Washington, D.C. South Mission

Dear Family, Here it is another week and almost another month gone by. It has been a good week. Monday we wanted to get the car back in to get the A/C checked. When we had it in on Saturday it didn’t misbehave and it is hard to fix something that doesn’t appear to be broken. After riding in a car without air conditioning for over an hour in 100+ weather on Sunday, Dad was pretty motivated to get it fixed. We drove to the office and it didn’t blow hot air, but neither did it blow cool air. About 10 when things had warmed up a bit, he went out to drive the car to see if the air conditioner was working and it was not. We decided to drive it to the repair shop and hoped it would still not be working by the time we got there. We were lucky—it still didn’t work by the time we got there. Pretty strange to be hoping that our car wouldn’t work, but with the weather as hot and humid as it had been and the promises of all the native Virginians that August was even worse we wanted a depend...

Dear Family, Mission News A new Senior couple joined our Office District Council this week. They do Military Relations at Fort Belvoir. There has not been a couple serving there for over 4 years, so they are having to make all of the contacts and learn how to be effective. This is a slow and tedious process. This last week we had 6 bike accidents. Two the them the elders flew over the handle bars. Two of them landed on their heads and one blacked out for a few seconds. One had some serious road rash. Two of the accidents were caused by missionaries riding bikes that were in very poor working order. One elder’s brakes did not work. We had two car accidents this week. No one was injured. We have had 15 car accidents in the last 5 month, but no injuries. Only one of the 15 was the missionary’s fault. Saturday we attended another baptism of person from Sierra Leone. After the baptism I told the sister that I was going to send a copy of the program to Elder Savage and Elder Fisher ...

Dear Family, Another week has raced by. We missed talking with you last weekend but were thinking of you and hoping that you were having a great time being together. It has been fun to catch up a little as you came back into the world of having phone service. We are also grateful that you were able to travel home safely. This week has been the week for rent payments and zone conferences. I should have gotten it ready the previous week so I could send it on Monday but didn’t get it quite ready. The previous Friday (12) was an MLC (Mission Leadership Council) meeting where Dad was to give a presentation on mission culture with regards to technology and I needed to inform the missionaries about a change in the funding of the missionary cards. His presentation was to be about 15 minutes and help the missionaries to understand the importance of why we have the guidelines we do for the use of the phones and other devices. He did such a great job. Afterwards President Caplin was so ef...

The air conditioner on our car is flaking out.  Sometimes it works great and sometimes not so great.  We took it into the shop yesterday (Saturday) for them to look at it.  Of course it worked great, so they could not fix it.  We borrowed a mission car so we could drop our car off at the shop and still get around. Today, I wanted to take the mission car to church just in case.  But I was over-ruled by Mom.  I left after sacrament meeting to meet with our friend David and to take him to his work.  Of course after 5 minutes the air conditioning in our car quit completely.  The thermometer in our car said the outside temperature was 101 and we had our normal East Coast humidity. As I drove the  half hour  to David's house, I was getting hot under the collar because of the heat and humidity, but also because this problem could have been avoided it only someone listened to me. I was feeling very sorry for myself on the way back....

Dear Family, Mission News I gave a presentation or talk to the missionaries about creating and sustaining a mission culture of wise and righteous use of technology. One goal was to help the missionaries feel good about and committed to monitor each other’s “screens” and to do a rigorous weekly audit of their companion’s devices. It was a 15-20 minute presentation a zone conferences on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I used power point to assist on the presentation. The power point presentation is attached. In my thinking there are three potential problems with smart phones and tables. Pornography. Even though the Church puts good filtering software on the phones, a motivated person can find ways around the filters. My remarks were directed mostly about pornography. I suspect there are a half dozen missionaries that have a pornography problems boarding on addiction. There are others that are challenged. Waste of time. Even though many time wasting internet sites are blocked by th...

Dear Family, Mission News Sunday night we had our new member devotional. It was good as usual. Afterward Mom and I interviewed a “baptismal” candidate. All knew it was not time to for her yet. The real purpose was to comfort her. Mom and I felt good about the time we spent with her. At first she was so distraught the she could not talk. When she left the interview she was smiling. Monday 21 new missionaries came from the MTC. Things went OK except one missionary was sent to the Baltimore Airport – unexpectedly. The Downs, a senior couple, made an emergency trip to Baltimore (2 hours each way) to pick him up. We met the missionaries at a welcoming dinner that night. We rearranged the arrival time and the group came in 2+ hours earlier. The evening went so much better. The president had more time to interview the missionaries and we had more time to visit with them. Fun. This group seems exceptionally strong. Tuesday we had the new missionary training in the morning. I was “in c...

Dear Family, This was a transfer week on steroids!  Monday was another day filled with interviews of missionaries going home.  It is so fun to visit with those leaving and their companions, but it is hard to get much done because visiting with the missionaries always wins out over getting work done.  It is a little hard to concentrate on paper work.  Our missionaries were coming a little earlier than in the past which will make it so that we will get them fed, interviewed, and to the hotel before midnight.  We had one group coming in around 3:30, and another one coming in from Mexico about 45 minutes later.  Garn had It worked out so that the 1 st  counselor in the mission presidency would pick the ones from the Mexico MTC and he could speak Spanish to them all the way to the mission home.  Just before the Provo missionaries landed we found that one of them was sent to the Baltimore airport???!!  He had been there about an hour, so we hurr...

Dear Family, What a wonderful week this has been. Last Sunday evening I looked forward to the upcoming week with a little bit of discomfort. It would be our turn to have an injured elder in our home. Knowing that we would have to live the rules of the younger missionaries was a concern. We as senior missionaries have a little more flexibility in our routine. I also realized that I would have to do more cooking—we have gotten a little lazy and relaxed about what we have for dinner. We also had to think of fixing breakfast for someone new because he was supposed to be off of his feet. We would have to share a bathroom, make another lunch. It would be harder to go and do the things that were required. Either we took him with us or I would go by myself. We were more than happy to help out, but my natural man thoughts were concerned about the logistics. We had had him in the office this past week making sure he was keeping his leg elevated and iced when needed and trying to find m...

Dear Family, Mission News On Monday Elder Southard came to live with us for a week. He badly rolled his ankle on March 1 and it has not healed. The doctors said that if he stayed off of it for 4 to 6 weeks, it would probably heal. Last week he was with the Elder and Sister Downs. Elder Southard He was a perfect gentleman, never complained and was easy to have around except that he was on crutches. He has a great attitude and wonderful humble spirit. He came with us to the office. We tried to keep him busy helping us out and we were successful half of the time. Unfortunately the pain in his ankle got worse and the doctors now recommend surgery. He flew home Saturday. Hopefully he will be back in a few months. The Church says that he has to be able to walk 6 miles with out stopping for 3 consecutive days before he can return. We went to a District Council in Arlington. Elder Corcran is the district leader and did the training on charity. He has a wonderful enthusiasm for ...