August 25, 2024

This week was intense! I spent the 1st part of the week in training with Sister Kanzler. She is going to do great. She has the skill set to do the job and hopefully my "Financial Bible" has the instructions she needs to help her when I am gone. She just needs to slow down and read through them :). Next week hopefully we will have a chance to do that and take things at a slower pace.

We had the opportunity on Monday to have a farewell dinner with the Weeds. I wish I would have gotten a picture. It has been great to continue our relationship with them since they live right here in Newberg and we have the chance to see them on occasion. They come to Utah frequently too so we plan on seeing them there too!

Tuesday was Waffle Day for the McMinnville Zone missionaries who live in Newberg. Okay, it is really the day the missionaries have interviews with the President, but Sister Phillips feeds them waffles while they wait their turns. She always feeds the Sr Missionaries too so we have just taken to calling it "Waffle Day."

Tuesday was tense while we waited for news on Ryan's PET scan and appointment with the oncologist. Our prayers were answered when he received the best possible outcome given what we already knew. The cancer has not metastasised or spread past the lymph nodes. It is Stage 3 with 70% cure rate. He will do 3 months of chemo and then another 2 to 3 months of radiation with chemo. It will be hard, hard, hard but the outcome looks good. He will be busy the next few weeks establishing base lines on things like his eye sight and teeth. He has to have an MRI and they have to place the PIC line for his chemo. It looks like his chemo will start by mid September after we are already home. Although the procedures are not fun it is good to at least have a plan and start moving forward.

Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday we attended our last Zone Conferences. They were emotionally exhausting as we said our goodbyes to all the missionaries we won't see again before we leave. It is comforting to know that in a year or so we will have out 1st Missionary Reunion and will be able to reconnect with many of them. Missionaries attending their last Zone Conference always give their departing testimony. Since we attended all (3) days of Zone Conferences, lucky us got to share our testimonies all (3) times. It was hard to get through those but I am grateful we could leave our testimonies with them and that they know we love our Savior, Jesus Christ, and that is why we have served for the last 1.5 years. Our Zone Conference theme this time was on the Prophet Joseph Smith and the restoration of the gospel. It was powerful and brought to rememberance many experiences we have had that have solidified our testimonies. It was a good theme to end on! Elder Rowan told the missionaries that if he were to write a book about our mission it would start with, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." We took so many pictures with missionaries at Zone Conference that I decided to make a collage of some of them just to document our experience.

The last place we had on our bucket list to visit before we went home was Crater Lake. We discovered it was only 1 1/2 hours south of Bend where we had our last Zone Conference. It was just too close to pass up so we got permission from the President to take a little detour on our way home. Friday night we stayed at Diamond Lake which was supposed to be only 30 minutes from Crater Lake. It was a cold and rainy night and prepared us well for the next day.

Events for the trip did not go as planned but in the end it all worked out! A few days prior to the trip we found out the north entrance to Crater Lake was closed because they needed the road for the fire fighters. That made our 1/2 hr drive to Crater Lake a 1 1/2 hr drive. The Larsons were going to do a boat tour which started at 9:30 AM and they had to be there at 8:30. That meant we had to leave Diamond Lake at 7:00. We were determined for things to work out so we started early on Saturday morning and actually made it to Crater Lake in good time. As we got closer to Crater Lake the fog and mist set in, but not before we snapped a photo at the entrance. There had been a prediction of snow and sure enough, we hit snow once we entered the park! We couldn't believe it!

We were still hopeful the boat ride would happen but when we got over there we found that all boat rides for the day were cancelled. We had purchased an auto audio tour of Crater Lake so the Larsons joined in with us and we enjoyed a nice drive around the rim of the lake. By 10:00 AM the fog had lifted and the day turned out great! We even made it back over to the trail leading down to the water so the Larsons could hike down and bring us back some pretty pictures. Crater Lake was beautiful!

We ended the day with a stop at the last Oregon waterfall on my bucket list. Salt Creek Falls is the 2nd highest waterfall in Oregon and just 50 ft from the parking lot you can get this beautiful view of it. It is in a remote area of Oregon and I never thought we would be over in that direction. But it just happened to be on the route home from Crater Lake. Lucky me!!!

