Skip to main content

Sister Nelson - Conference

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 pancake. It was fun to see Chelsea interact with them--she is so good to show her appreciation for their efforts. What a delightful evening.

There are two sets of missionaries that live in our apartment complex and since Garn is in charge of the mail, we bring their mail home with us and let them know that we have mail for them. When they get home at 9:30 they drop by and pick up their mail. We put some cookies into bags for two of the missionaries that don’t get any mail or packages. Their companions get lots of mail/packages and their companions don’t get any. Kent had baked cookies Sunday evening, so we used his cookies and put some in cellophane bags for the companions that didn’t get any mail. Then we all climbed into the car to deliver mail to the Mission President’s home so he could deliver the mail at interviews on Tuesday. We thought it would be fun for Kent to meet them since they have a home in Santa Clara, UT as does he. While we were there President Caplin told us to take Tuesday off and spend it with our family. He even asked if we wanted him to call into the office to tell them we weren’t coming. We thanked him, but told him we would take care of that. He is very good to let us make time for family. We went home and played games for a little bit.

Tuesday I got up and got a rent payment printed and ready to FedEx before going on our adventure for the day. The check had not shown up—so probably either got lost or will show up in our office with a note saying insufficient address and they could not deliver it. For some reason it was good enough last month and good enough to get the utility payments to them. Go figure. After getting that dropped off at FedEx, we headed for Mount Vernon. It was good to see where George Washington lived and where he loved being. It was fun to hear that he didn’t want to be the leader of the army after winning the Revolutionary War or the King and declined to serve a 3rd term as president. He felt he had done his civic duty and it was time for someone else to serve. He saw himself as a farmer and wanted to go back to Mount Vernon. The museums with all of the displays and movies are really interesting.

Kent and Chelsea really wanted to have some sea food in state that was not land locked. They treated us to a wonder seafood linner. The food was cooked very well and all of us were glad we ordered what we did. We came home and spent our last evening playing games, laughing and just having a wonderful time.

Wednesday came all too soon and it was time for Kent and Chelsea to leave to go back to Utah. They flew back together at least to Denver. Then Kent went to Las Vegas and Chelsea to Salt Lake. Garn and I went back to the office and had to get ourselves back into the swing of things.

We got a request from President Caplin to take care of the gifts for the Area Presidency and their wives who are coming to a Mission President’s Conference. Our mission president and wife get to be the hosts. Apparently it is custom to have a gift (fruit basket or something like that) in the rooms and President Caplin asked Garn if he take care of it. We will just finish up transfers on Wednesday and the mission presidents and their wives come in on Thursday, so things are going to be a bit hectic then.

Friday we tried to get things finished up so we could have the week end free to watch Conference. About 4 o’clock we took another rent check to an apartment complex and by the time we would get back to the office it would be too late to get anything done, so we went home. We needed to get a small gift for Nancy’s son. We had been invited for pizza because it was Lucas’s birthday and then we would have our discussion. I had noticed that he has a lot of legos and thought he might enjoy some of those. We picked correctly because he seemed quite pleased with them. The lesson went better than some of them in the past have gone. It seems better when Lucas gets occupied somewhere else. Nancy wants her children hear about Jesus Christ, but I think she is going to have to hear it on her own and when she understands it she can teach it to him. At this point he is so disruptive that she can’t concentrate enough to get the message. This one was a bit better and I am beginning to think there is hope.

Saturday rolled around and it was Conference Day. There was a baptism that I wanted to go to at 10:30. I though that if it was on time and lasted only an hour that I could make it back in time for Conference. It did start on time and I did make it back in time. To add a cherry on top, the baptism was very nice and well worth the half hour drive to be there. Garn stayed home feeling he needed to get some work done for WES. He has neglected WES a little the last couple of weeks and there are some situations that we need to make some decisions about.

Conference was good. There seemed to be a theme of repent, repent and “Come Follow Me.” I am hopeful that I can do as we were counseled to do. Sometimes it sounds so simple and easy when they say it, but sometimes it is a little harder to put into practice. I will keep trying. It seems so strange to finish the priesthood session at 10 p.m. instead of our west coast time of finishing at 7 p.m.

Today we got up and got ready for Conference and decided to invite the Elder Downs to dinner today. His wife had to fly back to Salt Lake with a sister missionary. We thought he might like to eat with us instead of eating alone. Then during the morning session we got a text from the elders who are teaching Nancy and asked if we would like to watch Conference with her. They can’t go to her home by themselves, so that is why we get to go to appointments with them. We went and were pleasantly surprised at how much she heard and appreciated. Her daughter also watched Conference, but I don’t think that she was as interested, but she was respectful. Lucas played with something in the other room—close enough to hear, but not disruptive. It was a good session.

We hurried home to put dinner on the table for Elder Downs. Dinner was a little more done that was optimal even with the oven on a very low temperature. It was either a little too done or waiting at least an hour for dinner. We chose to have dinner when we got home at 6:20.

Again, we are at the end of another week. It has been fun to have different family members visit with us this past 6 weeks and fun to have Conference. Life is good and we are so grateful.

We think of you often and keep you in our prayers.

Love,
Mom

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Elder Nelson - Family Day and History Symposium

Dear Family, Mission News Monday Elder Larsen and I went to the Japanese restaurant where David works. We are still trying to get him to come to Church, but he did not make it today. He has a substance abuse problem that we would like to help him with. On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Woodbridge and Annandale zone interviews. While the president was interviewing the elders, I was going over device audit procedures with the elders who were waiting. I learned/observed a couple of things: I need to come up with a plan to pull mission owned devices out of the field. The missionaries will use the devices they have purchased and brought into the field. There are a couple of issues with this. First it is not obvious how to store all of the data on the phone to an area safe place in the “cloud”. 90% of the data is stored on the area book which is a cloud software. The remaining 10% is not so easily saved so new missionaries coming into the area can have it. Second, on exchanges missi...

Elder Nelson - New Senior Missionaries and a Party on the Farm

Dear Family, Mission News I spent a fair amount of time preparing for the arrival of two senior couples. They have assignments that are very vague. They don’t really have anyone that supervises their work. The mission president is too busy with the junior missionaries to even know what they are doing. The stake presidents and bishops are likewise preoccupied their high priority responsibilities. Much is left up to the senior missionaries to find and create good things to do. The last two couples that came floundered for a couple of months before they engaged productively in the work. It was very frustrating for them. I am working with the stake presidents under the direction of President Caplin to make sure there is direction and responsibilities for these couples when they arrive. I want them to hit the ground running. I spent about 5-6 hours sending a bike home for an elder that had to go home early. Picking up the bike, helmet and lights from three different location...

Sister Nelson - Baptism

Dear Family, We send our love and support to Amanda and Lance and family. We were sorry to hear of Amanda’s grandmother Kenney on Saturday. She will be happier being with her eternal companion, but she will still me missed a great deal by her family. Know that we love you and are praying for you. It seems that we stay pretty busy, but looking back over the week it’s hard to figure out what took up so much of the time. We got to the office on Monday a little earlier than usual and that gave me a little bit of quiet time to concentrate. Then I spent the entire day trying to get some of the vendors who had changed addresses or had sold their properties to someone else approved and updated. I do the vendor approval so rarely that I still am not comfortable with the process of getting them set up and approved and then set up for payments in IMOS. I also had more calls from the missionaries about when they would be funded than I have had since I got here combined. They would ask if t...