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 service missionary first came to work in the office we though we would have her watch the office so that we could go to the conferences to mingle with the missionaries more. Dad didn’t feel comfortable having her in the office by herself, so we will have to get someone to be with her in the future. All of the other senior missionaries were helping with the cars since there were 2 zones at the conference. Anyway, about 9:30 Sister Chesbrough and I left the meeting to go pick up the sandwiches at Costco. When we got back we put them in the sacks and the lunches were all ready. We were able to go in and listen to the conference for about 45 minutes before they broke for lunch. One of the things that Elder Bennett talked to the missionaries about was the importance of getting their friends (new name for investigators) to commit to things that were important to them and find ways to help the friends to keep their commitments. He told the missionaries that as they teach people to keep their commitments, they are preparing them to be able to keep covenants that they make later with the Lord. I had not connected it like that before, but thought it was good.
Elder Bennett wanted them to walk quietly in and get their lunches and then go with their companion to someplace in the church and discuss what they had learned and what the Spirit had taught them that they could do to do a little better with their missionary work. As you remember our assignment was to get the missionaries through the food line in 5 minutes—we had four tables with sacks on each side making 8 lines. We did it!! We got cleaned up and back to the office about 2:30. It was hard for me to shift gears and get back to the work in the office.
About 8:30 that night Dad and I delivered a bike to a new missionary in Alexandria—about ½ hour away. Virginia doesn’t spend a lot of money on street lights so the roadways are really quite dark. When I saw the missionaries come into their parking lot they were wearing dark coats and only one of them had a bike light. The other missionary was riding a borrowed bike, so it didn’t have lights. I worry about the missionaries riding at night when the roads are so dark.
Wednesday Dad went to the other half of the mission tour with the other zones. I was in the office with the service missionary for the morning. It is amazing how much work gets done when I’m by myself (almost). I was happy to hear that Dad enjoyed the meeting since he had to miss the one on Tuesday and since he had done quite a bit of preparation on the agenda.
Thursday we woke up to snow on the lawn and very wet snow still coming down. We determined that we would have to drive very slowly. Schools were cancelled in many school districts and late started by 2 hours in others. There was a leadership meeting as the final meeting for the mission tour that the other two couples in the office went to so they could take care of the luncheon, so Dad and I were in the office alone. We were kind of glad that we weren’t out in the snow and slush. Only one of the couples came back to the office so it was a very quiet day and it was dark and cold outside. From about 3 it was dark and seemed more like 6. I was a little concerned about leaving too late and having the slush have a chance to turn to ice, so we left about 4:40 and got home a little earlier than usual.
Friday was a busy and hectic day. Our car has had some weird sounds coming out of it, so Dad asked the transportation secretary to listen to it. They discovered that the power steering fluid was low and filled it. They also decided that the oil should be changed. They took our car to Pep Boys where the Church has a lot of their work done and we could get a discount. They only problem was that it took about 5-6 hours to get the job done. Dad had promised to help the office missionaries help move an investigator, but now had no car. Elder Neilson went and helped the missionaries instead. We work with some really good people.
Friday was the day to do the big rent payment. It costs a little more than $170k to pay the lease payments on the mission apartments each month. Before I can actually print the checks, I have to get the president to approve the payments. On Monday I will print 94-95 rent checks and get them into the mail and hope that the mail can get the payments delivered. Last month we had a record—only one returned check saying it was not deliverable. We FedExed two payments and that solved the problem of two checks making it to the place they were supposed. I don’t understand why FedEx can get the checks delivered and the post office can’t. We came home and both of us felt ready for a week end, do after dinner and dad working a little on rewriting some letters for President Caplin, we watched a tv show on our ipad.
Saturday was a slow start day. Dad got up and worked on the letters again for a bit, then we got laundry started and off to get a couple of errands done. We had lunch and then got ready for a baptism that is somewhere in our mission. I never know where anything is because the roads curve around so much that I can be going north on a road that says East. Anyway, it was 30 miles in some direction. The young girl who was being baptized seemed to be very happy and there were a lot of people there for support. It also seemed that many of them knew her so it appears that she will have a good support system. Dad probably told you in his letter that the fellow that did the baptizing was a recently returned missionary from Finland. We asked him if he knew Taylor Pugmire who had recently returned from Finland. He did know her and said that she got there two months before he did. What a little world!
Since we didn’t bring keyboards or monitors for our computers, we stopped at Walmart on the way home. Boy, did we hit a mega store! We got our day’s exercise just walking around the store. Then when we got out to the car, Dad decided that he needed to go back into the store and buy some cords. We were able to get them set up and I can’t believe how much nicer it is to have a keyboard instead of a touchy mouse pad on the computer that was always changing my font size or making thinks disappear on me. Life is good.
Today at church the talks were good. We really do have a wonderful ward with warm and welcoming people. In Relief Society they announced that the air force band is doing their annual recording session in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Because there will be a short section where they have the audience sing, they want the place filled. I would love to be able to go see the cathedral and listen to the band/orchestra, and then get to sing with them. Doesn’t that sound like fun?! Being civilians, we have to sign some kind of document stating that they can use our picture and get a parking permit. Hope we can get it worked out.
Happy birthday to Barbara on Friday and thanks to them for letting Keri and McKay and girls stay with them last week end. The girls had so much fun feeding the goats and playing with the toys.
