President Nuñez

I received word from Venezuela this week that my good friend Juan Carlos Nuñez, a missionary with whom I served in the Peru Lima Central Mission, has been called as the Church's newest stake president.

Yes, that's right: A contemporary of mine is now a stake president, which must mean that I'm getting old.

Elder Nuñez (second from the left on the back row in the above photo) was never my companion, but nevertheless he taught me a valuable lesson early on in my days in the field. I arrived in my third area, Antares, also one of the poorest parts of Lima I've been to, to replace him and also got to work with him for a couple of days before he took off to his new area.

Antares was my third area in the mission in only three months in the country. My experience in my first two areas had been less than ideal, with a trainer who basically had taught me nothing useful and very little success in my second area. To make matters worse, within 24 hours of my arrival in this new area, I had an allergic reaction to all of the dust in the air and came down with a bad case of conjunctivitis, which is an eye infection you never want to get.

I was sulking over my past and present difficulties one evening when Elder Nuñez sat down to talk with me. I don't remember everything he said, but I do remember this sentence: "You have got to start believing that you were not sent here to fail."

Some of that is lost in translation, but those words stayed with me. And as soon as I really began to work and shrugged off my initial failures and challenges, I indeed saw success as time went on.

So thanks, President Nuñez, for your good advice and for your example. The people in your stake in Venezuela are lucky to have you.