June 11, 2023

What a fun week we have had!! We just love our missionaries so much!! We started out the week with MLC (Mission Leadership Council) on Tuesday. It is a fun chance for us to visit and catch up with all the Zone Leaders and Sister Trainer Leaders. We prepared lunch for them and it was great! Since we are going into summer we decided to buy fried chicken, then we had Instapot Mac-n-Cheese, watermelon, salad, and cookies. Sister Larson has a friend who loves to cook and has lots of money. So for our MLC's she has been making these fantastic, enormous cookies that she bakes at home in Utah and mails to us!!! It is crazy but they are sooo good and the friend loves doing it so who are we to argue :).

Then on Wednesday some sweet sisters down in Salem invited us and the Larsons to dinner. Elder Larson and Elder Rowan had helped set up a new apartment and get it ready for them and they were so grateful they wanted to have us to dinner. We enjoyed dinner with Sister Burt, Sister Finlayson, Sister Petersen, and Sister Anderson.

The fun did not stop there! On Friday we attended our 1st District Council with the missionaries from our District. District Council is a 1.5 hr meeting the missionaries have once a week with the missionaries from their District. It was amazing because these missionaries are amazing! They discussed Miracles from the week, people they were teaching and wanted us to pray for, how they were doing on their goals, and then they counciled together on the things they could do to help the mission be better. They settled on being more humble and seeking the Lord's will in all things. The sister in the middle in this picture is Sister Romney. Her original mission call was to Peru but she has been waiting (7) months for her Visa to come through. It finally came this week and we are so happy for her. She has been a great example of patience and faith as she waited. We will miss her!

The Sisters in our District are Hermana's, meaning they are Spanish speaking missionaries. They have been visiting a less active brother named Pablo. Pablo is about 60 years old and quit going to church a few years ago. He tells the Sisters he wants to come but so far has not made it. So the Sisters asked Elder Rowan & I to come with them to visit him that evening. We were excited to be asked and said yes, for sure! We had a nice visit with Pablo. His friend had died the day before and we were able to say a prayer of comfort with him. The Sisters also shared some scriptures with him about death, resurrection, and the Plan of Salvation. I think he felt better when we left and it was a special experience. Then on Saturday the Sisters in our area decided to have a picnic lunch and invited all of the Sr Sisters too. It is always fun to hang out with them!

It is rose season in Oregon so after our picnic we went to the Portland Rose Garden. It is free at Washington Park. We timed it just right and all the roses were in full bloom! It was beautiful and we were so glad we went.

One last thing before I close for the week. We had our own little personal miracle this week that we are so thankful for. We have had the same email account for 20-25 years and on Tuesday Microsoft deactivated our account because of possible fraudulent activity. All my emails were gone and I could not log in to our account. They provided several ways to get the account back. One was an old email I no longer have access to. The other way was to answer a series of questions to prove who we were about the history of our account. Remember now, this account was set up 20-25 years ago. I could not remember if it was in my name, Jack's name, the name John, etc. I tried (3) times and failed. Chris tried once for me. Finally on Thursday night before we went to bed I asked Heavenly Father to help me remember what we needed to make the account work. I don't usually ask for secular things like this in my prayers. I don't feel like Heavenly Father really cares about that kind of stuff. But it was going to be such a major hassle if we could not get the account back. All of our bills, automatic notifications, etc. our tied to that email. The next morning I tried one last time and it WORKED! My email is back and life is good. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for being in the details of my life.