Know that we think of you always and love you lots,
Mom
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 service missionary first came to work in the office we though we would have her watch the office so that we could go to the conferences to mingle with the missionaries more. Dad didn’t feel comfortable having her in the office by herself, so we will have to get someone to be with her in the future. All of the other senior missionaries were helping with the cars since there were 2 zones at the conference. Anyway, about 9:30 Sister Chesbrough and I left the meeting to go pick up the sandwiches at Costco. When we got back we put them in the sacks and the lunches were all ready. We were able to go in and listen to the conference for about 45 minutes before they broke for lunch. One of the things that Elder Bennett talked to the missionaries about was the importance of getting their friends (new name for investigators) to commit to things that were important to them and find ways to help the friends to keep their commitments. He told the missionaries that as they teach people to keep their commitments, they are preparing them to be able to keep covenants that they make later with the Lord. I had not connected it like that before, but thought it was good.
Elder Bennett wanted them to walk quietly in and get their lunches and then go with their companion to someplace in the church and discuss what they had learned and what the Spirit had taught them that they could do to do a little better with their missionary work. As you remember our assignment was to get the missionaries through the food line in 5 minutes—we had four tables with sacks on each side making 8 lines. We did it!! We got cleaned up and back to the office about 2:30. It was hard for me to shift gears and get back to the work in the office.
About 8:30 that night Dad and I delivered a bike to a new missionary in Alexandria—about ½ hour away. Virginia doesn’t spend a lot of money on street lights so the roadways are really quite dark. When I saw the missionaries come into their parking lot they were wearing dark coats and only one of them had a bike light. The other missionary was riding a borrowed bike, so it didn’t have lights. I worry about the missionaries riding at night when the roads are so dark.
Wednesday Dad went to the other half of the mission tour with the other zones. I was in the office with the service missionary for the morning. It is amazing how much work gets done when I’m by myself (almost). I was happy to hear that Dad enjoyed the meeting since he had to miss the one on Tuesday and since he had done quite a bit of preparation on the agenda.
Thursday we woke up to snow on the lawn and very wet snow still coming down. We determined that we would have to drive very slowly. Schools were cancelled in many school districts and late started by 2 hours in others. There was a leadership meeting as the final meeting for the mission tour that the other two couples in the office went to so they could take care of the luncheon, so Dad and I were in the office alone. We were kind of glad that we weren’t out in the snow and slush. Only one of the couples came back to the office so it was a very quiet day and it was dark and cold outside. From about 3 it was dark and seemed more like 6. I was a little concerned about leaving too late and having the slush have a chance to turn to ice, so we left about 4:40 and got home a little earlier than usual.
Friday was a busy and hectic day. Our car has had some weird sounds coming out of it, so Dad asked the transportation secretary to listen to it. They discovered that the power steering fluid was low and filled it. They also decided that the oil should be changed. They took our car to Pep Boys where the Church has a lot of their work done and we could get a discount. They only problem was that it took about 5-6 hours to get the job done. Dad had promised to help the office missionaries help move an investigator, but now had no car. Elder Neilson went and helped the missionaries instead. We work with some really good people.
Friday was the day to do the big rent payment. It costs a little more than $170k to pay the lease payments on the mission apartments each month. Before I can actually print the checks, I have to get the president to approve the payments. On Monday I will print 94-95 rent checks and get them into the mail and hope that the mail can get the payments delivered. Last month we had a record—only one returned check saying it was not deliverable. We FedExed two payments and that solved the problem of two checks making it to the place they were supposed. I don’t understand why FedEx can get the checks delivered and the post office can’t. We came home and both of us felt ready for a week end, do after dinner and dad working a little on rewriting some letters for President Caplin, we watched a tv show on our ipad.
Saturday was a slow start day. Dad got up and worked on the letters again for a bit, then we got laundry started and off to get a couple of errands done. We had lunch and then got ready for a baptism that is somewhere in our mission. I never know where anything is because the roads curve around so much that I can be going north on a road that says East. Anyway, it was 30 miles in some direction. The young girl who was being baptized seemed to be very happy and there were a lot of people there for support. It also seemed that many of them knew her so it appears that she will have a good support system. Dad probably told you in his letter that the fellow that did the baptizing was a recently returned missionary from Finland. We asked him if he knew Taylor Pugmire who had recently returned from Finland. He did know her and said that she got there two months before he did. What a little world!
Since we didn’t bring keyboards or monitors for our computers, we stopped at Walmart on the way home. Boy, did we hit a mega store! We got our day’s exercise just walking around the store. Then when we got out to the car, Dad decided that he needed to go back into the store and buy some cords. We were able to get them set up and I can’t believe how much nicer it is to have a keyboard instead of a touchy mouse pad on the computer that was always changing my font size or making thinks disappear on me. Life is good.
Today at church the talks were good. We really do have a wonderful ward with warm and welcoming people. In Relief Society they announced that the air force band is doing their annual recording session in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Because there will be a short section where they have the audience sing, they want the place filled. I would love to be able to go see the cathedral and listen to the band/orchestra, and then get to sing with them. Doesn’t that sound like fun?! Being civilians, we have to sign some kind of document stating that they can use our picture and get a parking permit. Hope we can get it worked out.
Happy birthday to Barbara on Friday and thanks to them for letting Keri and McKay and girls stay with them last week end. The girls had so much fun feeding the goats and playing with the toys.
Know that we think of you always and love you lots,
Mom
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