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 dependable air conditioner. They finally diagnosed the problem and we needed to have a whole new compressor. They would get it fixed for us on Tuesday. With the price of the repair, we should be getting ice cubes blowing out of the vents.
Tuesday we had our office meeting, and we had the new senior couple join us. They are military liaison missionaries and work at the Fort Belvoir. They brought 4 pans of cinnamon rolls and Sister Chesborough brought samples of the cookies she had sent her missionary granddaughter for her birthday. We were deluged with sweets. It was fun to have the new couple come and hopefully they will get a better feel for the comings and goings in the mission. All of the senior couples are invited to come, but they have chosen not to. We mostly talk about what is going on with our responsibilities in the office, so I can understand why they don’t come for this half-hour meeting, but it is helpful for us to know where we can ask for help or where can step in and assist each other.
A little later in the day a companionship of Hermanas came into the office with a phone question. They brought cupcakes!! Their offer was sweet (no pun intended), but our work table was beginning to look like a bakery. The office elders asked us if we would go with them to teach Nancy at 2:30 today and we were happy to do so. It has been a long time since we have seen her. I have thought about her, but the only way to get in touch with her for us is to drop by. By the time we get home and have dinner it is often too late to go visit people. When calling her, the phone goes straight to “caller is busy” with no option to leave a message. I can send a text, but she doesn’t reply. Anyway, we were able to go and try to have a lesson. The goal for the elders was to get a commitment from her to attend church and she didn’t want to do that. She is a young widow who is concerned for her children. Her 11-year old son has some disorders which affect his behavior. Her greatest desire is to have him become a good and responsible person. He doesn’t like to go to church and makes it pretty miserable for her. However, lately he has become interested in the Catholic classes that the young people take. I don’t know if he has a friend that is doing this and he wants to do things with him, but for Nancy she is encouraged that he wants to do something with church—any church. He is willing to go whereas she has to drag him to go to our church with her. Nancy likes visiting with the missionaries because she has a good feeling when she does. She also has good feelings when she goes to her church. She has been working with the missionaries for almost a year now and I’m not sure that she has grasped the idea of Christ had A church—His Church—and that there was an apostasy that happened and His priesthood was taken from the earth. The authority that was in Christ’s church was gone and there was a need to have this priesthood authority restored. Because she doesn’t understand that, all churches are the same for her. Dad and I are wondering if it would be helpful for her to go and read/study in the Book of Mormon with her once a week so that she can feel of its truths and feel the Holy Ghost testify of these truths. I don’t know if she will want to do that, but we are going to offer. We will probably take a lunch hour once a week and ready with her when her children are gone so that she can concentrate on the words of the Book of Mormon.
After the lesson we went and picked up our car and then went back to the office. The office has been a little hectic today with so many people popping in and out that it makes concentrating a little harder. It is always more fun to say hi to the missionaries. We have had a rash of bike accidents this week (6 by the end of the week) and a car accident. Our poor vehicle secretary has got his hands full. Luckily for the missionaries, no one was hurt and the car accident wasn’t the fault of the missionary.
Wednesday was the 24th. Salt Lake was shut down for the holiday and the other two office couples being from Utah were much more aware of the day and the holiday significance of the day than we who have lived away from Utah for so long. All of my questions had to wait for Thursday to be answered. We did the final planning for the Return and Report luncheon which will be next Tuesday. My assignment is to buy 10 pounds of hamburger, give 5 pounds to the mission nurse, buy the rest of the ingredients for my share of the sloppy mixture and make enough sloppy joe mixture to feed 21 or so people. This should be an easier luncheon or else I got the easy job this time. Wednesday evening we delivered the plant we bought on Saturday to Bob and JoAnn Bollig. They are the couple who live next door to the Mission Home who have been invited to join the senior missionaries when we meet at the Mission Home for our get togethers. She has had stem cell injections on her knees and is recovering. Hopefully she will have good success with this procedure. Anyway, we took by a hanging pot of purple flowers to let her know we were thinking of her. Lucky for us, her favorite color is purple and I think she appreciated them. Her husband would love to come to all of our activities, but she is a little afraid of getting too involved with the senior missionaries. She wants to hang onto her old friends.
