39,826 - One at a time

Last Wednesday we finished training the last zone in finding the less active members.  The final count of members over 18 on the records of the church within the mission is just shy of 40,000.  A few missionaries have finished updating the online document (google doc) with the new addresses and information from the results of the database search.  One missionary who is at home for 6 weeks recovering from an injury (he should be back to our mission within 5 weeks) has updated over 400 names & addresses in the Lautaro Ward where he was working when he had his accident (playing soccer).  That ward is the biggest in the mission with 1616 members 18+.  The missionaries are beginning to find part-member families to teach.  Less-active members are being invited back to church.  There is a huge amount of work to do.  We have new addresses for over half of the members of the church within the mission.  Each new address must be verified.  Each person must be invited back.  This work can only be done one person at a time.  Just comparing the new information in the database with the information in the church records and updating the google doc takes many hours for each unit.  Any volunteers want to help?

Training the missionaries

We were able to use the mission office where there were more computers for 3 of the zones.  We were travelling every day for 10 straight days.  I believe we filled our car up 7 times in those 10 days ($7/gallon).  We couldn't do this without a car.
We are working on a statistical analysis of the membership in the mission.  I hope to have the results within a week or so.  It is amazing that all of this can be created by obtaining a small file of less than 1 MB from each stake or district.  Ben Ingram is definitely a blessing to the church in Chile.
Here are some of the scenes from our travel to complete the training.

These last 2 pictures are of Dichato which was devastated by the tsunami which came and wiped out the village after the February 2010 earthquake.  Here are some photos of that devastation.