June 23, 2024

Summer means that lots of people are out and about, taking vacations, and going around visiting. We are the lucky recipients of some of those visits. In the last two weeks we have had two of our former Assistants to the President come to the mission with their parents to visit. How fun it is to meet their families, and even better, to finally be able to hug them. It is really hard when some of these Elders go home and we can only give them a hand shake and not a hug. We spend so much time with them they become like family. Two weeks ago Elder Henrie and his parents came for a visit and this week Elder Weaver and his family were here. They served as Assistants together and went home in December.

Our sweet young convert, Athena, also came to visit us in the office. Athena is a George Fox student and was baptized in November. She has gone home for the summer and we miss seeing her at church and around the office. She lives in a small community about an hour from here. Her family has a large property and she took the time to pick roses for all of us in the office. We found vases in the kitchen and we all have bouquets on our desks now :).

This week we traded out the last of the new cars (until we get more). That meant we just had to drive out to Tillamook to deliver a car. While we were out there we decided to make a day of it. After meeting with the missionaries to trade the car we headed up to Rockaway to walk the Old Growth Big Cedar Trail. It is a beautiful walkway through the wetlands to one of the oldest and biggest cedar trees in the Pacific Northwest.

Since we were in Rockaway we decided we should take advantage of being there and go see my cousin Tom and his wife Delta. We had a nice visit with them although we were sad to find out that Tom has bone spurs in his back and is not walking well. Hopefully he will have surgery soon and get back to walking his dog Cooper on the beach.

We tried to go visit the MLS couple in Rockaway, the Olsens, but the timing did not work out and we were sorry to miss them. We ended the day sitting on the beach for a short while because we couldn't be that close to the ocean and not take advantage of it.

Wednesday we had the Elders over for dinner and I am sorry I did not get pictures of it. Safeway had a killer deal on baby back ribs and we know how much the Elders like MEAT!! They were so excited when they saw what I had prepared. It was definitely a hit!!! Thurday afternoon we headed up to Tom's dental office to have our teeth cleaned. Such a blessing while we are here. We were each able to visit with Tracey for an hour so that was an added bonus. Tom found another bridge gone bad in Jack's mouth so it will be fantastic to get that repaired while we are still here too!

Early Friday I left the office to run an errand. Some of the Sister missionaries followed me out because they were headed out on exchanges. I was touched when I glanced in my side mirrors and saw them praying before they left. These missionaries are so good!

The temple in Portland has been closed for the last 7 weeks and just reopened this week. We were able to head up there Friday evening for a session and are so grateful the temple is so close to us. The closest temple to us besides the Portland temple is over 3 hrs away so we were not able to attend the temple while the Portland temple was closed. It felt good to be back!

Last year the Sr Sister missionaries were able to attend the Lincoln City Kite Festival while our husbands were busy with other things. This year we wanted to take them because we knew they would enjoy it. It was a beautiful day, warm with clear skies. The only problem is that there was just not much wind. Kites need wind!! We were able to see some kites fly but the big ones couldn't go up and the inflatibles could not be launched either. No matter, we still enjoyed a beautiful day just sitting on the beach :).

Today we were finally able to connect with Jack's nephew, Greg Moon, and his wife Katherine. They live about an hour from us in Vancouver, WA. We love them so much and had such a good visit. We vowed to not let so much time pass until we see them again.