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 new APs). We will have to wait and see. Sister Caplin was also in to work with a couple of the sisters who were meeting her there. Garn left around 5:45 to go cool the car down while I locked up. When I got in the car and he went to roll up the back driver’s side window we heard a metal clinking sound and discovered that the window wouldn’t roll up. It was miserable to drive home with the back windows down—not because of the noise but because of the pressure on our ear drums. It felt worse than take off in an airplane or landing. We also worried about having someone steal anything out of the car like the registration, insurance papers, etc. We took all that in for the evening so we wouldn’t lose that. That evening we had the sisters come and get their mail and some Books of Mormon in Vietnamese and some other language that they needed for their teaching. It is so much fun to get to have extra contact with the missionaries and hear how their day has gone.
Wednesday we some of the knitted Easter Chicks in to the Senior couples to share our Easter tradition with them. Things were so hectic in the morning that Dad got to the office without his name badge. We had bought extra ones, but he had put all of his extra ones on his suit coats so that when he put on a suit he would always have one. He thought he had put one in the car, but when he went out to get it, all he found was one of mine. He figured that no one would notice and something was better than nothing. He was right--NO one noticed his name tag was
"Sister" Nelson instead of "Elder" Nelson. Then Garn made an appointment to take the car in for repair. The lady who works in the office part time has a sun who owns a shop that repairs cars and he was able to work us in. Driving our car to the shop was not fun because of the ear thing again. Garn drove Sister Chesbrough’s car and then we drove back to the office. About 3:30 in the afternoon I went with Sister Chesbrough so she could drop me off to pick up the car. What good people we work with. The fix-it job was NOT cheap, but we are grateful that it was fixed so quickly. I got back to the office in time to help Garn clean before going home. While he worked on more WES stuff I read a book about experiences from Elder Busche’s life. He was the first German general authority. It is inspiring to read some of his experiences.
Thursday was a good day in the office. Garn had gotten the idea that the best way for us to help the missionaries would be for us to do some finding for them to be able to teach more. He figured that if he got the zone leaders from the stake where the Mission Office is, they could come on their lunch hour and teach us how to be better at finding. We bought lunch for them and they came to teach. They are such good elders and did such a great job that we were all ready to go out and open our mouths. They had some good ideas of how to do it and mentioned Elder Uchtdorf’s talk in Conference. We shared ideas of what to say in certain situations and got some ideas to put into our “play book”. We have a new neighbor who just moved in where our other friend that we helped move out lived. We got ideas of how we can continue the friendship and at some get the missionaries involved.
I had a missionary card that I needed to deliver to one of the Sister missionaries who had lost hers at the beginning of the month. They were having a baptism at 6 pm, so we decided to go to the baptism and deliver the card then. It was a good baptism and we were glad that we had gone. During our training in the office they had mentioned that people who are baptized and are introduced to the missionaries by friends and have these friends sit in on the teaching are 90% more likely to stay active in the Church where those who don’t have friends involved. We decided that we probably ought to get in touch with the missionaries who are teaching our friend who moved and see what we can do to help with his teaching. As a starter we decided to stop by his home on our way home from the baptism. He wasn’t home, so we will have to make another stop and maybe take a goodie or something.
The elders and sisters came to get their mail this evening after they got home. It is nice for them to get their mail this way instead of having to wait for a district meeting or when the zone leaders can find time to get it to them.
Friday was another day in the office. We are still all excited about opening our mouths, so when a man came to the office to drop off some menus for a Japanese restaurant, Garn decided to talk with him a little. The man said that he noticed the badge and said he knew a little bit about the Church, so Garn started talking about the Church a little with him. I had gone out to put some things in the front office and stayed to talk a little with him. Then the housing secretary joined us. It was fun to get his history and talk to him about the Savior a bit. He talked about the spirit he could feel in the office and wished he had that in his life. About that time the 3 office elders came in to work on some projects for the President, but stopped to talk with him. They were so good to get his phone number before he left. We made plans with the office elders to go to the restaurant on Saturday when David would be at work so that we could go further with the teaching. The missionaries said they would call to make the appointment and give us a call so we could meet them there. We were all excited—we may not be great at this, but at least we are trying.
We were on cleaning duty this evening, so did that before we left. We ate a quick dinner and went grocery shopping for ourselves and for the luncheon we are in charge of at transfers.