Thursday was another day of trying to find the utility bills on the utility company website. I finally called the utility company and said, “I got an email stating that my utility bill was ready. I cannot get on your website for this account.” They asked what the account number was and I told them. They replied that the bills that don’t have three numbers after the dash don’t have bills ready on the website yet. I will have to call the apartment complex to get the amount. I ask myself why they can’t just email me a copy of the bill or mail me a copy until they get the website ready. It just doesn’t seem like they want to be paid very badly when they make getting a copy of the bill so hard.
I came home and ironed after dinner to relax and feel like I was getting something done this day. Shirts don’t try to hide from me. I get to just pick up the shirt and iron it and I’m done! Dad worked on a large quote for Meggitt Defense. There are two large orders that they needed to send off on Friday. It looks like we will probably get one of them and maybe the other one. We’ll have to wait and see.
Friday was the day to get the first half-month funding for the missionaries. It never ceases to amaze me how some missionaries have zero balances a week before the end of the month and others have more than $100. The Larsen’s and Dad and I went to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant for lunch. It is amazing how much food we got for $7.50. We had enough for lunch and then at least that much for diner that night. The best part of the meal was visiting with some good people.
We came home that evening and didn’t do much. For not doing too much extra this week, we didn’t have a lot of energy left over to do much. Dad did make a “date” to walk with our neighbor Tom. He usually walks 1 hour and 45 minutes on Saturdays, but Dad needed to be back home by 8:30 to get ready for a baptism. They agreed that Tom would knock on the door and they would walk together and then Tom would drop Dad off at 8:30.
We slept in until 6:30 Saturday morning, but had time to do our Come Follow Me study before Dad left at 7:30. I got up and did some mending for Dad. He had caught his suit pants pocket on a handle of a chair and undid the seam a bit. Also, his reading pillow was beginning to lose its stuffing where a seam was coming apart. While Dad walked I sewed and cleaned some floors. We just don’t have the right equipment for efficient supplies.
We went to the baptism of a woman from Sierra Leone, the third person from that country in the past 3 or 4 weeks. They seem like humble, genuine people. This woman was the last of her family to be baptized. It is good to see families joining the church. From the baptism we stopped by the park for our ward’s annual 24th picnic. We had invited Nancy and had called to remind/reinvite her but her phone always goes immediately to “user busy” and there is no message feature available. I also texted her, but got no response. When we got to the picnic the elders were there and they had just gotten a message that she would not be able to make it. She was feeding the Spanish Hermanas dinner at 3.
We left the picnic to go do our fresh food grocery shopping and to get the items we needed for the luncheon on Tuesday. We also had to buy some cleaning supplies so that we could clean the apartment a little easier. We came home had lunch and then got going on all the floors. We had better supplies, but the mop and bucket that the mission office gave us didn’t work well together. The mop didn’t fit into the bucket. Ugh! We will try again. The wet mop that was here doesn’t spray anything out of the fluid container. The wet Swiffer things don’t have a “mop” to attach them to. I don’t like hands and knees cleaning because the floors are too hard. Poor me!
In the evening we made up the sloppy joe mixture so we won’t have to worry about that on Monday evening. We watched a church movie that was about some missionaries that was kind of fun and relaxing.
Today was the missionary farewell of a young sister who was called to the Paris, France Mission, Spanish speaking. The music was outstanding. The missionary, her sister, and a friend sang an A cappella song that had the harmonies. They were so spot on the whole way through the song. The missionary did a wonderful job with her talk. I continue to be so amazed at the maturity and clarity of thoughts they are able to speak with. These young people are certainly way ahead of where I was when I was their age. The missionaries mother also sang a beautiful number. This ward is so filled with musical talent!!
We have had a quiet afternoon finishing up letters and talking with some of you kids. It has been a good day. Dad is at a Mission Presidency meeting tonight.
Dad and I continue to memorize a scripture a week. There are doctrinal points in Preach My Gospel that the missionaries have been asked to memorize. In each of the doctrinal points, there are sub topics. Each of the subtopics have two scriptures associated with them. We are slower than the missionaries, but we are trying to learn a new one each week and remember the ones that we have already learned. It is harder to learn and to retain as we get older. I can still remember the ones I learned as a youth in mutual and seminary, but it is taking a little more effort to keep these new ones in the memory bank. We, however, are still working on it.
We love you all and are grateful for your good choices.
