November 19, 2023

Happy, happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family!! We love you and think of you always. As we serve here as missionaries in the Oregon Salem Mission we have much to be grateful for. We feel your love and support every day!! We are grateful to those that reach out with an encouraging word and to let us know what is going on in your lives. We are so grateful for our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren. It has been so fun to have a visit from each family and to be able to share our experiences with them. We are grateful to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and for the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are grateful to have the health, stamina, and financial resources to be able to serve this mission.

Today at church I was reminded of the talk by President Nelson to the youth, "Hope of Israel." Incredible talk!! In it he asks, "Would you like to be a big part of the greatest chalenge, the greatest cause, and the greatest work on earth today?" He then goes on to explain what that is. It is to be part of the literal gathering of Israel. He says, "We want you to know that the gathering of Israel ultimately means offering the gospel of Jesus Christ to God's children on both sides of the veil who have neither made crucial covenants with God nor received their essential ordinances. Every child of our Heavenly Father deserves the opportunity to choose to follow Jesus Christ, to accept and receive His gospel with all of its blessings---yes, all the blessings that God promised to the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, as you know is also know as Israel. My dear extraordinanry youth, you were sent to earth at this precise time, the most crucial time in the history of the world, to help gather Israel. There is nothing happening on this earth right now that is more important that that. There is nothing of greater consequence. Absolutely nothing."

We may not be youth but we can be part of this great work!! Serving as Office Missionaries is a part of that where we can help and support these young missionaries as they go forth to gather Israel! How grateful we are for this opportunity and the chance we have to work side by side every day with these great young people!!

Last week I told about the car accident with our Assistants where they hit the woman in the road. I thought I would give an update this week. It turns out it is harder to get a police report than we thought. They don't automatically share them and it takes time to request one so it may be weeks before we get it. But we do know that the woman was released from the hospital and we believe she is going to be okay. It wasn't the end of our traffic accidents though. Another set of Elders were hit from behind by a semi-truck on Thursday. Thank heavens they were not injured either. Elder Rowan is learning lots about body repairs and how expensive they are. He has made good friends with one of the owners of a local body repair shop and he said that this car will likely be totaled because of the extensive damage to the frame which isn't visible.

Even with all of the problems with the cars there have been tender mercies too. We received notice a while ago that we would be getting more new cars in 90-120 days. It hasn't been that long but this week we received notice that (4) of the new cars were available for pickup. Imagine that, (4) new cars to replace the (4) that need to be in the shop. They say there are no coincidences with the Lord and we know that to be true!! We picked up the new cars on Friday and here is a picture of Elder Rowan and some of the missionaries installing one of the ORB-Com systems in the car so it is ready for use. Everybody looks pretty happy!

In other news we said goodbye to the Delimonts this week. They were the only MLS (Member Leadership Support) missionaries in our mission. They were assigned to a small branch in Rockaway Beach which they loved. They did so much good and saw several baptisms during their time there. They also lived only a few blocks from the beach. How cool would that be? Our mission is looking for replacements for them so if you are interested we would love to have you :). They are from Missouri and will be reassigned to the Bentonville, Arkansas mission where they will serve from home. We wish them well!

Believe it or not I actually had time to attend a craft night for our ward Relief Society. They were offering the supplies to make this for free. Score! We were also having District Council that night so I was trying to hurry and if you look close you can see the error I made. Oh well, nobody will probably look that close and it will be fun to set outside my front door. We didn't bring many Christmas decorations with us so this will make a nice addition.

Other fun things going on this week were seeing some of our missionaries in the Church Music Festival, getting pictures from one of our returned missionaries with his girlfriend, taking "artsy" pictures of mushrooms in the grass of the church building, and having dinner at Sister Incze's.

Elder Wood & Sister Imlay. We anticpate this will be what it is like as we eagerly look forward to seeing "our" missionaries in the future.

Mushrooms in our church parking lot. It was just too good of a picture not to share.

Dinner at Sister Incze's. Notice the crowns, courtesy of the "poppers" Sister Incze provided. They reminded me of playing The Great Dalmuti with our family!

Finally, I have to express gratitude for this beautiful world that we live in. The sun was shining and the sky was blue so we just had to take a drive after church today. We don't know how many more of these days we will get as winter comes upon us. We drove through the beautiful hills of this beautiful Willamette Valley that we live in. We googled it once and do you know that there are over 700 wineries in the Willamette Valley? As you drive through the hills you get a feel for this. There are grapevines everywhere. All over every hillside. Even though we don't drink wine, the vineyards are a beautiful sight!

We were rewarded with a rainbow at the end of our drive today. God was smiling down at us:). If you look close you can see it was a double rainbow. It made me want to chase rainbows! Happy Thanksgiving!

From Elder Rowan:

Men are from Mars. This is what the women from Venus say. That doesn't mean anything but a way to start this epistle. From a man's point of view it was just another normal week for the Vehicle Coordinator. One of the cars which was stopped behind another car was hit from behind by a semi-truck. Nobody was hurt but the car will most likely be totaled. The car has about 7000 miles on it. We also picked up 4 new Volkswagon Tiguans. Four more cars coming next week. I have to set them up in the system and put the big brother device in them, then trade them out with old cars. The missionaries get excited about new cars. But the funny thing is the oldest cars are 2022's with less than 20,000 miles on them. Spoiled missionaries! God knows what is going on in all missions. Just one of the many little miracles I see every day here in Oregon. We needed 3 cars right now, and they came. Can you imagine being responsible for 160 teenage drivers. My hair is getting grayer by the minute. But I do love working with these young missionaries. Sister Rowan and I went on a car ride today through the country side. We just headed out of town on a different road we had not been on before towards a hill. We drove through beautiful hillside vineyard estates. Here in the Willamette Valley there are over 700 wineries, with wine tasting barns everywhere. It would be a great place to live if you were a wine drinker. We are having a blast here in Oregon. So, until next week, keep on truckin'.