Saturday Garn left to meet a visa waiter missionary who is leaving on Monday. President Caplin had asked him if he would interview the 3 missionaries before they left. It wouldn’t be a worthiness interview because they all had just finished those recently. This interview was to see what they had learned while they were here, what they liked, what they wished they had done, etc. Garn came home to get me so we could go pick up a friend (investigator) of some Spanish elders. They can’t take people in their cars with them especially when they are the girls. They were in a trio, so one of the elders went with us to translate and the other two rode in their car. We went to the baptism and enjoyed it a lot even though it was all in Spanish. It’s a good thing that the Spanish use their hands so much when they speak that sometimes we could figure out what they were talking about and we could get a word here and there. Mary, of course, could understand everything that they were saying so the baptism was a great experience for her. She is going back to Bolivia in a couple of weeks and would like to be baptized before she goes. With the visa she has she can’t come back for 10 years and is afraid she won’t ever be able to come back. The really sad thing for me is her 18 year old and 13 year old don’t want to go back to Bolivia, so they will be staying with their father. I don’t know if I could leave my children behind. Anyway, it was a wonderful baptism and we felt the Spirit even though we didn’t understand much of what was said.
We got home and Garn worked on taxes while I finished up the shopping for the luncheon. When I got home, it was time to fix dinner and finished up the last of the taxes. It doesn’t make either of us very happy when we work on them, so it is good to finally good to have them done. Because of the money we had to take out of our 401K to keep the company going last June, we had a lot of money that was taxable. That made it so we had some taxes to pay that we wouldn’t have had to do otherwise. Oh, well, that is done and now we can move on.
Today is Don’s birthday. I am grateful for him and for his example for me and my family. Hope you had a great day! Church was good and we had some good visits with family. Oh, how grateful I am that we can be family forever.
We had the new member/returned member fireside this evening and it always a wonderful to hear the conversion stories of these new members. Tonight we had a Jewish man, a Palestinian man, and two other young men who bore beautiful testimonies. The net is open wide and bringing people from all over into the gospel fold. It’s now time to turn in and try to get a good night’s sleep so I don’t start off the week tired.
Again, we love you all and pray for you daily.
Love,
Mom
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 new APs). We will have to wait and see. Sister Caplin was also in to work with a couple of the sisters who were meeting her there. Garn left around 5:45 to go cool the car down while I locked up. When I got in the car and he went to roll up the back driver’s side window we heard a metal clinking sound and discovered that the window wouldn’t roll up. It was miserable to drive home with the back windows down—not because of the noise but because of the pressure on our ear drums. It felt worse than take off in an airplane or landing. We also worried about having someone steal anything out of the car like the registration, insurance papers, etc. We took all that in for the evening so we wouldn’t lose that. That evening we had the sisters come and get their mail and some Books of Mormon in Vietnamese and some other language that they needed for their teaching. It is so much fun to get to have extra contact with the missionaries and hear how their day has gone.
Wednesday we some of the knitted Easter Chicks in to the Senior couples to share our Easter tradition with them. Things were so hectic in the morning that Dad got to the office without his name badge. We had bought extra ones, but he had put all of his extra ones on his suit coats so that when he put on a suit he would always have one. He thought he had put one in the car, but when he went out to get it, all he found was one of mine. He figured that no one would notice and something was better than nothing. He was right--NO one noticed his name tag was
"Sister" Nelson instead of "Elder" Nelson. Then Garn made an appointment to take the car in for repair. The lady who works in the office part time has a sun who owns a shop that repairs cars and he was able to work us in. Driving our car to the shop was not fun because of the ear thing again. Garn drove Sister Chesbrough’s car and then we drove back to the office. About 3:30 in the afternoon I went with Sister Chesbrough so she could drop me off to pick up the car. What good people we work with. The fix-it job was NOT cheap, but we are grateful that it was fixed so quickly. I got back to the office in time to help Garn clean before going home. While he worked on more WES stuff I read a book about experiences from Elder Busche’s life. He was the first German general authority. It is inspiring to read some of his experiences.
