Week 52: One Year Mark

Hey everybody!
    This has been a pretty incredible week. It was pretty crazy all week getting things ready for President Flores to leave and President Fortuna to come. On thursday Sister Ray cooked a thanksgiving style lunch for all of us in the office and for President and his family....Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy...all that good stuff. It was delicious. It was fun being around president flores these last few days. You could kind of tell that he was ready to go home haha I imagine its gotta be pretty exciting to go home after 3 years away from home. Also Tuesday and Wednesday We had some zone conferences so that president and sister flores could give us their last testimonies and say good bye to the missionaries. afterward we all gave president and hermana flores the "goodbye handshake". it was a really special meeting and i learned a lot...but it wasnt really goobye for us in the office because we still had the rest of the week with him in the office.
     On Friday we went over with president flores and his family to the house of President Hernandez (mission president of the Tegucigalpa mission) and his wife cooked us a big lunch so that was really cool as well, afterward we hung around just for a few minutes playing ping pong with president flores. I also reached my one year mark in the mission which was pretty exciting. Its pretty crazy thinking about where i was a year ago during these days. I remember my first days in the MTC like it was yesterday...and it feels like it was only a month ago. The time has FLOWN by. its really crazy. Im over the hump now and im expecting it to go by even faster, so i have to work even harder.
     Later that night on friday we went to the airport to welcome President Fortuna. We were there for about 20 minutes or so before the plane landed. We were there waiting with President Flores and his family and Elder Laburiel who is an area 70 here. First off the plane was Elder Amado from the first quorum of the 70 so we got to meet him, i shook his hand and gave him a big hug. then a few minutes later President Fortuna came through the gate with his family and we greeted them and helped them with their bags (half their luggage got lost and arrived a day later). At that point President Flores took of his nametag and wasnt our mission president anymore...haha it was kind of weird to see that. After the airport i drove all their  bags to their house and we helped them get a little settled in. The next morning we had a meeting with President Fortuna as a mission office. He told us a lot about his life so we could get to know him better and then we explained a little bit about ourselves. He is an amazing man. I already look up to him and am so excited for the opportunity i will have to work with him so closely. He got baptized when he was 20 years old in the dominican republic and a year letter (1992) left on a mission to the Santo Domingo East mission. He got married a year after his mission and was called to be bishop right then, a few years after he was called to be stake president, and then just recently he has been a counselor to a mission president in the dominican republic. He is an accountant and his wife is a lawyer, he was in charge of all the buying of church properties in all of the Carribean. They have 3 kids, the older is 11, another 8, and the last is 3 years old. REALLY young kids to have as a mission president. Im really looking forward to getting to learn more from another mission president.
   Later on Saturday we went to the airport to say goodbye to Pres. Flores and his family. It was really good to be able to see them off. Hermana Flores started crying as she said goodbye to us and gave us all hugs. it was a memorable experience...I was really able to understand a little bit better how much mission presidents and their wives love their missionaries.
   Since then we`ve been with president fortuna basically all the time helping him out with the transition. Today He took me with his kids to their school so he could show me where it was so they could sign up for classes then we went out to eat and he had his first Baleada in Honduras. Its really cool being able to get to know him so well .

well i gotta run! lOVE YOU ALL

Elder Archibald