Love,
Mom
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 dependable air conditioner. They finally diagnosed the problem and we needed to have a whole new compressor. They would get it fixed for us on Tuesday. With the price of the repair, we should be getting ice cubes blowing out of the vents.
Tuesday we had our office meeting, and we had the new senior couple join us. They are military liaison missionaries and work at the Fort Belvoir. They brought 4 pans of cinnamon rolls and Sister Chesborough brought samples of the cookies she had sent her missionary granddaughter for her birthday. We were deluged with sweets. It was fun to have the new couple come and hopefully they will get a better feel for the comings and goings in the mission. All of the senior couples are invited to come, but they have chosen not to. We mostly talk about what is going on with our responsibilities in the office, so I can understand why they don’t come for this half-hour meeting, but it is helpful for us to know where we can ask for help or where can step in and assist each other.
A little later in the day a companionship of Hermanas came into the office with a phone question. They brought cupcakes!! Their offer was sweet (no pun intended), but our work table was beginning to look like a bakery. The office elders asked us if we would go with them to teach Nancy at 2:30 today and we were happy to do so. It has been a long time since we have seen her. I have thought about her, but the only way to get in touch with her for us is to drop by. By the time we get home and have dinner it is often too late to go visit people. When calling her, the phone goes straight to “caller is busy” with no option to leave a message. I can send a text, but she doesn’t reply. Anyway, we were able to go and try to have a lesson. The goal for the elders was to get a commitment from her to attend church and she didn’t want to do that. She is a young widow who is concerned for her children. Her 11-year old son has some disorders which affect his behavior. Her greatest desire is to have him become a good and responsible person. He doesn’t like to go to church and makes it pretty miserable for her. However, lately he has become interested in the Catholic classes that the young people take. I don’t know if he has a friend that is doing this and he wants to do things with him, but for Nancy she is encouraged that he wants to do something with church—any church. He is willing to go whereas she has to drag him to go to our church with her. Nancy likes visiting with the missionaries because she has a good feeling when she does. She also has good feelings when she goes to her church. She has been working with the missionaries for almost a year now and I’m not sure that she has grasped the idea of Christ had A church—His Church—and that there was an apostasy that happened and His priesthood was taken from the earth. The authority that was in Christ’s church was gone and there was a need to have this priesthood authority restored. Because she doesn’t understand that, all churches are the same for her. Dad and I are wondering if it would be helpful for her to go and read/study in the Book of Mormon with her once a week so that she can feel of its truths and feel the Holy Ghost testify of these truths. I don’t know if she will want to do that, but we are going to offer. We will probably take a lunch hour once a week and ready with her when her children are gone so that she can concentrate on the words of the Book of Mormon.
After the lesson we went and picked up our car and then went back to the office. The office has been a little hectic today with so many people popping in and out that it makes concentrating a little harder. It is always more fun to say hi to the missionaries. We have had a rash of bike accidents this week (6 by the end of the week) and a car accident. Our poor vehicle secretary has got his hands full. Luckily for the missionaries, no one was hurt and the car accident wasn’t the fault of the missionary.
Wednesday was the 24th. Salt Lake was shut down for the holiday and the other two office couples being from Utah were much more aware of the day and the holiday significance of the day than we who have lived away from Utah for so long. All of my questions had to wait for Thursday to be answered. We did the final planning for the Return and Report luncheon which will be next Tuesday. My assignment is to buy 10 pounds of hamburger, give 5 pounds to the mission nurse, buy the rest of the ingredients for my share of the sloppy mixture and make enough sloppy joe mixture to feed 21 or so people. This should be an easier luncheon or else I got the easy job this time. Wednesday evening we delivered the plant we bought on Saturday to Bob and JoAnn Bollig. They are the couple who live next door to the Mission Home who have been invited to join the senior missionaries when we meet at the Mission Home for our get togethers. She has had stem cell injections on her knees and is recovering. Hopefully she will have good success with this procedure. Anyway, we took by a hanging pot of purple flowers to let her know we were thinking of her. Lucky for us, her favorite color is purple and I think she appreciated them. Her husband would love to come to all of our activities, but she is a little afraid of getting too involved with the senior missionaries. She wants to hang onto her old friends.
