New Challenge

Have you ever appreciated just how good it is to be in a ward, to just think that no matter what really ever happens there's really no chance of of things falling into chaos. That if someone happened to drop their calling, there's another 35 people that could easily take their place. Well, I've been thinking a lot about that lately, because I miss my ward, and I miss everyone who makes it such an awesome and safe place. What I'm trying to get at is that the branch here in Columbia is struggling a ton right now, and unless we can get it back up and running semi-smoothly again, there is a chance it may collapse. Lets run through the situation really quick: Number 1 is that it is a hispanic branch, so what does that mean? It means that there is drama at every corner, and everywhere that you look, Hispanics love creating drama, more so than any other group of people ever in the history ever. Number 2 is the lack of communication, they all refuse to communicate, or delegate, which makes the whole presidency thing very difficult. The branch presidency is very individual, if you want the presidency to know something you have to tell each member, because if you only tell one, he will not tell anyone else. Number 3 is the fact that there are 2 teams in the branch, and people will not accept callings if you put them close to someone on the same team, and if someone betrays the team you are on, they will drop their calling in order to be as far away as that person as possible. Number 4 is that our branch president is gone for a couple of months, and next month our 1st counselor will be gone, leaving someone who talks in broken spanish most of the time because he is from the english ward serving in the branch for a time. 

That's really the main difficulties happening right now, so unless people get their act together it could be quite more of a situation in quite some time.

So our week this week was figuring out ways where we can help strengthen the branch and get it back running good again. We had meetings with the stake presidency and many different other things. The consensus was basically that we, the missionaries, have all the responsibility on us to make sure that the members feel loved and appreciated, and that hopefully from us sharing that love the members can catch on and share their own love and appreciation for the other members. So that the branch can be much more unified. We are also pushing Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching hard. So we wont have a whole lot of time or energy to teach investigators, the stake president wants us to reactivate instead, so that we have more people that already know the gospel, to fulfill callings. So we have a lot of work on our hands, in ways that I never imagined I would. Something cool that happened is that we ate dinner with the dominguez, tacos de lengua, where i learned that toungue is gross. That is really all. People are pressuring me to go. 

Elder Bertoch