What a week!
I transferred after district meeting on Tuesday. Took my 2 big suitcases, bike, and about 5 other random back packs on the 20min train to Leiden. The other two Office Elders (Elder Solomon and Elder McConkie) picked me up and walked me across the street to the office and started training.
Who is in the office? Normally there are 2 office elders (we have 3 while Solomon trains me) and we are here Mon-Friday. Sister Van Eden is a member in Leiden that works on following up with new members and family history, she is here Mon-Wed from 10-2. The Van der Puts, a dutch senior couple, works with housing and cars and are in the office a couple times a week but no set schedule, and lastly President Bunnell and the APs (Assistants to the President) are in the office on Monday.
What am i doing? I deal with all legality needs and pretty much anything that President wants done. So as far as legality goes I'm in charge of getting everyone in and out of the country from a legal stand point. This includes getting them a Belgium visa (so i take every new missionary down to Brussels 2 times so they can get the finger prints and everything done the first time and a Belgium drivers license on the next trip. Then I have to get everyone a Dutch Residency Permit, which is a ton of paper work. I'm going to Brussels for the first time (as an office elder) on Wednesday! This last week I started to learn some of the processes of the paper work that we do for everyone. I also took sometime to fix a few documents in the church system that had been out of date since I got here by changing wording and moving some code snip-its around and created a few new document packets to make our lives easier. Its going to save us hours in doing the new missionaries paper work since before they were doing the changes one by one and each took time to fix :)
President jobs: next to all the legality stuff, I also do jobs for president. These really can be anything and range from creating a word document full of instructions for using a program, so that president can learn to use it, to creating and updating handbooks and mission related items. Putting together power points and even some stuff related to proselyting.
Overall I'm loving it here. Its been a real eye opener of what it really takes to run the mission. Its also a really interesting way to serve. We really don't get to serve the Dutch people directly because we work from at least 9-5 everyday and in the last week we were here till 8, all but 1 day, getting things done. So we really don't get to share the gospel as much, but we do so much for President and the other missionaries that they will never know of, which is a great way to serve. I don't mean to sound like we great or anything, we are just serving in a different way and I just wanted to describe what we do. It also really fits my personality too. I'd much rather work behind the scenes and not get any attention, I think I got that from dad because that's really how he has lived his life and career. You are an amazing example to me, Dad!
Love you guys!
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Elder Talyon Anderson Perry
Belgium/Netherlands Mission