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 snacks in the office that often last weeks, except when we have missionaries in the office. We went through a couple of big boxes of the snacks this week. The waiting companions often ask if there is anything they can do to help while they wait, so I am learning to leave some of my filing for them to do while they are waiting.
I finally was able to get an appointment to get my hair cut in the late afternoon before we headed over to the mission home to help get ready for the arriving missionaries. We helped the two mission counselors and their wives get the tables all set and the food set out and then sat and visited…and sat and visited…and sat and visited. Finally Garn got a phone call from President Caplin asking if we knew where the missionaries were. They weren’t on their scheduled flight. Garn got on the phone and called Salt Lake travel, but they were all gone. So, he called emergency travel to see if he could answers, but they were on another call. He then called the MTC to see if they knew anything, but they said that all they knew is that they made it to Salt Lake on time. After much research we discovered they had missed their plane in Salt Lake and didn’t think it was important to let someone know that they weren’t on the plane. President and Sister Caplin asked them when they got here if they had been told what to do if they missed a plane and they said yes, but they thought that since they were in Salt Lake the Church would somehow know. Yikes, hope this isn’t a precursor of what they will be like in the future. We had one missionary that arrived on time from the Mexico MTC, so the office elders, the AP’s and President and Sister Caplin came to the mission home and ate dinner and took the one elder to the hotel. He was dead on his feet from having up so long. The office elders are in a trio and the cargo van they were driving had seating for only two, so one of the elders became our companion during all of this time. When the new elder got here, the office elder said he could be the new missionary’s companion and he was SO kind and thoughtful of him. He made it possible for our new elder to be able to go to the hotel early and go to bed and not have to wait for all of the other missionaries to get here. We boxed up the Café Rio dinner and sent it to the hotel so that the late arrivals could have dinner when they got there. We should have known that transfers would be interesting this time with the way they started out.
Tuesday morning we were leaving for the office to pick up some supplies for the luncheon we are in charge of when we got a call from the office elders—or at least the two that had driven the cargo van the night before. They had gotten back to their apartment after 1 am and parked the van in their spot, but found that it had been towed sometime between 1:30 am and 7:30 am. We needed to go get them and take them to the tow place. Since it was a little bit bigger vehicle than a regular car, it was more expensive to have it towed--$275. We got that taken care of, got them on their way to the transfers, and us headed back to the office to open it for the couple who were going to watch it for us. We were able to get to the chapel where transfers were taking place and finish getting things ready for the luncheon. Sister Caplin shared with us that her trip to transfer had not been uneventful either—she was stopped and given two tickets. The policeman said he was showing her mercy because he could have given her four. The ones she got was that she was driving a church vehicle and she had a UT driver’s license. He told her that she should go to court and the judge might show some mercy and dismiss the tickets. Does it sound like he was giving silly tickets to get a quota?
We got back to the office around 3:30 after cleaning up. Garn left a little earlier because those watching the office had another meeting they needed to attend. When he got back to the office he got notice from Salt Lake that three of our visa waiters had finally gotten their visas signed and we could go to the embassy to get them on Wednesday. We had known that they would be signed some time this week, but not which day. Because of that, President hadn’t not assigned these three visa waiters to an area. President was in the office trying to get some final changes taken care of with transfers. It had been a little more hectic than usual because two new zones had been organized and several areas were being white washed. We found that two of the three waiters had gone to a companionship making 4 elders there. He didn’t want four elders together, so more changes had to be made. We told him that we could have two of the elders stay at our place until they left.
Wednesday we kept the two elders and took them to the office with us and had them do their study time while we worked for a while. Then we took them with us and went to pick up the third elder and headed off to Washington D.C. We got their a little early, so had lunch at a pizza place that had the most different pizza ever. It was a very thin crust in long oval shape with a very few items on it. Lots of crust was left around the edges uncovered with anything. While we were eating, Garn asked the missionaries what they knew about the Church in Ecuador—kind of priming them to be able to talk about the Church with the people at the consulate. From here we walked to the consulate to meet with the people who had the visas and passports. They were very gracious people with wonderful smiles and very helpful. After getting the documents that were needed, the gentleman said that the ambassador wanted to meet us. That was pretty exciting. The missionaries were a little shy, so Garn shared that there were 200,000+ members of the Church there in Ecuador meaning that about 1 our of 64 people are members of the Church. He talked about our special building called temples that we have in Ecuador—one already there and one that is going to be built. When we were through he told us that if we ever needed anything to let him know and he would help. It was a great meeting.
