Week Fifteen: First Week in the Office

Alright my lovely people, I'll try to keep this brief.

I honestly don't know how many weeks I will try to keep my letter brief and fail.

A brief summary:

This week I arrived in the Office with my Companion, Elder Shepherd. And we immediately started being trained by the Office Couple, Elder and Sister Hermansen. They are from Utah and they return home from their mission January 26th. Elder Hermansen is training Elder Shepherd to be the Financial Secretary and Sister Hermansen is training me to be the Office Secretary.

This means Elder Shepherd gets to worry about Financial things and I get to worry about Office things. Which means, everything. I help run President Mkhabela's schedule, I deal with the paperwork for the incoming missionaries (I get to know everyone coming to Zimbabwe, or anywhere in Africa, a few months in advance), I deal with the paperwork for missionaries returning home (I put together their departing folders, certificates, emails to their priesthood leaders and families, etc.), I deal with running mission meetings and helping them run smoothly, I input baptismal records to the Church servers, I do correspondence with the Southeast African Area Office as well as Salt Lake, I organize and handle the mail for the mission, I make reservations for things, order lunch, etc.

I have gained a huge appreciation and greater respect for secretaries. They do so much that no one knows about.

So I have been busily learning the duties and responsibilities of this calling. I've been meeting all the other people who work for the Church here. A lot of it is unimpressive throughout the week, I spend most of the day at a desk. However there are still a few amazing things that happen.

Just yesterday, It started to rain, and then a man comes into the front door of the building, shakes off the water a bit, then comes to the office window and cheerfully and casually says "Hello!"
Sister Hermansen responded "Hello Elder Dube" then proceeded to introduce me as her replacement. I was confused because this man didn't have a name tag on. I greeted him, he talked to Sister Hermansen a bit, then he ran back out into the rain. Sister Hermansen gave me an umbrella to help him and so I ran out after him, but he was nowhere to be seen. I returned and then asked if he was who I thought he was. "Yes, that was General Authority, Elder Dube. He comes here on vacation with his wife."

It was so casual and so amazing. He returned with his wife shortly after the rain stopped, and then they waited until their car arrived.

I may get to meet him again tomorrow, but it is unsure.

Ponderizing this week is Proverbs 3:1-2 " My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee."

Until next Saturday,

-Elder Wilcken

PS. A tragedy just happened. My SD card got corrupted. I had backed up most of the files, but not since a week or so ago. So all the pictures this last week were lost. Ah well.