Thursday was another day of trying to find the utility bills on the utility company website. I finally called the utility company and said, “I got an email stating that my utility bill was ready. I cannot get on your website for this account.” They asked what the account number was and I told them. They replied that the bills that don’t have three numbers after the dash don’t have bills ready on the website yet. I will have to call the apartment complex to get the amount. I ask myself why they can’t just email me a copy of the bill or mail me a copy until they get the website ready. It just doesn’t seem like they want to be paid very badly when they make getting a copy of the bill so hard.
I came home and ironed after dinner to relax and feel like I was getting something done this day. Shirts don’t try to hide from me. I get to just pick up the shirt and iron it and I’m done! Dad worked on a large quote for Meggitt Defense. There are two large orders that they needed to send off on Friday. It looks like we will probably get one of them and maybe the other one. We’ll have to wait and see.
Friday was the day to get the first half-month funding for the missionaries. It never ceases to amaze me how some missionaries have zero balances a week before the end of the month and others have more than $100. The Larsen’s and Dad and I went to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant for lunch. It is amazing how much food we got for $7.50. We had enough for lunch and then at least that much for diner that night. The best part of the meal was visiting with some good people.
We came home that evening and didn’t do much. For not doing too much extra this week, we didn’t have a lot of energy left over to do much. Dad did make a “date” to walk with our neighbor Tom. He usually walks 1 hour and 45 minutes on Saturdays, but Dad needed to be back home by 8:30 to get ready for a baptism. They agreed that Tom would knock on the door and they would walk together and then Tom would drop Dad off at 8:30.
We slept in until 6:30 Saturday morning, but had time to do our Come Follow Me study before Dad left at 7:30. I got up and did some mending for Dad. He had caught his suit pants pocket on a handle of a chair and undid the seam a bit. Also, his reading pillow was beginning to lose its stuffing where a seam was coming apart. While Dad walked I sewed and cleaned some floors. We just don’t have the right equipment for efficient supplies.
We went to the baptism of a woman from Sierra Leone, the third person from that country in the past 3 or 4 weeks. They seem like humble, genuine people. This woman was the last of her family to be baptized. It is good to see families joining the church. From the baptism we stopped by the park for our ward’s annual 24th picnic. We had invited Nancy and had called to remind/reinvite her but her phone always goes immediately to “user busy” and there is no message feature available. I also texted her, but got no response. When we got to the picnic the elders were there and they had just gotten a message that she would not be able to make it. She was feeding the Spanish Hermanas dinner at 3.
We left the picnic to go do our fresh food grocery shopping and to get the items we needed for the luncheon on Tuesday. We also had to buy some cleaning supplies so that we could clean the apartment a little easier. We came home had lunch and then got going on all the floors. We had better supplies, but the mop and bucket that the mission office gave us didn’t work well together. The mop didn’t fit into the bucket. Ugh! We will try again. The wet mop that was here doesn’t spray anything out of the fluid container. The wet Swiffer things don’t have a “mop” to attach them to. I don’t like hands and knees cleaning because the floors are too hard. Poor me!
In the evening we made up the sloppy joe mixture so we won’t have to worry about that on Monday evening. We watched a church movie that was about some missionaries that was kind of fun and relaxing.
Today was the missionary farewell of a young sister who was called to the Paris, France Mission, Spanish speaking. The music was outstanding. The missionary, her sister, and a friend sang an A cappella song that had the harmonies. They were so spot on the whole way through the song. The missionary did a wonderful job with her talk. I continue to be so amazed at the maturity and clarity of thoughts they are able to speak with. These young people are certainly way ahead of where I was when I was their age. The missionaries mother also sang a beautiful number. This ward is so filled with musical talent!!
We have had a quiet afternoon finishing up letters and talking with some of you kids. It has been a good day. Dad is at a Mission Presidency meeting tonight.
Dad and I continue to memorize a scripture a week. There are doctrinal points in Preach My Gospel that the missionaries have been asked to memorize. In each of the doctrinal points, there are sub topics. Each of the subtopics have two scriptures associated with them. We are slower than the missionaries, but we are trying to learn a new one each week and remember the ones that we have already learned. It is harder to learn and to retain as we get older. I can still remember the ones I learned as a youth in mutual and seminary, but it is taking a little more effort to keep these new ones in the memory bank. We, however, are still working on it.
We love you all and are grateful for your good choices.
Love,
Mom
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