Wednesday, February 26, 2014

iPads!!!




Well, I have learned by sad experience that maintaining a blog is actually hard work.  I realized this first when I was trying to update it on a biweekly basis so I could keep progressing the work in the wonderful Washington DC North mission.  I also realized this when we got our iPads recently!  As a condition of us receiving iPads to work with, we are not allowed to access or update our blogs sadly, so the time I have to work on the blog has diminished greatly.  But do not fear, I shall continue to press on and write til the day I leave for Brazil!

So first off, I would like to tell all of you that iPads are a wonderful tool and a gift to help.  The iPad can also be one of our biggest time-wasters as a missionary.  As many are aware, apple products are known for the plenitude of apps that are available to just whisk the time away.  Luckily as a missionary, we don't have access to most of them, but of the apps we do have it comes down to a decision on what's good, better, or best.  For instance, said picture which was taken from my iPad.
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One of the apps we are allowed to access is the Church's Gospel Library app.  With this app we can browse essentially all of the Church's talks, material for teaching, and scriptures right at the palms of our hands.  While it is good for us to read through all this wonderful doctrine to learn and connect scriptures with ideas, it can be a big distraction in how we spend our time.

But one of the best things that has come from the iPads, is that all the records we keep and numbers we keep track of are now done digitally, with no more confusion in deciphering how to do things.  Now this may not mean a whole lot to lots of people, but this means a lot to us as missionaries.  Because we as missionaries keep records of all the work we do in our areas, when we leave/get transfered away, lots of infomation can be lost and people we were once working with drop off the radar.  But no more!  Everything is now online and will always be there to look back on and we will not lose this precious information anymore.  Or, at least that is the theory for now, but it seems to be working out okay so far.

Here's to the start of hopefully something very wonderful for the missionary work in the area.  I will have a cool story about using the iPad next time I update (which in theory should be next week some time).