After dropping Elder Paxton back with the elders he had been with, we went back to the office with the two that were staying with us. Again President was there and wanted to know what these two elders were going to do until they left. He wanted them to work up until the end. Good idea to keep their work ethic going. Each of these two elders was assigned to a companionship to work in the day time, but returned to our house at the end of the day (9ish). In the morning we got them to their companions. One of the companionships live in our complex, so we just walked them to the missionaries’ apartment. The other elder we drove to the other companionship. It was like having kids at home again getting them to where they needed to be each day. We found that travel had them booked for a 9 am flight on Friday morning. They finally had a date to go to their mission—7 months from the time they entered the MTC.
Thursday we delivered the elders to where they were to be for the day and went in to the office. Poor Garn had so many phones that didn’t work and neither Salt Lake or T-Mobil could get the sim cards to work. With so many areas having white washed it created some missionaries not having a phone for their areas. Kind of stressful for him. One of the office couples said they would be happy to take these three elders to the airport on Friday if we wanted. We felt a little guilty not sharing our fun time with the missionaries, so decided that they should do it. I decided to make muffins so they could eat on the way to the airport and not have to stop and eat at our house.
Friday started out early—the Larsen’s were picking up all of the elders at our house at 6:20. The one elder not staying with us arrived with his temporary companions in time to have muffins and pictures. Our visa waiters were a little nervous, but pretty excited about going. We will miss some of them because they have been here so long and some of them have lived in the building right next to ours.
Garn spent much of the day out checking out some irregularities on a phone. With many conversations with Salt Lake and the elders, he was able to determine that it was just something that happens sometimes with the filtering system that the Church has on the mission phones.
We came home this evening more than ready for the week end, but after dinner we did go and do some grocery shopping. We got home in time for the sister missionaries that live in our complex to come and get their mail. That is one benefit of living close to us is that we bring their mail to our apartment and let them know we have mail for them so they get it the same day it arrives.
Saturday we slept in until 7 and it felt good. I woke up at 6:30, but it felt so good to just close my eyes and rest for a little while longer. We were able to read in Come Follow Me and Jesus the Christ a little longer than usual and that was nice. Garn wanted to take a walk through our woods close to the apartment since the paths are mostly dry now and on our way home we stopped by the farmer’s market that is just at the bottom of the hill in the parking lot of the VTR.
We delivered a chick in an Easter basket to some people that live next door to the Mission Home. These are the people that have been invited to many of our senior missionary get togethers at the mission home. They are very nice people and we thought they might enjoy the knitted chick filled with M&M’s. What we thought was going to be a quick 5-minute visit took well over a half hour as we listened to them talk about their home and their plants etc. Very nice people.
We did a quick run to Costco to get some fresh vegetables and some meat for Easter dinner. The week had so busy that we hadn’t thought of Easter and what we could do to make it a better day for us and for those around us. We invited the sister missionaries who live in our complex, but needed to get the meat. Because we took so long delivering the Easter chick, we had to hurry to get ready for the baptism which was at the southern end of the mission. We got there and had to wait for anyone to show up. At first we were a little worried that it had been cancelled and we had not been notified, but people began arriving and we went on in.
Sunday was a great day. Our ward has so much music talent that. We walked in to prelude music played on the harp. The music by the ward choir was wonderful and the scripture reading fit in so well. The 1st counselor gave a talk that I would like to have a copy of, but the part that touched my heart the most was when the young women sang Christ the Lord is Risen. There were at least 20 young women and maybe more. One of the new young woman is very handicapped. She is in a motorized wheelchair and is very hard to understand when she speaks. Even with all of her problems, she always has a smile and radiates a spirit of goodness. She went up to sing with girls and you could hear her attempts to sing and could tell by her mouth that she was saying the words that the other girls were singing. What touched my heart was that because Christ is Risen, she too will be resurrected with a perfect body and will be able to sing. Although her words were not understood, her spirit was felt and the song became holy as it was sung.
Our Sunday School class was done well and I appreciated the comments that were made. One comment that was made by our stake president was when the woman washed Jesus’ head and feet with the alabaster oil, the Savior told the people to leave her alone. That she was giving what she could. The stake president then said, that although it may not be a big offering it was still accepted because it was what she could give. We don’t have to serve big, but we can serve with what we have and the intents of our heart will be known and accepted of the Savior. It has been a good day.
We had the sisters over for dinner and then we had them help us deliver goodies to our neighbors. We wanted to introduce them to our neighbors so that we might someday be able to have the sisters teach them.
Later Garn and I walked a little around our area admiring the blossoms and the new leaves coming out. It has been a long time since we have had a winter where everything dies and the world looks so bleak. That makes the renewal of life in the Spring so much more beautiful. Somewhere in this there must be a similitude for life?
Our hearts are full with love for the Savior and his willing sacrifice for us which allows us to repent and return to our Father in Heaven. Because of him we can be with our family forever and for that I am SO grateful. This has been a good week of studying the Savior’s life and my heart is full.
Sending my love to all and hoping you can make this next week a great one,
Mom
PS The last two pictures wouldn't download, so you will have to get them next week.
