Secretarial Duties

 

Heh, tablets are taking over the world. I'm not worried, because I know I'll get one. But for now, I'm stuck with "ancient" desktops. I wonder sometimes just how I'm going to take advantage of all the new tech when I get back. For sure most of my stuff's out of date...but that's alright. My iPod hasn't run out of space yet!

 

But anyway. It's much more difficult not to think about things outside of the mission sometimes, while us secretaries have to handle everything in the world that it interacts with. We go arrange for Subway in meetings (delicious!), we handle the logistics every time people get moved around (transfers being the biggest nightmare of them all), I run frequently to buy things here and there for the office/President. I have to get to know basic geography of Brazil and flight codes, and I now know at least half of the neighborhood names in the mission because I pass references with Google Earth. I like to call it Google Deus sometimes, because with all the info Google's got I can literally walk WITH the missionaries in a virtual environment and point out points of reference, read numbers and names on houses, even grab phone numbers from advertisements. I'm no pro with navigating the mission, but now I feel a lot more secure about getting around in it. I can't remember what it was like to be so unaware of the mission around me, because now I know exactly where every area is located, and who's in it. I sort of memorized everything without really making an effort too. It's kind of...cool.

 

I'm gonna be here for another four months, so I plan on making some organizational changes that will facilitate secretary functions. I'm limited with the technological wizardry I can use, since there's no guarantees of the technological intelligence of the next secretary, but I've always got something to occupy my time. 

 

Right now...I'm just happy for writing so much today. I've had to neglect writing to people because I'm stilling learning to cope with all the secretarial duties, but most of it is down. Now we have time to go out, and to find people who need to be found. We baptized 3 people in the last 3 weeks, and it was a family! We like to joke that despite having WAY less time than everyone else somehow we managed to baptize just as much as the rest of the zone. The assistants have changed the organization a bit too, and for now the entire mission is a little more excited as the Church is changing the monetary distribution system to missionaries currently. My comp's having a lot of fun with that.

 

Anyway. That's about all I've got in my head. I hope everybody back home is well, and that they're WRITING ME! Don't ever forget to write, people!

 

-Erich