A Monday Letter!

Bon tardi kerido hendenan di mi!

You were right, it was a very busy week! We had the audit on Tuesday, and it went well. Two of the ladies from the Central Offices of the Church in the Caribbean came over to do it. Their names are Dayanara and Francisca. I talk to them all the time on the phone, like everyday probably. It´s kind of funny, one of the sisters that baptized Dayanara lives in Queen Creek, AZ!!! Pretty crazy, and Dayanara says that she actually goes down to Arizona every couple of years it sounds like, so the next time that she is down, you can meet her! I work with her all the time, she is kind of like our boss and helps us know what to do.

Anyway the audit went well, they seemed impressed because we actually found the audit form online and just went through the whole audit and filled out the questions before they even came, so we knew all of the questions that they asked us, and we even had the true or false stuff already marked many times on the questions, so they said they were quite impressed that we had practically done the whole audit before they even came. So, thinking of it that way, it went well.

Despite how well they thought that we had done in the preparation and cleaning up of the policies and filing, there are many things that still need to be fixed. One thing will be that we will need to review all of the housing contracts that we have in the Mission because of some issues that we have there. There are probably about 80 of those contracts. We need to do that as well as go back to 2011 and do some more filing for that year.  There are several other procedures that either need to be done differently or just set up and started.  We also need to go and try to get copies of missing receipts that we need. So we have thirty days to do all of that.  (Guess that works out well since Jeff has about 30 days left in the mission!)

Thanks for sending the debit card, I should be getting it hopefully in this coming week.  I´ll send you an email to let you know once I receive it so that you can activate it.

So, is Leah all set up for school? She's going to love ASU. It's a good thing that you chose to take another class, you will really be grateful that you did that later on.

Happy Father's Day Dad! I hope that you had a great day.

I don't recognize the name actually of the guy that asked you if you were the DeSpains, my family, at Stake Conference. Wow, I can't believe that Amanda Hansen is leaving on her mission! Tell her best of luck for me and that it's too bad that I can't see her before she leaves!  (One of Jeff's good friends from high school leaves for her mission two weeks before Jeff gets home so they won't get to see each other.  Bummer!) 

Things are going good here, we've been in the office a lot trying to train and learn, do an audit, pay everybody that needs paid, and getting all of the new items for the houses ready, and sometimes it seems like we're doing it all at the same time, haha. There is a big housing project that President Hernandez started here so that the missionaries can live a little more comfortably. He is such an understanding and loving man. He and his wife had visited some of the missionary housing and were pretty astounded at the overall quality of living that they were living it, so he has been working for a long time to try to make the missionaries more comfortable and help them have nice, clean housing. This week we were able to get microwaves, blenders, irons, and toasters (which were also waffle irons) to a good amount of the missionary houses. The missionaries are going to be really grateful for those blessings!

I'm busy, but that's a good thing, everything here is going good, I'm just a little tired. I still can't believe how far the Lord has carried me in my life and in my mission. He has changed me and helped me overcome so many things on my mission. I am so grateful for His Plan and His Love. I know that He knows all of us, that He will always help us pass through our trials, whatever they may be, and however hopeless they may seem to us.

I love you all, I'm sending a picture of me and Elder Perschon so that you can see us both!  (Elder Perschon is the missionary that Jeff is training to take care of mission finances.  The picture has been added to the blog!)

Elder DeSpain

Working . . . ALOT!

Famia di mi!

I am doing good, we're just working a lot, but we're doing the best that we can, so that's all that we can do I guess. I am doing good, just tired. We have been putting in some pretty late nights trying to get everything in order here.  The audit went well, they were amazed at how much work we had done and how well we had organized everything. In fact, we had the audit papers reviewed and filled out, so they were pretty amazed that I could show them the audit before they even did it. Progress!  Sweet!  In a nut shell, we have 30 days to fix all of the problems, at least all that we can. We're doing good, we're trying our best, and I'm sure that the Lord will help us and everything will work out. I love you!

Elder DeSpain

Audit Week!

No regular email on Monday this week again.  Jeff and his companion have been extra busy with office stuff.  Henry finally received this short email from Jeff on Thursday.

Hey Dad,

I figured that I better take a few minutes and do what I can of my email now. I'm doing good, we had the audit yesterday, and it went good.  Now we´ve got 30 days to take care of everything that they found in the audit and get everything that we can in order. One of the big tasks for that will be reviewing all of the housing contracts that we have for the 70 or 80 houses that we have in the mission. Through the process of preparing and doing the audit, we found a lot of problems in the housing department of the mission too. That is my companion's assignment. So, we're just cleaning up the whole office now. There are quite a few problems with the housing department, and luckily we found those and can start working on them.  We're very blessed that Elder Marte is here in the office as the Housing Elder.  He and I both really want to do things right and get everything fixed up and how it should be.  It seems like I have been working my tail end off and we are making progress but there is a lot more to do!  We will keep giving it all we have and with the Lord's help we should be able to get a lot of things in better order.

I love you Dad, thanks for sending the pictures, haha.  I was wondering why you sent a video of the microwave, haha, but it was really nice to see the house again.  (We have been wanting to remodel our kitchen for a few years now and we finally got that started this past week.  Henry sent Jeff pictures of the kitchen as things were being torn out.  One picture was of the microwave being carried out of the kitchen.  That's a big joke in our family because it's the microwave that Henry and I were given for our wedding 24 years ago.  We tell the kids that we've had it longer than we have had any of them!)

Sorry, I forgot that I never sent this. I love you!

Elder DeSpain 

Wow! Crazy Transfer Week!

We didn't get an email on Monday this week but we knew it was a transfer week plus Jeff is now training another elder on mission finances so we waited . . . patiently.  Finally Friday morning Henry got this email message from Jeff:  "I'm alive and I'll write a little bit later.  Love you!"  


Late Friday we got the email below.


Hey!  I'm really sorry, we have been way busy here, especially with training.  My new companion is named Elder Perschon, and he is from Spanish Fork, Utah.  We have to be ready for the audit on Tuesday, so we're working pretty hard.  We have had transfers to finish up with, and then tomorrow I think that we're going to have to try to finish up with audit stuff. 

(Leah went to ASU orientation last Friday so we had questions for Jeff about what he would recommend that she take.)  Leah, I would definitely take one more class.  If I counted correctly, you are taking 14 credits already.  If you took one more normal class, it would put you at 17, and I think that's actually what I took my first semester of my freshmen year.  Just take something easy, like a lot of the big generals classes are easy.  A lot of things that are lecture classes with 200+ students aren't very hard to take and get a good grade in, so  I would definitely suggest that.  Have you seen your major map yet?  Also, when I looked into getting a Spanish minor from ASU, I found out that I think that you are required to live on the ASU West Campus at some point, so it might be good to look into that before starting on that. 

 

With the jury duty, thanks for helping, and just leave it how it is, hopefully I won't have to convict a murderer or something.  Don't worry about it, thanks for helping with it.  (This is kind of unbelievable but Jeff was selected for jury duty in May.  He won't be home for that so he was granted a postponement - until July 23rd, six days after he gets home!  Welcome back to "civilian life" I guess!)

 

With the card, send it to me, envelope and all, as soon as you can to the letter address that is in Florida for the Mission, and then I will activate it from here.  (Jeff's debit card expires at the end of this month.  I talked to the nice lady at the bank  and they can't extend the expiration date for the extra 17 days to get him home so we have to get a new card to him so he will be able to pay for baggage costs and anything extra that he needs those last couple of weeks and on his trip home.)

 

Thanks!  I love you!

Elder DeSpain