Well, another week has gone by and we are still here. It has been an up and down week for us. We finished moving in to our new office at the newly remodeled stake center. Our new office is wonderful. It is nice and clean and the air conditioning works wonderfully. The chapel, cultural hall, stake presindent's office, high council room and our office are the areas that have air conditioning. Because we are there most of the time during the day when the other areas are not available, our office is very popular.
We discovered as we moved all of the supplies from the old office, that we had a lot of extra student manuals, some were 7-8 years old. They took up a lot of space in our storage room, so we let the members have any of the excess manuals that they wanted. We felt it was better to let them have them instead of being stored in a closet some place. There is only one problem with the new office; we do not have internet, yet. The telephone company did not reserve a slot for the building while it was being remodeled, and they now say they are at capacity and may not have one for a while. It will really hamper us if we can't get it soon.
There was an open house for the renovated stake center that went from Tuesday to Saturday. The dedication was Saturday evening. We could not be there, because we were in Vitoria da Conquista, a city about 150 miles away. Before the stake here in Itabuna received the date for the dedication, we had made plans for the training and a super saturday event in Vitoria. We went to Vitoria on Friday afternoon. That night, we treated the couple who had rescued us the previous month to dinner. The next morning we went to the super saturday event for seminary. The young people had a good time. That aternoon we gave a training lesson for teachers, then that night we were at an institute event. In all it was a busy day.
On Sunday we spoke in 2 sacrament meetings and then that evening, we presented a fireside about the Perpetual Education Fund to about 45 -50 people. This is probably one of the more difficuly parts of our job, because we have to learn how the whole system works, be able to explain it to members, interview those who are interested, make sure all the paper work is filled out correctly, make sure the Bishops and Stake Presidents understand their roles, make sure a repayment process is in place and then follow up to make sure those who received help are doing well in school. On top of this, it has to be in Portuguese. I am learning a great deal of new vocabulary.
When we came back today, we had a zone conference with the missionaries and the mission president, President Vecchi. He is a very kind and understanding man. The missionaries seem to really love him. We also found out that we still do not have internet. There are still problems to be solved, but we know the Lord will bless us as we strive to do our part. It is good to know the Gospel is true.