February 16, 2013

By way of explanation, we thought you might be interested just what the Area Presidency does. Back home, there are not any Area Presidencies. This is because the church is well established and mature in the wards and stakes. Because of this, the local leaders can administer the affairs of the church with less oversight or supervision. Internationally this is not the case. The various Presidencies around the world are charged with the administration of the church. This is due to the distance from SLC and need for more training of local leaders. Our Area Presidency attends the Stake conferences when there is to be a reorganization or by assignment from SLC. They tour the Missions in the Area(17). All changes in leadership and boundaries within the 7 countries are processed though the Area office and then sent to SLC for approval. All missionary recommendations for the 7 countries are processed here and then sent to SLC for assignment. Once the call is made, then it comes back here and it is then processed and sent to the Stake President of the missionary. It is sent to the Stake President to insure it gets to the missionary. Sometimes the addresses of the missionaries are not findable.
  One amusing story happened this week. If a future missionary indicates on his application (recommendation) he has a passport, then it is necessary for him to attach a copy of it to his application. An application came in this week that indicated the applicant had a passport, however, the attached document was a copy of a fumigation report. We got a good chuckle out of that.
   Hermana Pitcher received a great gift today at church. When we went to SLC for our missionary training, the missionary badges we received were in English. We have been hoping for Spanish badges for eight months now. Well, finally today Hermana Pitcher got her Spanish missionary badge. Happy day!
  

Just a few more pictures taken during the week while our kids were here. All three were taken in a village called Panajachel. The first is of Jace and a little boy selling goods. The boy followed us for a long time trying to get us to buy things. The middle picture is of the kids getting ready for the zip line. At the nature preserve where the zip line was located, there was a huge butterfly pavilion. The bottom picture is from inside the pavilion.

We are still enjoying spring weather down here!