Dear Family,
Here it is the end of our third week. We are beginning to get into a routine and I can almost plan a day or even a day or two into the week. We can even drive to church and the office as well as the grocery store without using gps. We, however, can go very far without it. In fact, we have found that most of the time the gps takes us one way to get some place and brings us home a completely different way. How in the world do they expect us to learn to navigate our way around here on our own.
On Monday I did the big rent payments for the mission. We have about 74 apartments that are preset and 2 that are still done individually each month. I had to gasp a little when I saw the total for the 74 units totaling $169+ thousand dollars. That didn’t even include the utilities for each of these apartments! Before I pay each of these rents I need to review the leases to make sure that the base payment doesn’t change for the current month (each lease has a different renewal month) and then compare that with the Church software. If there is a difference, then I need to go find out why and change usually the Church’s amount. This is usually caused by the rent increase of a new lease. Anyway, this one went quite smoothly. It took most of the morning to get the checks printed. The fellow that has been helping me decided to help me by putting checks into the printer for the next batch, but I hadn’t printed the check on blank paper that is stored in the office for auditing purposes. When I realized what he had done, I grabbed the remaining checks out of the printer, but had ruined two checks before I realized what he had done. Here’s hoping that all of the checks make it to the leasing offices. The postal service is notorious in this area for losing 3-5 checks each month.
We spent the evening studying our Sunday School lesson for family home evening because Dad wanted to learn about the scriptures that were in the lesson. Our teacher spent most of the time talking about why Isaiah is hard to understand and what we can do to help us understand better.
There was a lady who used to be the Relief Society president who welcomed me to the ward and volunteered to be my ministering sister. She knew that with my records not in the ward that I wouldn’t get a sister, so she saw a need and filled it. The other senior missionary sister that is in the ward gets ministered to by this sister. What a good example of seeing a need and doing something about it. She came to visit on Thursday and we got to know each other better and I now felt that I had a friend in the ward.
Our stake had a service project on Saturday that I went to with the other senior missionary sister. We had bought fleece, diapers, and baby wash to donate. At the project we made fleece blankets and then filled bags with a package of diapers, baby soap, desitin, a knitted baby cap, a couple of onesies, and a tied fleece blanket. One of the sisters in our ward works in a clinic where lots of refugees and low income ladies give birth to their babies. These women are really living on the edge and could use a bit of help. Although these items will only be a drop in the bucket, it felt good to be able to go and help. Sister Nielsen had invited her upstairs neighbor to go with us to the event and I had a wonderful time getting to know her friend. She is a devout Catholic and a very nice lady. While we tied quilts I sat across the table from her and we had a wonderful visit. After tying the quilts, Sister Nielsen invited her friend to take a tour of the chapel. We were walking down the hall and she was quickly saying this is the kitchen, here is where the little children are taught, and here is where the women have their meetings. Sheri, her friend, stepped into the R.S. room to take a quick look while Sister Nielsen went on down the hall. I was between Sister Nielsen and Sheri when I heard Sheri say is that a picture of Jesus. The R.S. room was dark so I was surprised that she could see anything very well, but I went back with her to look at the picture. She asked me if that was Mary in the picture and I told her it could be Mary with Jesus, but it might be the woman at the well with the Savior. We then walked down the hall to the foyer where Sheri noticed another picture of the Savior—the one with just his head and shoulders and the red robe on. She looked at that picture and said, “You have another picture of Jesus”. I could tell she was a little surprised and could see a question forming on her face. She said, “Do you believe in Jesus?” “I thought you were Mormons.” The thought ran through my head that President Nelson really has received revelation. We went on to tell her that we worship Heavenly Father and Jesus and then pointed out our name tags showing that we are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She, of course, asked about Mormon and we explained that he was a prophet much like prophets in the Old Testament. This prophet abridged the Book of Mormon and that is where the name Mormon comes from. An interesting experience to say the least. It was a good experience to share our testimony of the Savior and at the same have my testimony of President Nelson being a prophet of God reinforced. A good morning.
