February 4, 2024

This was a much quieter week all the way around. There were no car mishaps and work in the office proceeded as normal. We had lots to catch up on so we spent some late nights getting things done but we finally feel back on top of things. When we went to the office on Monday morning we proceeded to empty the trash from the previous week. I emptied everyone's trash cans into a bigger bag. As I emptied Sister Larson's trash all of a sudden we could hear a fire alarm going off. We could not tell where the sound was coming from. We went into the hall, it wasn't there, we moved to different parts of the office and still could not identify where the sound was coming from. Just then Elder Larson arrived and could hear it too. He remembered that he had put some smoke detectors in his garbage the week before and apparently as the trash got heavier it pressed on the button and set the alarm off. So funny! It was even more funny to watch Elders Rowan & Larson going through the trash trying to find the smoke detector all while it was loudly screaming in our ears :).

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Sister Dibble in the Newberg 1st ward was going to paint me a picture on the back of a Book of Mormon. She presented it to me last Sunday and I am so honored that she took the time to paint it for me. It is her signature picture of the Sacred Grove which is very fitting for the Book of Mormon. It will be a treasured keepsake from our mission.

The first part of my week was spent processing the supply orders for the missionaries. Each zone turns in an order for the proselyting materials they want and then I check to see what we have in our supply library and submit an order for whatever we don't have on hand. They also submit orders for new missionary name tags and I process those too. The missionaries always try to slip in orders for ASL badges, badges in languages their father had, or the unusual language they have in their area such as Marshelles, etc. I try to accomodate them as along as the requests don't get out of hand. We have Book of Mormons in most of the major languages around the world in our supply library. We have English, Spanish, Russian, French, Marshelles, Thai, Chuukese, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and about 20 other languages. Today the missionaries asked me for one in Kinyarwanda. I had to look up what that was. Turns out it is the language of Rwanda in Africa.

The second part of my week was spent getting ready for our Mission Audit next week. As financial secretary I am responsible for coordinating the audit in the office. Each role in the office has a part on the audit and has to answer questions pertaining to their processes. We have been aware of this from the beginning of our mission so each one of us has reviewed out section on the audit often to make sure we were doing our duties correctly. Then the auditor will come on Monday and pull random samples of financial records, housing records, vehicle records, etc. and verify we are doing things correctly. We feel ready and that we will pass but the word "audit" always makes people nervous.

Friday we had the fun opportunity of going to see Danica honored as a senior on the high school basketball team. She has enjoyed her years of playing and has lots of great memories. There were posters & pictures of the seniors and each of the (5) seniors was called to the floor and honored with flowers, gifts, speeches, and applause! Danica had a good game (they won) making several 3 pointers and a beautiful layup! Tom has been announcing at the games this year so it was fun to see him in action too!

We were also able to fit in going to a couple of Alyssa's volleyball games. They are always fun and we love that we are close enough to support the girls in their activities!

Saturday we decided to take a girl's trip out to Lincoln City. Sister Incze (our mission nurse) will be going home in early March and wanted to see the coast one last time. It was a beautiful day and we had so much fun! We declared that we were going to call each other by our first names (which we never do) and it was so hilarous to see how awkward it was for each of us. We visited the beach and marveled at the waves, hit up some gift shops and bought ourselves Oregon Coast hoodies, and then took the Sister missionaries (Sister Cannon & Sister Garlick) in Lincoln City to lunch at Kyllo's. The sky was blue and it was almost warm. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day!

While we were gone Elder Rowan went to Salem to deliver some bikes and then looked up some of his favorite missionaries and took them to lunch. Pictured is Elder Cordray and his companion Elder Schunk.

Sunday we Sr missionaries got together and the sisters modeled their Oregon Coast hoodies. Then we had dinner with Sister Incze and played some games. We were gifted with the most beautiful sunset. What a perfect ending to the week.