This morning I was at the Mission Home to pick up the mission van. I was going to take it to the local Hyundai dealership for service. This is the same van that Hna. Johnson and I took to Jimaní on the 8th of February to pick up Elder Andersen. Well, I guess it really needed service because I couldn’t get it started. The battery was dead. I called the office Elders to bring the jumper cables and tool box to rescue me. I worked on the Van while I waited for them and discovered two important things about it. First the lights had been left on overnight. That will kill a battery every time. Next I discovered that the positive battery post was loose so that even if the battery had a full charge it probably wouldn’t have started anyway. Working on car batteries is something I know and do well. When I finally finished and we had the Van running, I looked at my hands and they were dirty. Not a little dirty but really dirty from the battery, battery mount and tools, etc. I haven’t had dirty hands from working on a car in 8 months. It really felt good to work on a car and get some grit under my fingernails again.
This evening Hna. Johnson and I went over to the Mission Home to talk to the President. He and Hna. Almonte had just returned from their very busy day. I had a dozen or more things I needed to run past the Pres. for his approval, etc. We had a very nice visit with the Almonte’s. As strange as it may seem, we don’t get to see them very much. Pres. & Hna. Almonte are so busy running the mission, looking after the welfare of 200 missionaries, conducting interviews, doing physicals, teaching & training at Zone conferences, etc. they have very little personal time to relax or even to slow down. And since they are on the road so much we don’t see them in the mission office very much.
But this was a nice visit with them for Hna. Johnson and I. It was a casual visit and the Almonte’s were able to stop and take a break from their busy schedule. Hna. Almonte helped Hna. Johnson with her Spanish and gave her a bunch of vocabulary words to practice and use every day. Hna. Johson also talked to her about doing several silk flower arrangements for their home. Hna. Johnson is looking forward to the project.
President Almonte is the busiest person I know. For example this week Pres. Almonte conducted Zone conferences in 3 Zones all over “El Campo”. In addition to the physicals that Hna. Almonte does, Pres. Almonte has to have a personal interview with every missionary in the mission once every 6 weeks. That’s 200 personal interviews every 42 days. Wow, he’s busy. He got back into the capital yesterday evening and this morning at 8:00am he was off to a Zone conference and interviews here in town. Being a Mission President has got to be one of the hardest jobs a man can have in the church.
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