Washington, D.C. South Mission

Dear Family, Mission News This was transfer week which is always a crazy time. I attempted to give flight information to the President, so he can pick up and drop off missionaries. On Monday 11 of our 16 new missionaries got stranded in Minneapolis and didn’t arrive until midnight. Mom and I had dinner with the 5 missionaries at the mission home and took their pictures. It is fun to meet the new missionaries and feel their excitement. Transfer day is on Tuesday. This time I had to make sure we had phones for the missionaries in new areas. Wednesday the departing missionaries went to the Dulles Airport in the morning. Elder Shek was going home to Hong Kong at 6:15am. The rest of the missionaries’ flights were at 10:00am. So, Mom and I got up at 3:50am to take Elder Shek to the airport. He is a super missionary and it was a delight to talk with him for about a half hour. We were back home in bed before 5:30am. Wednesday, I went to a district council meeting about an hour northwes...

Dear Family, Are we really beginning the last week of January? In some ways it seems that New Years was months ago instead of weeks and in other ways it’s hard to believe that we are finishing up January. We had transfers this week and that always makes things exciting. It seems mission life revolves around transfers. It starts off with all of the missionaries going home rotating through the mission office so that they can have their exit interviews. Of course, their companions have to come, so they are waiting in the front office while their companion is in with the President. We love getting to visit with the missionaries and that is why we get distracted and visit with them. BUT that makes for less work getting accomplished. There are always last minute changes or things that need to be done to get ready for the missionaries flying in on Monday evening, so life on Monday got pretty exciting? I had to make sure that all of the returning missionaries had sufficient cash to...

Dear Family, Here I am writing you from a wet and cloudy state. We are kind of glad to have the rain come and melt some of the snow so that with all of the new missionaries coming in on Monday and “finished” missionaries leaving on Wednesday we can do all of the traveling and transferring a little easier. Monday started out with even more snow on our car and more snow on the roads because it had snowed during the night. Dad went out to clean off the car while I finished getting ready to find that someone had already cleaned the care off and cleared an area around the car so we could get in without getting our feet too snowy. How kind was that?! When we went out to the care to leave a neighbor was out cleaning some of the cars and we asked if he had done it and he said no, but that our neighbor who lives just in front of us had done it. What a nice act of service that was! And what a nice way to start the day! It has been a little more hectic and unsettled at the office this week. ...

Dear Family, Mission News Monday, we had a Senior Missionary going away party for Elder and Sister Bloomfield. They are leaving this coming Tuesday, but they won’t be released for 3 months. The big problem is Sister Bloomfield is the mission nurse and there are no potential mission nurses “in the system”. She will be the mission nurse from Delta, Utah. Anyway, it is always fun to get together with the senior missionaries. I attended 3 district council meetings this week which was real treat. The missionaries in general are very open to suggestions and learning. The missionaries are trying hard and most seem to be really enjoying their missions. We seem to be getting a fair amount of baptisms in the Spanish program. The poise, confidence, leadership and teaching ability these elders and sister have is remarkable. This generation is strong. In one district council meeting a sister said that they did a door approach and the woman seemed receptive. She asked, “Do you like lesbians?”...

Good Morning, Here we are in the middle of January and we finally got a snow storm. Not really a storm, but steady, soft falling of snow. It has taken most of yesterday and this morning to get the amount of snow that we have and enough to cancel church for today. Church would never have been cancelled in Utah for this amount of snow. Garn and I had a bet about whether Church would be cancelled today when we went to bed last night. I was so sure that it would not be cancelled because there was so little snow on the ground and it had been spritzing around since 1 p.m. on Saturday. I guess the steady turtle won the race because we woke up this morning with about 2 inches of snow on the cars and fences. We decided to see if the other senior missionary couple would like to come to our home and we could have a “Sunday School” type gathering and have a lesson together. We thought we would invite the sister missionaries that live in our complex to come along with the Spanish elders ...

Dear Family, Mission News I am now attending district councils once or twice a week. The objectives are:  Encourage District Leaders to be more prepared by having a senior missionary show up.  Encourage missionaries to help new members to write and share their conversion stories. Invite missionaries to write and share some of their spiritual experiences, tender mercies and miracles with President Caplin.  I get about 10-15 minutes to lead a discussion. That is fun for me. In the two district councils I attended last week the zone leaders did training. I am impressed by the capability, poise and maturity of these leaders. They are awesome. As I get to know more of the young missionaries I am also impressed by their obedience and willingness to serve. It is a privilege and pleasure to rub shoulders with these wonderful young saints. One major difference in the missionary work now than when I was in the field 48 years ago is Preach My Gospel manual. There is a to...

Dear Family, First of all, a Happy Birthday to Elizabeth today. We send our love to her. This has been a fun and full week. It’s hard to believe that New Year’s Day was just this last Tuesday—it seems weeks ago. Monday morning we arose early determined to begin our new schedule. We read and studied our “Come Follow Me” book along with the scriptures and found many new questions and insights. By 6:30 we were ready for a walk and went exploring in our neighborhood. As we walk it, we get to know a little better where things are and how our apartment fits into the neighborhood. We came back got the worked on some office stuff from home, got the laundry going, cleaned bathrooms and had breakfast. It was only 10 and we felt we were really going to get things accomplished today. Before going to get the things we needed for the district New Year’s Eve get together, we decided to stop by the office to get some information that Dad needed and for me to do some work on money for the sister...

Dear Family, Today is Elizabeth Jayne Perry’s 3rd Birthday Mission News New Year’s Eve Mom and I got up at 6:00 did our “Come Follow Me” study, cleaned the apartment, had breakfast, went for a walk and then went into the office to do a couple of quick things. When we got there, the other senior missionaries were there in their normal missionary attire doing their normal work. We thought the office was “closed” on New Year’s Eve, but it wasn’t. We felt a little foolish, but we got over it. Departure dates: President Caplin noticed that two sisters that came out together, were not going home together. He asked me to look into it. The is a report in iMOS (Internet Missionary Operating System) that shows missionary start dates and release dates. There were several irregularities. For sister missionaries about half of the sisters serve 18 months plus 3 weeks and about half 18 months minus three weeks. Part of this is caused by the fact that 18 months fall right in the middle of the tr...