When I got home we had lunch and left for Mt. Vernon. We arrived there about 1 and stayed until 6. Again, it was a beautiful day with wonderful scenery. No wonder George Washington loved to be home—the view from his back veranda was unbelievable. He had a 10-bedroom home with NO bathrooms. I am glad that I leave now and not in the 1700’s. They had surrounding buildings that they did the work of running the plantation—a wash room where they boiled water to wash clothes, made lye soap to clean clothes, and heated irons to iron all clothing (2 slaves working 6 days a week); a smoke room where they dried their meat/fish and built a fire in the middle of the room to smoke the meat that was hanging from the ceiling and walls (the walls were all black from the smoke and still held the smell of the smoke); the stalls for about 20 horses; the rooms for the carriages (and yes the smell of the horses could still be smelled); and the bunk houses of some of the slaves. They had upper gardens for plants and herbs, the lower gardens for vegetables, and the orchards for the fruit trees. LOTS of acres.
Washington had his own memorial where his and Martha’s bodies were entombed. A short distance they had a memorial for the many slaves that had been buried there. All of this was in a lovely forested area. From here we walked down to the wharf where the slaves caught 1.5 million herring in about a 7-week period once a year. The fish were really plentiful back then.
We watched a couple of videos giving some of the history of Washington and his life and I felt that I learned a lot about him and the times. In one of the movies they billed as a 4-D movie we watched the movie, got snowed on with real, wet, white snow, felt the explosion of the cannons going off (our chairs rumbled and shook), and listened to the surround sound. Pretty impressive.
Sunday we went to the primary program and enjoyed the little children sing some of my favorite songs. I will say that it is much more fun to watch/listen to children that we know—especially if those children are our Grandchildren. We got to talk with lots of family in the afternoon (at least for us) and that was fun. In the evening we went to listen to a professor from the University of Virginia talk about families. He was a devout Catholic, and had done much research that that found that children do best in a home with the biological mother and father married and living in the home. Every bit of the research he shared confirmed what we have been taught by our Father in Heaven. Again, I had my testimony of living prophets verified. Much of what we have been taught by prophets is put down as being old fashioned or prejudiced or just plain wrong. Professor Brad Wilcox said that just because some movie star, social media, or activist says something doesn’t make it right. The research doesn’t back up their claims. We have been taught what families are and how important they are by prophets and that should be enough, but it does give me a little more confidence to talk about families as the Lord talks about them and not feel so naive and uneducated.
It has been a good week. We think of you often, pray for you daily, and love you always,
Mom
Here it is the end of our third week. We are beginning to get into a routine and I can almost plan a day or even a day or two into the week. We can even drive to church and the office as well as the grocery store without using gps. We, however, can go very far without it. In fact, we have found that most of the time the gps takes us one way to get some place and brings us home a completely different way. How in the world do they expect us to learn to navigate our way around here on our own.
On Monday I did the big rent payments for the mission. We have about 74 apartments that are preset and 2 that are still done individually each month. I had to gasp a little when I saw the total for the 74 units totaling $169+ thousand dollars. That didn’t even include the utilities for each of these apartments! Before I pay each of these rents I need to review the leases to make sure that the base payment doesn’t change for the current month (each lease has a different renewal month) and then compare that with the Church software. If there is a difference, then I need to go find out why and change usually the Church’s amount. This is usually caused by the rent increase of a new lease. Anyway, this one went quite smoothly. It took most of the morning to get the checks printed. The fellow that has been helping me decided to help me by putting checks into the printer for the next batch, but I hadn’t printed the check on blank paper that is stored in the office for auditing purposes. When I realized what he had done, I grabbed the remaining checks out of the printer, but had ruined two checks before I realized what he had done. Here’s hoping that all of the checks make it to the leasing offices. The postal service is notorious in this area for losing 3-5 checks each month.
We spent the evening studying our Sunday School lesson for family home evening because Dad wanted to learn about the scriptures that were in the lesson. Our teacher spent most of the time talking about why Isaiah is hard to understand and what we can do to help us understand better.
There was a lady who used to be the Relief Society president who welcomed me to the ward and volunteered to be my ministering sister. She knew that with my records not in the ward that I wouldn’t get a sister, so she saw a need and filled it. The other senior missionary sister that is in the ward gets ministered to by this sister. What a good example of seeing a need and doing something about it. She came to visit on Thursday and we got to know each other better and I now felt that I had a friend in the ward.
