August 13, 2023

It is a heatwave in the Pacific Northwest this week. It is going to be 102 degrees today and 107 degrees tomorrow! I think it will be good to stay indoors! Airconditioning in our part of Oregon is different. It does not usually get that hot here and when it does it does not stay hot for long. The apartments we rent for the missionaries and even our apartments do not have central airconditioning. Instead people use window airconditioners or fans and in the case of our apartment we have an airconditioner in the wall in our living room. When it starts to cool down all the a/c units from the windows are removed until the next year.

Since it is August that also means that it is Blackberry season! Hooray for us! We love the blackberries and it is so cool that we can just stop along the road and pick however many we want. Yesterday we did our first picking and had blackberries with ice cream for dessert and blackberries with our yogurt for breakfast this morning. For those that don't know, the blackberries grow wild here and are everywhere. The locals hate them because they are an invasive plant and will take over if you don't keep them cut down.

We had fun times in the office this week. It was President Phillips birthday Monday so we had a breakfast for him and invited all the local missionaries since it was their "P" day (their were 20 of us total). President Phillips is a humble, reserved man and even though he said he was out of his "comfort zone," he agreed to pose for a picture for us :).

It was also zone conferences this week and that is always a great time seeing and visiting with all the missionaries. I didn't take pictures of all the missionaries this time because you have seen them before. But here is a picture of me standing at the truck passing out the vehichle inspection clipboards. Notice the gray wagon in the back ground. We brought that from home thinking we might use it when going to the beach or other outings but it has come in really handy at car inspections. I pull that around as Sister Larson and I go about gathering up clipboards as we go from car to car checking the tread on the tires. The skills we have learned!

The third day of zone conferences is always "over the mountain," in either Bend or Redmond. They are both about 3.5 hrs away. It is a beautiful drive out there through the mountains and we have attempted to do some site seeing every time we are out that way. This time I identified some waterfalls that I thought we might enjoy visiting. They were Sahalie & Koosah Falls. They ended up being spectacular!!! You know me and waterfalls. The hike was about 1 mile round trip to see it all and was so doable. We hiked along the edge of the McKenzie River in a beautiful forest of trees. We are excited to go back again in the fall when the colors have changed!

For Zone Conferences this week we studied the talk, "Meek and Lowly of Heart," by David A. Bednar. One of the things I love most about zone conference is the chance to study and discuss one of the divine characteristics of our Savior Jesus Christ. This is such a good talk with so many thoughts on what it means to be "meek." I think often we confuse meekness with being timid and that is not what it is at all and this talk was such a good reminder of that!