Guamanian Devil

Family,

One good thing about coming to Guam every month, is that the internet is so fast! I click on stuff and it actually opens. Quite the luxury.

So we had Zone Leader Council last night, and it went from 1-10:15. It was pretty long, but I really enjoyed it. It's a good way to get some feedback on how to fix problems that we're having. I flew in Saturday morning at 5:20 or so, and didn't get to sleep until that night, so I was running on about 40 hours without sleep. Lucky for me, I didn't have a 9 hour meeting to stay awake through like the missionary from Yap did. Everyone else is gone, but my flight doesn't leave until this evening, so I'm just going around with the Guam zone leaders until then.

Really the only news I have is this trip to Guam, so I think I'll stick with that.

I went to the airport to check in, and the woman at the counter seemed like a pretty angry person to begin with. She looks at my passport and everything and asks where I'll be staying in Guam. I didn't know which missionaries I'd be staying with, and even if I did, I don't know the address. I told her all of this and she snapped back, "Well, then we can't print your boarding pass, and you can't get on this flight." Now I was annoyed. This was my fourth time flying out of Palau, and no one has ever asked me for that. I told her that I didn't know, and since it was 12:30 at night, there was no way I could find out. She wasn't going to budge. I asked her if she wanted me to just make up the address, and she cut me off and said "Oh, so that's how you got on the flight last time?" If Continental wasn't the only airline in Micronesia, and I had a choice, they would never get my business because of this one lady. Anyway, that's what I did; I took a guess (which turned out to be wrong) as to what the Mission Office address was, and she printed my boarding pass. Then I went through security they asked to check my backpack, and another ornery woman took my consecrated oil out and chucked it and handed me my backpack. It's my fault for forgetting about it, but that just topped it all off.

My trainer, Elder Stanley, is the zone leader here in Guam right now, and he goes home in a week (he extended for 30 days, so he goes home before the end of the transfer). In December, 60% of our mission will have been out since June. The mission president is pretty in need of people to train (we have 10 elders coming from the MTC this transfer). Things are going to get pretty interesting pretty soon.

In Palau I realized we've been kind of slacking in finding new investigators. We've been relying mostly on others (especially members) to give us referrals and people to teach, and we've, for the most part, neglected our own finding efforts. I've since repented, and I'm pretty excited now to get things going again once I get back.

That's all I have for this week. I'm doing well, and I hope you guys are too.

Love,

Elder Barlow