Our stake had a service project on Saturday that I went to with the other senior missionary sister. We had bought fleece, diapers, and baby wash to donate. At the project we made fleece blankets and then filled bags with a package of diapers, baby soap, desitin, a knitted baby cap, a couple of onesies, and a tied fleece blanket. One of the sisters in our ward works in a clinic where lots of refugees and low income ladies give birth to their babies. These women are really living on the edge and could use a bit of help. Although these items will only be a drop in the bucket, it felt good to be able to go and help. Sister Nielsen had invited her upstairs neighbor to go with us to the event and I had a wonderful time getting to know her friend. She is a devout Catholic and a very nice lady. While we tied quilts I sat across the table from her and we had a wonderful visit. After tying the quilts, Sister Nielsen invited her friend to take a tour of the chapel. We were walking down the hall and she was quickly saying this is the kitchen, here is where the little children are taught, and here is where the women have their meetings. Sheri, her friend, stepped into the R.S. room to take a quick look while Sister Nielsen went on down the hall. I was between Sister Nielsen and Sheri when I heard Sheri say is that a picture of Jesus. The R.S. room was dark so I was surprised that she could see anything very well, but I went back with her to look at the picture. She asked me if that was Mary in the picture and I told her it could be Mary with Jesus, but it might be the woman at the well with the Savior. We then walked down the hall to the foyer where Sheri noticed another picture of the Savior—the one with just his head and shoulders and the red robe on. She looked at that picture and said, “You have another picture of Jesus”. I could tell she was a little surprised and could see a question forming on her face. She said, “Do you believe in Jesus?” “I thought you were Mormons.” The thought ran through my head that President Nelson really has received revelation. We went on to tell her that we worship Heavenly Father and Jesus and then pointed out our name tags showing that we are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She, of course, asked about Mormon and we explained that he was a prophet much like prophets in the Old Testament. This prophet abridged the Book of Mormon and that is where the name Mormon comes from. An interesting experience to say the least. It was a good experience to share our testimony of the Savior and at the same have my testimony of President Nelson being a prophet of God reinforced. A good morning.
When I got home we had lunch and left for Mt. Vernon. We arrived there about 1 and stayed until 6. Again, it was a beautiful day with wonderful scenery. No wonder George Washington loved to be home—the view from his back veranda was unbelievable. He had a 10-bedroom home with NO bathrooms. I am glad that I leave now and not in the 1700’s. They had surrounding buildings that they did the work of running the plantation—a wash room where they boiled water to wash clothes, made lye soap to clean clothes, and heated irons to iron all clothing (2 slaves working 6 days a week); a smoke room where they dried their meat/fish and built a fire in the middle of the room to smoke the meat that was hanging from the ceiling and walls (the walls were all black from the smoke and still held the smell of the smoke); the stalls for about 20 horses; the rooms for the carriages (and yes the smell of the horses could still be smelled); and the bunk houses of some of the slaves. They had upper gardens for plants and herbs, the lower gardens for vegetables, and the orchards for the fruit trees. LOTS of acres.
Washington had his own memorial where his and Martha’s bodies were entombed. A short distance they had a memorial for the many slaves that had been buried there. All of this was in a lovely forested area. From here we walked down to the wharf where the slaves caught 1.5 million herring in about a 7-week period once a year. The fish were really plentiful back then.
We watched a couple of videos giving some of the history of Washington and his life and I felt that I learned a lot about him and the times. In one of the movies they billed as a 4-D movie we watched the movie, got snowed on with real, wet, white snow, felt the explosion of the cannons going off (our chairs rumbled and shook), and listened to the surround sound. Pretty impressive.
Sunday we went to the primary program and enjoyed the little children sing some of my favorite songs. I will say that it is much more fun to watch/listen to children that we know—especially if those children are our Grandchildren. We got to talk with lots of family in the afternoon (at least for us) and that was fun. In the evening we went to listen to a professor from the University of Virginia talk about families. He was a devout Catholic, and had done much research that that found that children do best in a home with the biological mother and father married and living in the home. Every bit of the research he shared confirmed what we have been taught by our Father in Heaven. Again, I had my testimony of living prophets verified. Much of what we have been taught by prophets is put down as being old fashioned or prejudiced or just plain wrong. Professor Brad Wilcox said that just because some movie star, social media, or activist says something doesn’t make it right. The research doesn’t back up their claims. We have been taught what families are and how important they are by prophets and that should be enough, but it does give me a little more confidence to talk about families as the Lord talks about them and not feel so naive and uneducated.
It has been a good week. We think of you often, pray for you daily, and love you always,
Mom
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