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 snacks in the office that often last weeks, except when we have missionaries in the office. We went through a couple of big boxes of the snacks this week. The waiting companions often ask if there is anything they can do to help while they wait, so I am learning to leave some of my filing for them to do while they are waiting.
I finally was able to get an appointment to get my hair cut in the late afternoon before we headed over to the mission home to help get ready for the arriving missionaries. We helped the two mission counselors and their wives get the tables all set and the food set out and then sat and visited…and sat and visited…and sat and visited. Finally Garn got a phone call from President Caplin asking if we knew where the missionaries were. They weren’t on their scheduled flight. Garn got on the phone and called Salt Lake travel, but they were all gone. So, he called emergency travel to see if he could answers, but they were on another call. He then called the MTC to see if they knew anything, but they said that all they knew is that they made it to Salt Lake on time. After much research we discovered they had missed their plane in Salt Lake and didn’t think it was important to let someone know that they weren’t on the plane. President and Sister Caplin asked them when they got here if they had been told what to do if they missed a plane and they said yes, but they thought that since they were in Salt Lake the Church would somehow know. Yikes, hope this isn’t a precursor of what they will be like in the future. We had one missionary that arrived on time from the Mexico MTC, so the office elders, the AP’s and President and Sister Caplin came to the mission home and ate dinner and took the one elder to the hotel. He was dead on his feet from having up so long. The office elders are in a trio and the cargo van they were driving had seating for only two, so one of the elders became our companion during all of this time. When the new elder got here, the office elder said he could be the new missionary’s companion and he was SO kind and thoughtful of him. He made it possible for our new elder to be able to go to the hotel early and go to bed and not have to wait for all of the other missionaries to get here. We boxed up the Café Rio dinner and sent it to the hotel so that the late arrivals could have dinner when they got there. We should have known that transfers would be interesting this time with the way they started out.
Tuesday morning we were leaving for the office to pick up some supplies for the luncheon we are in charge of when we got a call from the office elders—or at least the two that had driven the cargo van the night before. They had gotten back to their apartment after 1 am and parked the van in their spot, but found that it had been towed sometime between 1:30 am and 7:30 am. We needed to go get them and take them to the tow place. Since it was a little bit bigger vehicle than a regular car, it was more expensive to have it towed--$275. We got that taken care of, got them on their way to the transfers, and us headed back to the office to open it for the couple who were going to watch it for us. We were able to get to the chapel where transfers were taking place and finish getting things ready for the luncheon. Sister Caplin shared with us that her trip to transfer had not been uneventful either—she was stopped and given two tickets. The policeman said he was showing her mercy because he could have given her four. The ones she got was that she was driving a church vehicle and she had a UT driver’s license. He told her that she should go to court and the judge might show some mercy and dismiss the tickets. Does it sound like he was giving silly tickets to get a quota?
We got back to the office around 3:30 after cleaning up. Garn left a little earlier because those watching the office had another meeting they needed to attend. When he got back to the office he got notice from Salt Lake that three of our visa waiters had finally gotten their visas signed and we could go to the embassy to get them on Wednesday. We had known that they would be signed some time this week, but not which day. Because of that, President hadn’t not assigned these three visa waiters to an area. President was in the office trying to get some final changes taken care of with transfers. It had been a little more hectic than usual because two new zones had been organized and several areas were being white washed. We found that two of the three waiters had gone to a companionship making 4 elders there. He didn’t want four elders together, so more changes had to be made. We told him that we could have two of the elders stay at our place until they left.
Wednesday we kept the two elders and took them to the office with us and had them do their study time while we worked for a while. Then we took them with us and went to pick up the third elder and headed off to Washington D.C. We got their a little early, so had lunch at a pizza place that had the most different pizza ever. It was a very thin crust in long oval shape with a very few items on it. Lots of crust was left around the edges uncovered with anything. While we were eating, Garn asked the missionaries what they knew about the Church in Ecuador—kind of priming them to be able to talk about the Church with the people at the consulate. From here we walked to the consulate to meet with the people who had the visas and passports. They were very gracious people with wonderful smiles and very helpful. After getting the documents that were needed, the gentleman said that the ambassador wanted to meet us. That was pretty exciting. The missionaries were a little shy, so Garn shared that there were 200,000+ members of the Church there in Ecuador meaning that about 1 our of 64 people are members of the Church. He talked about our special building called temples that we have in Ecuador—one already there and one that is going to be built. When we were through he told us that if we ever needed anything to let him know and he would help. It was a great meeting.
