Washington, D.C. South Mission

Dear Family, Today we are celebrating our 43rd wedding anniversary. In some ways it seems like a long time to be married because it is hard to remember not having my sweetheart around, but time has seemed to fly and I don’t know where all of that time has gone. I wonder what I have accomplished and if I am any better than I was back then. Now I need to make some plans so that there will be more growth for the future. This has been a good week—maybe that is because we had a little more discretionary time. Sometimes it seems that we get up in the morning and go into the office before it gets too light and come home after dark in the evening with not a lot of energy to much after we get home. There is still WES stuff for us (mostly Dad) to take care of, but we are grateful that we are on the east coast giving us 3 hours to be able to communicate with those back at WES. Heavenly Father was aware of what our needs would be and arranged for a way to take care of them even if we had not...

Dear Family, Mission News We are warming up for the Christmas deluge of packages for the missionaries. On Monday we received about 35 packages and around a hundred letters for the missionaries. The other couples in the mission said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” A couple of wards asked for the names of missionaries that that don’t get much mail from home. We have one sister from the Philippines whose parents can barely afford to send a letter once a quarter. We have one elder that was disowned by his family and gets nothing from home. There are about 8 or so missionaries that don’t get much support from home. These wards are going to help these missionaries with a little Christmas spirit. I re-wrote two letters for the mission president. He liked them, and he just had a couple of small changes. We are now emailing the forms and instructions to the new missionaries instead of mailing paper. Man, we are high tech now! I was going to do a mission website, so the missionaries ...

Dear Family, Here we are at the end of another week. As I think about the happenings of the week some of them seem much further away. This was the week of the Tour of the Mission with Elder Bennett of the seventy. We had so many details to get worked out and it seemed that he was certainly a master of looking at the details. But after doing and redoing the details several times, things worked out well and ran quite smoothly. WES still keeps Dad busy in the evenings. This week had been a little more time consuming than usual. I guess it is good because it keeps us on our knees more and closer to the Lord. Good things do happen with growing experiences. Tuesday we needed to get to the stake center about 7:30 to get tables set up and lunch sacks filled by 8:45 when they wanted everyone in their seats listening to the prelude music, pondering, and/or reading scriptures. Dad had to go back to the office to open it up since we couldn’t find anyone to watch the office. When the serv...

Dear Family, Mission News Elder Randall K. Bennett toured the mission. Mom and I were responsible for feeding 130 missionaries on Tuesday. I got to listen to about 4 hours of the training on Wednesday. Among other things he talked about ways to help friends (they are not called investigators any more) keep commitments by asking the friend how the missionaries can help keep the commitment and exactly how they want the missionaries to help. Helping friends to learn to keep commitments prepares them to make the baptismal covenant. He told some good stories about when he was the mission president in Russia and other stories. Stories are the best. The mission president asked me to re-write the welcome letter that the mission president sends to the newly called missionaries and a letter he sends to the recently baptized. I re-wrote them and sent them to him yesterday. He has not gotten back with me on the letters. I can’t imagine him liking everything (or perhaps anything). W...

Dear Family, Another week has raced by and time to look back over the week. Much of the week is the same—because we go the office every day—but it seems that the days vary a lot. The week started out gray and with a little bit of rain and a bit early. Since we needed to leave early to put our potato casserole in the oven, we decided to come into the office a bit early. One of our utilities payments came back on Friday saying the address was vacant and could not be delivered. When I called the leasing office, they said that the address was right and that they were there. In order not to have a late payment and late fees, I drove the payment out to the leasing office. The office was being remodeled and was locked. It did, however, have a note indicating that the office was on the side. After persevering a bit and with the help of a tenant I was able to get into the building and find the office and give them the check. Although it was not an easy delivery, I would hope that the ...

Dear Family, Where has October gone. This week has been full and we are enjoying life. Monday President Caplin asked Dad if he could drive and elder to the airport. This elder had been in our mission awaiting his visa for Fiji. We have 18 new missionaries coming in tonight at 6:30. Our housing secretary was going nuts trying to get apartments lined up. The thing that makes it a little tricky is that 5 of the 18 are visa waiters so we don’t know how long they will be here. Tuesday was the big day for “Elder” Nelson. He was in charge of getting the motel rooms for all of the new missionaries for Monday night and doing the luncheon for all of the new missionaries along with their trainer companions and the old companions of the trainer companions. It added up to about 70 people. We did something different from what had been done in the past. Instead of getting sandwiches from Subway or a fancy grocery store that caters, we saw some crescent roll sandwiches at Costco that looke...

Dear Family, The week: Monday we took Elder Kresge to the airport. He was a visa waiter and after two transfers got his visa. He is a good elder, confident and excited to go to Fiji. Tuesday was transfer day. We received 18 new missionaries on Monday. Monday night they stayed at a hotel I reserved for them. It is a new hotel, walking distance to the Centreville Stake Center where the transfers take place. It is also about $20/room less expensive than the hotel they used to use. I was responsible for lunch for 70 missionaries. The lunch went smoothly because there are so many helping hands. The new missionaries were assigned their trainers and about 30 missionaries were transferred. Wednesday we drove three mission cars to the Washington DC North Mission because they needed cars for all of their new missionaries. That evening we went to an appointment with the Elders. They could not get members from the ward to go because it was Halloween. The appointment was with Auska Kath...