October 29, 2023

My post today is just going to be full of random things. It has been quiet in the office this week. We had no meals to prepare, the President was gone to a Mission President Conference, and our printer still wasn't working. We have been without a printer in the office for about 4 weeks now. It was ordered by the FM Group and they told us it was going to be delivered on Oct. 20th. Well, Oct. 20th came and went and we still didn't get a printer. Turns out it is backordered but no one told us. I am okay because I have my own dedicated printer but the rest of the office is suffering. They print to my printer but it is only black and white and often they want color. We continue to pray over this problem and hopefully it will be resolved soon.

My granddaughter Alyssa loves mushrooms!! Not to eat but to study, find, and look at. When we walk through their forest she is always on the hunt for them. So it was exciting this week when Elder Larson brought this beauty in to show us. They know how to grow mushrooms in Oregon!! This one was just growing in the parking lot bushes at our Mission Office. I sent a text to Alyssa and she identifed it for us. It is an Amanitas and when I asked her if it was edible she said no, and whoever was holding it should wash their hands :).

Elder Riel is one of the Assistants in the office. His dad is a graphic designer of some sort and is always sending stickers to the mission. Everyone loves to get them. We were especially excited a few weeks ago when he gave us (2) ea of these personalized stickers. One went on my water bottle and I was just hanging on to the other one until I decided what to do with it. Due to a mixup in badge ordering we ended up with some extra badges and what to do with them was solved. We applied them over the bad badges!! They are so cool looking. The missionaries love them and want to know where they can get some. Both the Larsons and us have them. Wearing them in the office is fun but wearing them out in public is questionable with Big Foot on them :). But they will be prized momentos from our mission.

This week we found out that a new couple has received their call to serve in our mission. They will be replacing Sister Incze, our mission nurse when she goes home in March. They will arrive in February. He will be the Mission Medical and his wife will serve in the office and also assist him. We were curious about them so we got permission from President Phillips to do a zoom call with them. They are the Bready's (pronounced Brady) and are from Sandy, Utah!! They only live a few miles from us. It was fun to get acquainted with them.

We have had a terrible infestation of fruit flies in our apartment this week!!! It has been awful! Apparently we aren't the only ones because the Social Media Sisters who also live in our complex have had a problem and people were complaining about it on the Newberg Community Facebook page. I am serious when I say we have killed upward of 300 fruit flies. It started with some overripe bananas but even after we got rid of them and completely purged the apartment of any kind of produce sitting out we continued to have the problem. We read that if you put apple cider vinegar in a bowl, covered it with siranwrap and poked holes in it then they would go in the holes and not be able to get out. We tried that for a few days and it helped some but finally we have resorted to slapping them with a notebook or wet paper towel. Now we are only seeing 10-15 a day but for a while there I was walking around with my hoodie up over my head!

Other goings on in the mission included the night our apartment door got heart attacked by some of our local sister missionaries. They are so cute and we love them! Elder Rowan has continued to help Elder Larson with his efforts to bring the missionary apartments up to a "Celestial" standard. This includes removing all couches from missionary apartments. We are in awe of how obedient the missionaries are being. Our Social Media sisters needed new office chairs so we spent some time assisting them with putting them together. They are Sisters Wilson, Walker, & Jacobsen. President Phillips calls the Social Media Sisters his "Rockstars!" They are so good in what they do with creating Facebook ads, etc. that the church has asked them to work with missions throughout the US. Thursday we got to go out to lunch with our District to a cute Mexican restaurant after making an emergency run to the airport. We were scheduled to take one of our "reassigned" missionaries to the airport Thursday morning. He was headed to Peru. The Assistants begged to take him so we agreed. Then they got to the airport and he realized he forgot his Passport, travel itineraries, etc. at his apartment. There is a reason we try to get them there (3) hrs early! His companions made a fast 20 min dash to our office with the needed documents and we headed out to the airport afterall. It was a 45 minute drive but we still got there with 1 1/2 hrs to spare! Whew!! Friday we got brave and went and got (3) vaccinations all at the same time (Flu, Covid, & RSVP). Hopefully that means we will be in good health throughout the winter :).

One of the pre-reads for our upcoming Zone Conference is a talk by Elder Dale G. Renlund from the October 2019 conference, "Unwavering Commitment to Jesus Christ." In the talk Elder Renlund tells the story of the 1st (3) members of the church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly know as Zaire. In 1977, two of the people, the Banzas, were highly respected in their Protestant church community. Because of their talents, their church arranged for their young family to go to Switzerland to study and provided a university scholarship. In Geneva they learned of the church, made the decision to be baptized, and gave up everything to become members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their sacrifice is unimaginable!! Elder Rowan and I were discussing this. Our sacrifice to serve a mission is nothing compared to what they gave up. Most days we can't even say we are sacrificing anything. We love our mission! We love what we are doing and most days we have lots of fun. How is that a sacrifice? Our hope is that our Savior will recognize the small effort we are making by being here and know that we love him and desire to serve him!