After dropping Elder Paxton back with the elders he had been with, we went back to the office with the two that were staying with us. Again President was there and wanted to know what these two elders were going to do until they left. He wanted them to work up until the end. Good idea to keep their work ethic going. Each of these two elders was assigned to a companionship to work in the day time, but returned to our house at the end of the day (9ish). In the morning we got them to their companions. One of the companionships live in our complex, so we just walked them to the missionaries’ apartment. The other elder we drove to the other companionship. It was like having kids at home again getting them to where they needed to be each day. We found that travel had them booked for a 9 am flight on Friday morning. They finally had a date to go to their mission—7 months from the time they entered the MTC.
Thursday we delivered the elders to where they were to be for the day and went in to the office. Poor Garn had so many phones that didn’t work and neither Salt Lake or T-Mobil could get the sim cards to work. With so many areas having white washed it created some missionaries not having a phone for their areas. Kind of stressful for him. One of the office couples said they would be happy to take these three elders to the airport on Friday if we wanted. We felt a little guilty not sharing our fun time with the missionaries, so decided that they should do it. I decided to make muffins so they could eat on the way to the airport and not have to stop and eat at our house.
Friday started out early—the Larsen’s were picking up all of the elders at our house at 6:20. The one elder not staying with us arrived with his temporary companions in time to have muffins and pictures. Our visa waiters were a little nervous, but pretty excited about going. We will miss some of them because they have been here so long and some of them have lived in the building right next to ours.
Garn spent much of the day out checking out some irregularities on a phone. With many conversations with Salt Lake and the elders, he was able to determine that it was just something that happens sometimes with the filtering system that the Church has on the mission phones.
We came home this evening more than ready for the week end, but after dinner we did go and do some grocery shopping. We got home in time for the sister missionaries that live in our complex to come and get their mail. That is one benefit of living close to us is that we bring their mail to our apartment and let them know we have mail for them so they get it the same day it arrives.
Saturday we slept in until 7 and it felt good. I woke up at 6:30, but it felt so good to just close my eyes and rest for a little while longer. We were able to read in Come Follow Me and Jesus the Christ a little longer than usual and that was nice. Garn wanted to take a walk through our woods close to the apartment since the paths are mostly dry now and on our way home we stopped by the farmer’s market that is just at the bottom of the hill in the parking lot of the VTR.
We delivered a chick in an Easter basket to some people that live next door to the Mission Home. These are the people that have been invited to many of our senior missionary get togethers at the mission home. They are very nice people and we thought they might enjoy the knitted chick filled with M&M’s. What we thought was going to be a quick 5-minute visit took well over a half hour as we listened to them talk about their home and their plants etc. Very nice people.
We did a quick run to Costco to get some fresh vegetables and some meat for Easter dinner. The week had so busy that we hadn’t thought of Easter and what we could do to make it a better day for us and for those around us. We invited the sister missionaries who live in our complex, but needed to get the meat. Because we took so long delivering the Easter chick, we had to hurry to get ready for the baptism which was at the southern end of the mission. We got there and had to wait for anyone to show up. At first we were a little worried that it had been cancelled and we had not been notified, but people began arriving and we went on in.
Sunday was a great day. Our ward has so much music talent that. We walked in to prelude music played on the harp. The music by the ward choir was wonderful and the scripture reading fit in so well. The 1st counselor gave a talk that I would like to have a copy of, but the part that touched my heart the most was when the young women sang Christ the Lord is Risen. There were at least 20 young women and maybe more. One of the new young woman is very handicapped. She is in a motorized wheelchair and is very hard to understand when she speaks. Even with all of her problems, she always has a smile and radiates a spirit of goodness. She went up to sing with girls and you could hear her attempts to sing and could tell by her mouth that she was saying the words that the other girls were singing. What touched my heart was that because Christ is Risen, she too will be resurrected with a perfect body and will be able to sing. Although her words were not understood, her spirit was felt and the song became holy as it was sung.
Our Sunday School class was done well and I appreciated the comments that were made. One comment that was made by our stake president was when the woman washed Jesus’ head and feet with the alabaster oil, the Savior told the people to leave her alone. That she was giving what she could. The stake president then said, that although it may not be a big offering it was still accepted because it was what she could give. We don’t have to serve big, but we can serve with what we have and the intents of our heart will be known and accepted of the Savior. It has been a good day.
We had the sisters over for dinner and then we had them help us deliver goodies to our neighbors. We wanted to introduce them to our neighbors so that we might someday be able to have the sisters teach them.
Later Garn and I walked a little around our area admiring the blossoms and the new leaves coming out. It has been a long time since we have had a winter where everything dies and the world looks so bleak. That makes the renewal of life in the Spring so much more beautiful. Somewhere in this there must be a similitude for life?
Our hearts are full with love for the Savior and his willing sacrifice for us which allows us to repent and return to our Father in Heaven. Because of him we can be with our family forever and for that I am SO grateful. This has been a good week of studying the Savior’s life and my heart is full.
Sending my love to all and hoping you can make this next week a great one,
Mom
PS The last two pictures wouldn't download, so you will have to get them next week.
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