the office, lots of baptisms to record. We had zone leader council on Friday and got to meet many of the leaders of the mission. I told the zone leaders that new converts aren't members of the church until I enter them in the computer and send the record to Salt Lake. I explained that the new convert will not be on the ward list, not be assigned home or visiting teachers, be given callings, advance in the priesthood and cannot go to the temple without being on the records of the church. They got the idea that the baptism record is an important piece of paper and that they need to get it to the office right away. Most of the baptism records come by fax with the original following in a week or so. I will have a few days at the begining of next week to finish entering records for March. It will depend on whether they come or not. Every day I enter all that I have. On Monday this week I did leave some for the next day but that is very unusual.

After the zone leader conference and a few hours at the office, we went to a baptism in the San Fernando branch. Since Elder Ramirez was back in Cali from Medellin for the zone leader conference he was able to baptize Nelly. She has been to church several times and her son was baptized in the "Nevada" last week. She will not be confirmed until next week because of General Conference.

This morning we went to the San Fernando branch to help clean the chapel. We thought the cleaning started at 8:00 am but when we got there they were just starting the last class of a 12 week course for leaders and teachers. So we went to the class, had some Colombian hot chocolate and bread and then cleaned the building. We washed windows. We got home about 10:40 and the conference broadcast started at 11:00. We walked in during the opening song.
We spent the rest of the day at the mission home with the Princes and Torgersons. We watched conference in English. What a spiritual feast!