Washington, D.C. South Mission

Dear Family, Here it is another Sunday and time to review the week and see what we have learned and try to remember the tender mercies from the Lord. This week has been relatively quiet in comparison to last week. Monday we came in and worked on picking up the pieces from last week and being gone so much of the time. It wasn’t too bad. I wonder if I am getting a better handle on things or it is just quieter. One thing for certain is that since having such a bad end of January with SO many of our February checks not making it to their destinations, I have FedExed about 13 payments and that really helped. It costs $5 instead of $.50 to send these payments, but we don’t have the 10% late payments or threats to send the account to the lawyers. In the end the mission probably saves money. Tuesday I was looking at the calendar for May and noticed a new luncheon scheduled for a Saturday during the Mission tour. So I asked one of the other senior sisters in the office if she knew anythi...

Dear Family, Mission News On Easter we had a wonderful sacrament meeting with beautiful music and the counselor in the bishopric gave a great talk on the Atonement of Christ and the Resurrection. We had Sister Banluta and Sister Withers over for dinner. After dinner we took chickees to 4 of our neighbors and introduced them to the Sister Missionaries. This week I helped solve a couple of technical problems with phones. I am getting more comfortable working on these problems and I can facilitate faster the resolution of the problems. The tech support people in Salt Lake do the real problem solving. I now know how to faster and better to access their support. I called and talked with some of the missionaries that are heavy users of afterhours data and phone calls. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I tried my best to put a positive spin on the conversation. President Caplin also asked me to call some missionaries that are not writing their weekly letters as often as they shou...

Dear Family, What a week this has been. It was transfer week with added twists and turns. We were so glad to get to the week end—and we are still alive and standing!! Monday was the day that three of our visa waiters were leaving—from two different airports and at three different times. President Caplin asked Garn if he would get that taken care of, so he asked the other two office couples to help deliver these missionaries. One of the couples picked up Elder Ramsey at 6:00 so they could get him to the Dulles airport for a 9 am flight. They needed to be at the airport two hours early for an international flight (Ecuador). We picked up Elder Spencer at 9:30 for a 12 pm flight at Reagan airport, and another couple took Sister Isabelle to the Dulles airport for a 5 pm flight to New Zealand. When we got back to the office around 10:30, the office was full of missionaries waiting to have their exit interviews. Of course, their companions are there with them. We have jars of fruit s...

Dear Family, Mission News Monday we took Elder Spencer to the airport. He is off to the Ukraine. Tuesday we (mainly Sister Chesbrough) fed the new missionaries a macaroni bar lunch. It was delicious. Everybody loved it. Macaroni Bar – It was very good! This is a picture of the Macaroni Bar with a close up of the deserts. Elder Downs-Vehicle Coordinator, Sister Larsen-Referral Secretary, Elder Larsen-Housing Coordinator Sister Chesbrough-my super helper, who loves to cook, Sister Downs-mission nurse, Elder Downs-vehicle coordinator. We had 2 visa waiters stay the night with us on Tues-Thursday. We took them to the consulate in Washington DC and had a 10 minute meeting with the Ambassador from Ecuador. This was a stressful week with the phones. A lot of phones got switched around. Phones had technical problems. One phone was run over by a car. Another was lost. It took me 4 days to get SIM card activated for one set of missionaries that needed a new phone...

Dear Family, What a good week we have had. It is always good when we are busy and doing what we can to help. We got to the office and got to work. This 45 minutes to an hour are some of our most productive time with no interruptions. It was a little quieter than usual because one of the senior couples was not there and the other office couple was out doing work on the apartments. I wouldn’t want to have it that quiet all of the time, but sometimes it is nice to have the office with no distractions. We left a little earlier because Garn was anxious to get home and work on things for WES, for taxes, and a proposal for buying our partner out. While he was doing that I did some errand running to get a couple of things done that needed to get done. Tuesday was a different day. All of the senior couples were in the office and we had the President come into the office in the afternoon. He had a couple of elders come in to help with the transfers (Garn thinks these elders might be the ...

Dear Family, Mission News We attended two baptisms. John a high school teacher from Ethiopia was introduced to the Church while he was working at a 7-11. While engaged in a conversation with a boy on the subject of the Bible, the boy said he would be back in a few minutes. He came back 10 minutes with a Book of Mormon. The boy connected him with the missionaries and the rest is history. A 16 year old priest baptized 40 year old John. We were asked to take a Hispanic woman from Bolivia to a baptism on Saturday. She wants to get baptized before she goes to back to Bolivia in two weeks. Pablo 50 years old or so was baptized by his son-in-law. We did not understand the words of the service, but we surely felt the spirit. 3 of our visa-waiters got their visas approved, but more paperwork needs to be done. Hopefully they will go the end of next week. We got some new assistants to the president. They were in the president’s office when the mission president’s wife came in. She wanted a...

Dear Family, We just finished a wonderful Conference. I am always a little sad as the last speaker finishes his talk and the last note of the last song fades away. It has been a good week. Monday Kent and Chelsea caught the train right by our house so they could go into Washington D.C. to see a few last things. Kent wanted to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving so they needed to be there to get tickets by 8:30. They were lucky and got a 9:15 tour. Things are so far from each other because the buildings are so large that even if the building is next door it is a block walking distance. From there they had a capitol tour, a visit the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Garn and I worked in the office and met them at home around 5:00. From here we went to the Jung’s home for a Korean dinner. Sister Jung really went all out and Chelsea was in heaven. Some of my favorites were the tofu (of which I am not a big fan when American’s fix it), the noodles, and some kind of potato pan...

Dear Family, Mission News As I was looking back on my calendar, I don’t see any unusual events. However, I have been busier than usual with little unusual things. I have helped several missionaries solve phone problems. One parent called and wanted to know the best way to get a bike to his newly arrive son. One big challenge is to help Mom get on the apartment portals. She needs to get on the portals to get the amounts she needs to pay for utilities and also to see if the USPS delivered the mail. We are making progress on this, but the progress is slow. Thursday night I set up a mission presidency meeting with all participants at “attending” from their home. I used Zoom and it went very well. The presidency meeting deals almost exclusively with working with the members to find and retain. Virtually nothing about the missionaries. The president works mostly with the young missionary leaders lead and direct the young missionaries. We have three visa waiters that are going to Ecuad...