Surprise, surprise!

Hey y’all!

So this has been a pretty crazy/surprising week. Things in Ferrol are going pretty good, and our investigators were starting to progress. It was a looking out to be a pretty normal week until we got back to the piso on Tuesday, and I saw that I had 3 missed calls from President....😓 never a good sign. He proceeded to tell me that he needed me to come serve in the office. That's the story about how I got emergency transferred for the second time.

I got the call at 13:15 on Tuesday. President told me that I needed to come down and fast. I packed as quickly as I could, and at 14:30, I was on a bus headed to the train station in A Coruña. I said bye to my comp and a couple elders from the district, and then got on a train and headed to Madrid arriving in my new apartment around 23:00. I was a little sad to not have time to say bye to the members and our investigators, but I'm confident that they are in the Lord's hands, and that Elder Henrie and his new Companion will take care of them.

So, our situation in the office is kind of interesting. Normally, the office Elders are a trio, right now we are 5 missionaries....very interesting. So there are 3 different jobs in the office: residency, secretary, and pisos. Residency deals with orders and residency in Spain; secretary is miscellaneous, and piso deals with buying and selling apartments. I will be coming in as the new Secretary; I'll be trained by Elder Tarver. Elder Jäger from Germany is the residency elder, and he is just finishing his training by Elder Brasher. Then there is Elder Keffer who is the piso elder. We are 5 right now because 2 are getting trained at the same time, but both Elder Brasher and Elder Tarver will be out in about a week.

My new responsibilities as the secretary are going to be pretty busy. I'm now in charge of all travel, "buying tickets for the entire mission". That includes transfers itself, so that's going to be a fun challenge.... I'm also in charge of all technology, so if anyone has a problem with phones or tablets then they need to come to me. Also, I am responsible for organizing interviews for president for the transfer. Those are all the big main things, but there also a lot of little reports and boletins I have to fill out here and there that will keep me busy. 

I'm excited for my time in the office and the new challenges it will bring. I think it's going to be a great opportunity to learn and grow. I'm a little nervous, because it looks like Elder Tarver will leave by the end of the week which means I'll be on my own. Normally, training takes a whole transfer, but we are trying to cram it all into 2 weeks. One week down, one more to go. On top of that, according to the rest of the other elders, the secretary is supposedly the most stressful position in the mission. I didn't really believe them until I found the bottle of Advil in my desk with the note transfer pills. 😅 So wish me luck everyone! 

On church this past Sunday, they asked me to talk, and I wanted to share a little bit of what I did then. With this Easter season, it's a great time to remember Christ and all that He has done for us. I was thinking that when we are baptized, we all make a covenant to be a representative of Him and to always follow Him. That's a big responsibility. At the same time, though He has already covenanted to be there for us. No matter how hard it gets, He is always there at our side, which is a big focus of the church’s Easter campaign this year.

If you haven't already seen it, I would highly recommend going to the church website and looking it up. It centers on the idea that Christ has been with us in the hard moments of our lives, and how we can share that with others. If you want, you can look at my profile on Facebook as an example. All you do is print of a piece of paper and write your own experience or thoughts. Then snap a pic and post it on Facebook. I love it, because it is such a simple and beautiful way to share your testimony. It's been so cool to see the participation of members and people from the street in this. Get in on it; it's awesome! I love you guys!

-Elder Bassett

Toledo