Washington, D.C. South Mission

Dear Family, Mission News The big event of week was Elder Bennett, our area president, spoke to the missionaries on Friday. Mom got to see it, but I had to watch the office. Mom said it was really good. An elder that was serving in the Pittsburg Mission came home early for medical problems. The plan is to have him serve a service mission. We will probably use him a couple of days a month. He will be serving in the community helping the homeless on Tuesday and Thursday. He will be working on the temple grounds Monday and Saturday. On the 2nd and 4th Fridays he will work in the Philadelphia Temple. He will do something in our mission on the 1st and 3rd Fridays. I hope he can serve with the full time missionaries. We did lunch for the return and report on Tuesday. The car was low on oil – 2+ quarts. I took the car into the shop to find out where the oil was going. They could not determine where the oil was going. I hope our car lasts a couple more years. There is a neig...

Dear Family, I think I am finally writing about the week I have just finished!?! Life is racing by and I am getting some of the things that are needful done—not always on the organized schedule that I had planned, but life does go on even if I’m a little behind. We had a good Sunday, but I think that I put it in last week’s letter. It was a little late by the time we got home and I was tired so decided to wait until Monday to make the cookie sheet of brownies that I needed to do for the “Return and Report” meeting on Tuesday. Monday we got up early so we could get to the office a little early in hopes of getting home a little earlier to be able to spend more time with Uncle Phil, Aunt Jane, and Aunt Janie. We had a quick dinner and then figured I’d better get the brownies done. I had thought about cocoa on Saturday, but was sure I had some at home, so didn’t buy more. When I went looking for the cocoa, I couldn’t find any so had to make a trip to the store to get some. That made the ma...

Dear Family, The week has flown by so quickly that I can’t figure out what we have done besides catch up. Monday started out with Dad taking the elders in our complex to do their grocery shopping at 7:00 am. While they did their shopping, Dad bought a couple of pies to take the senior get together that evening. Our weekend had been busy enough that I didn’t get a dessert made and this way he got to have some pie. We are trying to get new apartments that are more centrally located in the areas because we are having more and more missionaries (elders) using bikes. That means a lot of looking and negotiating for our housing secretary and then a lot of set up for a new property in the system for me. We will have to close down some apartments, but we are having the total number of missionaries that we have going from the low 170’s to 190 by December. We had a wonderful get together with the seniors and got to get caught up on all of their activities. We are aware of what the office couples...

Dear Family, Mission News It was a relatively “quiet” week and that gave me some time to do projects: updating five of the about ten form letters for arriving and departing missionaries, created a mission bike policy, revised the logistics for taking departing missionaries to the airport. I still have some little projects to do. Monday we had our almost weekly Senior District Council. Mom shared some things she discussed with Sister Caplin about the Persian emphasis in the Church. It seems that the Church feels that many of the Persians are ready for the Gospel. About 40 Persians and their friends met with Elder Randall Bennett last Sunday and talked about how the Church can strengthen the Persian community in our area. Our second Persian speaking elder arrives on Monday. Two more are planned to come. Saturday we enjoyed a Devotional given by President Ballard and Elder Christofferson. The broadcast came from Sharon Vermont and was sent to the 19 missions in the North America No...

Dear Family, Mission News The missionaries met a student on the George Mason campus and invited him to institute and four weeks later he was baptized (yesterday). He kept all of his commitments – read the Book of Mormon, prayed, attended church and kept the commandments. At his baptism three other friends attended that were invited by the missionaries. Two of them were Chinese and the other (a Caucasian) is majoring in Chinese translation. They had a 20 minute discussion in Chinese after the baptism. Elder Carper, Greyson, Elder Fowler, Elder Tahi after the baptism. These elders are the office elder that we see a lot. The sister missionaries are assigned to serve only in the YSA ward. They spend most of their days on the campus of George Mason University. They love it. “We never run out of people to talk to.” The university has 38,000 students and very large, beautiful campus. We had 3 Zone Conferences this week. Mom and I got to one of them. The one we went to, the missionar...

Good Morning Family, As I look back over this week, I’m not sure what we really did. We were busy, but mostly catching up on things that got pushed aside from the week before. Monday morning we started out early with Dad taking the elders who live in our apartment complex grocery shopping. Mondays are their P-days and they are on bikes, so we volunteered to take them shopping at 7 am before we went into the office. I stayed home and worked on our lunches so we could still get into the office on time. I got a call from Barbara saying that she and Christie were back so Christie could have her surgery on Wednesday. They checked her into the hospital on Monday for tests. It is amazing what can be done. On Wednesday the zone conferences got started. They were originally scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but then we got notice that President Bennett, the president of the North America North East Area was coming for a conference and we weren’t having zone conferences. On ...

Dear Family, Happy Birthday Bryon!! We were talking about this past week and both of us felt as if last Monday was at least 2-3 weeks ago. This has been a busy transfer week. Monday started out with interviews in the office. Because we love these young people so much it is very tempting to stop our work and visit with them. We sometimes have to help them get their “My Life Plan” and other documents printed up for their interviews because they don’t have access to printers and the President likes to have the documents readable. We love doing that, but we don’t get other things done. The most fun things win out. We also have to make sure that our “fruit snacks” jars are filled because they love these and are jars empty out pretty fast. The van rental place where we usually get the van to transport missionaries from the airport and then on to the hotel only had 15-passenger vans available. Since Salt Lake says that we can only rent 12-passenger vans, Dad had to look else where to ...

Dear Family, Mission News My heavens this was a busy week. It was transfer week and we sent 13 missionaries home and received 27 new ones. Mom and I were talking about this and it seems that transfer day was (Tuesday) was three weeks ago. Part of the reason is that we had a number of late nights and early mornings. Working tired is harder. Today we had our mission “family prayer” at 6:30am. All the missionaries pray for their friends at 6:30am. We then did a half hour of “come follow me” study. At 7:00 we went back to sleep until 9:30am. It felt very good to get a little extra sleep. I initiated with the departing missionaries a 20 minute debriefing session where the missionaries talked about some of their missionary experiences. I was impressed by the faithful, heart-felt responses of all the missionaries. We read another chapter of the Book of Mormon with Nancy on Friday. There was a good spirit. I don’t know if she is really progressing to baptism, but we all enjoy the visi...