Thursday was a good day in the office. Garn had gotten the idea that the best way for us to help the missionaries would be for us to do some finding for them to be able to teach more. He figured that if he got the zone leaders from the stake where the Mission Office is, they could come on their lunch hour and teach us how to be better at finding. We bought lunch for them and they came to teach. They are such good elders and did such a great job that we were all ready to go out and open our mouths. They had some good ideas of how to do it and mentioned Elder Uchtdorf’s talk in Conference. We shared ideas of what to say in certain situations and got some ideas to put into our “play book”. We have a new neighbor who just moved in where our other friend that we helped move out lived. We got ideas of how we can continue the friendship and at some get the missionaries involved.
I had a missionary card that I needed to deliver to one of the Sister missionaries who had lost hers at the beginning of the month. They were having a baptism at 6 pm, so we decided to go to the baptism and deliver the card then. It was a good baptism and we were glad that we had gone. During our training in the office they had mentioned that people who are baptized and are introduced to the missionaries by friends and have these friends sit in on the teaching are 90% more likely to stay active in the Church where those who don’t have friends involved. We decided that we probably ought to get in touch with the missionaries who are teaching our friend who moved and see what we can do to help with his teaching. As a starter we decided to stop by his home on our way home from the baptism. He wasn’t home, so we will have to make another stop and maybe take a goodie or something.
The elders and sisters came to get their mail this evening after they got home. It is nice for them to get their mail this way instead of having to wait for a district meeting or when the zone leaders can find time to get it to them.
Friday was another day in the office. We are still all excited about opening our mouths, so when a man came to the office to drop off some menus for a Japanese restaurant, Garn decided to talk with him a little. The man said that he noticed the badge and said he knew a little bit about the Church, so Garn started talking about the Church a little with him. I had gone out to put some things in the front office and stayed to talk a little with him. Then the housing secretary joined us. It was fun to get his history and talk to him about the Savior a bit. He talked about the spirit he could feel in the office and wished he had that in his life. About that time the 3 office elders came in to work on some projects for the President, but stopped to talk with him. They were so good to get his phone number before he left. We made plans with the office elders to go to the restaurant on Saturday when David would be at work so that we could go further with the teaching. The missionaries said they would call to make the appointment and give us a call so we could meet them there. We were all excited—we may not be great at this, but at least we are trying.
We were on cleaning duty this evening, so did that before we left. We ate a quick dinner and went grocery shopping for ourselves and for the luncheon we are in charge of at transfers.
Saturday Garn left to meet a visa waiter missionary who is leaving on Monday. President Caplin had asked him if he would interview the 3 missionaries before they left. It wouldn’t be a worthiness interview because they all had just finished those recently. This interview was to see what they had learned while they were here, what they liked, what they wished they had done, etc. Garn came home to get me so we could go pick up a friend (investigator) of some Spanish elders. They can’t take people in their cars with them especially when they are the girls. They were in a trio, so one of the elders went with us to translate and the other two rode in their car. We went to the baptism and enjoyed it a lot even though it was all in Spanish. It’s a good thing that the Spanish use their hands so much when they speak that sometimes we could figure out what they were talking about and we could get a word here and there. Mary, of course, could understand everything that they were saying so the baptism was a great experience for her. She is going back to Bolivia in a couple of weeks and would like to be baptized before she goes. With the visa she has she can’t come back for 10 years and is afraid she won’t ever be able to come back. The really sad thing for me is her 18 year old and 13 year old don’t want to go back to Bolivia, so they will be staying with their father. I don’t know if I could leave my children behind. Anyway, it was a wonderful baptism and we felt the Spirit even though we didn’t understand much of what was said.
We got home and Garn worked on taxes while I finished up the shopping for the luncheon. When I got home, it was time to fix dinner and finished up the last of the taxes. It doesn’t make either of us very happy when we work on them, so it is good to finally good to have them done. Because of the money we had to take out of our 401K to keep the company going last June, we had a lot of money that was taxable. That made it so we had some taxes to pay that we wouldn’t have had to do otherwise. Oh, well, that is done and now we can move on.
Today is Don’s birthday. I am grateful for him and for his example for me and my family. Hope you had a great day! Church was good and we had some good visits with family. Oh, how grateful I am that we can be family forever.
We had the new member/returned member fireside this evening and it always a wonderful to hear the conversion stories of these new members. Tonight we had a Jewish man, a Palestinian man, and two other young men who bore beautiful testimonies. The net is open wide and bringing people from all over into the gospel fold. It’s now time to turn in and try to get a good night’s sleep so I don’t start off the week tired.
Again, we love you all and pray for you daily.
Love,
Mom
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