August 6, 2023

As I typed the date for this blog entry I realized that today is our 5 month anniversary for being out on our mission. The time is flying by and in many ways it feels like we have always been here. We have and are learning so much and are grateful that we feel like we know what we are doing now. I can tell you today that I am glad for Sabbath Days! It has been a busy week and we are tired!!

This week Sister Larson and I prepared and served two meals to groups of 50-60. The 1st meal was for our monthly MLC. After debating for days of what to prepare we settled on Swedish Meatballs over rice with Normandy vegetables, rolls, and Snickerdoodle cookies for dessert. It was a fairly simple meal to prepare but it was HOT in the kitchen. We won't be doing that meal in the summer again.

A few days later we served dinner to our newly arriving missionaries and their trainers. We normally serve Costco lasagna for this meal but we were planning on 60 and did not have enough oven space for that many pans in the oven. So instead we served Fried Chicken from the Fred Meyer deli, baked potatoes, carrots, rolls, and rainbow sherbet for dessert. It should have been a simple meal too but was made a little more stressful when Fred Meyer called at 10:00 that morning and said their fryers were broken and they couldn't fill our order. We scrambled around and found a Fred Meyer 30 minutes away that could do it. It meant a little extra drive but in the end it all worked out. Whew!

It was definitely a bittersweet week as 26 of our missionaries departed for home. The missionaries all have an interview with the Mission President before going home so we had many of them coming and going in the office on Thursday. It was so fun to spend time with them and hear them bear testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ! They pretty much took over my desk area but I wouldn't have it any other way!!!

Here they are preparing to leave for the airport!

And here they are once they got to the airport!

With departures come new arrivals to take their place. More missionaries for us to love! We got 13 new missionaries and 6 reassigns who will be here for a short time waiting for Visas. Our Mission President tries to pick the best of the best to be trainers for the new missionaries. There is so much for them to learn and absorb they look like deer in the headlights when they get here. Here is a picture of all our trainers this time and what the luggage looks like all lined up for the new arrivals.

This week I want to talk about the amount of talent our missionaries have. They are amazing! They can sing like angels, play musical instruments, etch in leather, and draw and paint fantastically! That is not to mention all the sports they play and the drama clubs they have been in. They are truly inspiring! Below is a picture of Sisters Finlayson & Womack. Sister Womack plays the piano beautifully and Sister Finlayson found a cello at a member's house that she could play. These two sisters prepared a musical number, I Need Thee Every Hour, to play at a baptism of a Spanish "friend" they had been teaching. They practiced it for us and gave us chills!

Elder King showed off the leather etching he did for his scripture cover. The pictures he etched represented Oregon to him.

The woman in the purple shirt is Cindy Elzinga. She is a Service Missionary who has been teaching Family History to our missionaries for over three years. She is from New Zealand and has a great accent. For over three years she has been driving to all the Zones in our mission and teaching all the missionaries how to find ancestors on Family Search. She is amazing and VERY loved by our missionaries. I am so glad that she has been willing to share her skills and knowledge with our missionaries! The missionaries have been able to bless the lives of others on both sides of the veil!

This week we also had a Sisters Devotional which we do in our area right before transfers. The sisters share what they learned during their current assignments. For this Devotional we were asked to read "Forget Me Not," by Elder Uchtdorf. A fantastic conference talk from October, 2011. We discussed the talk and how it applied to us. Relevant to everyone, no matter our age or place in life! In the talk Elder Uchtdorf references the Forget Me Not flower. After our discussion Sister Wilson presented us with a hand painted picture of a flower done specifically for each one of us. Mine was a Peony! It will be a treasure I keep always! To conclude the evening we passed around note cards and each sister wrote something for every other sister there that they admired about them. Another treasure!!

To end on a humerous note I am going to conclude with a picture of some Elders apartment that Sister Larson took. She went with her husband to install an air conditioner and was surprised to find (4) beds all lined up in the living room. Apparently these missionaries did not want bunk beds so they kept the bedrooms for study rooms and lined up all their beds single file in the living room. Sister Larson said it reminded her of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!