August 18, 2024

And so the goodbyes and hellos begin! It has been a busy week with Transfers and New Arrivals. This is the last time we will participate in these events. It is hard to believe that our time on the mission is winding down.

The week started last Sunday with Sister's Devotional. Last Sunday I was having a particularly hard day thinking about all that Ryan is going to have to go through. Our Relief Society lesson was on trials and eventually I just had to get up and leave the lesson. When I got to Sister's Devotional later that night I was still having a hard time holding it together. One of our sweet Sister missionaries, Sister Bodily, saw that I was struggling. I told her why and she came and sat with me. She said that every time she saw me struggling she would reach over and hold my hand. Our devotional that night was on having the image of Christ engraved on our countenances. That night I saw his image on her face and on all the faces of our sweet sister missionaries! These Sister Devotionals have been such beautiful, spirit filled meetings and I have loved them!!!

Early in the week we got good news regarding Ryan's PET scan and oncology appointment. Prayers answered! Originally the appointments were scheduled two weeks out which seemed like an eternity when we just wanted answers and it was hard not to think about the cancer just growing during all that time. But now the appointments have been moved up almost a week and the PET scan is tomorrow and the oncology appointment Tuesday. Tender mercies for sure!

With Departures on Wednesday the office started to get busy on Monday with departing missionaries coming in for their interviews with the President. Elder Rowan had to leave for his final appointment with Tom to have some dental work done and Sister Larson & I went shopping for the New Arrival dinner on Wednesday. My last shopping trip with the mission credit card :). The energy and buzz in the office started to build that afternoon and it was fun to visit with some of the departing missionaries. The President buys dinner for all of them Monday night and he is always quick to tell them to buy for the office couples too!

Tuesday was Transfers so a busy day for Elder Rowan & Elder Larson. Sister Larson and I held down the office and visited with all the missionaries in and out during the day. The departing missionaries attended the temple with President & Sister Phillips in the morning. Sister Elzinga was the Family History Specialist the 1st half of our mission and knows the missionaries well. She always likes to come in and say goodbye to them when they get back from the temple. It was bittersweet to know this was my goodbye to her also. She truly was AMAZING! She provided every missionary with a birthday treat and taught them to love Family History (especially during Covid). She is an expert and then some in doing Family History. It was a sad day when the missionaries could no longer work with her except on their P day.

One exciting thing that did happen on Transfer Day was that we got Elder Nielsen back to Newberg. He is now one of the Assistants and we will love having these last few weeks with him!

When the young issionaries leave on Departure day it is tradition to have a group picture with everyone leaving. This time it was our turn to join in the picture as departing missionaries. Sister Larson prepares a folder for each missionary with their flight itineraries, boarding passes, letter from the President, etc. She also does her Matchy, Matchy thing so of course she had to prepare one for Elder Rowan & I.

Once the departing missionaries are off it is time to prepare and greet the arriving missionaries that same day. It was the last missionary meal I will prepare before leaving. It also happened to be Sister Phillips birthday the next day so it was fun to celebrate her.

The young missionaries were not the only ones to arrive in our mission this week. Elder & Sister Kanzler (from Sacramento California) also arrived. Sister Kanzler will be my replacement and I am excited to get started on our training. When I first arrived I did not have very good written instructions. The previous Referral Secretary created a great training manual for the General Secretary and we have used it often, even referring to it as the "Bible." I wanted to leave the Financial Secretary with her own "Financial Bible" so I have been working hard on it the last month or so. I think it will be helpful to her, especially since we only have about 9 days to actually train together.

We started training on Friday and that evening President & Sister Phillips took us all to dinner at La Sierra to welcome the Kanzlers. This is the Kanzler's third mission but first office mission. I think they are going to do great! The Lord is in charge and everything always works out!

Saturday we visited the Portland Temple for the last time while we are here and enjoyed the spirit we feel there and the beauty of the temple grounds. Later in the day we we went for a long drive through the hills and winding roads of the back country and just tried to soak it all in. We did soak it in, because in true Oregon style, it poured rain on us :).

August 11, 2024

I am not going to lie!! This has been a really hard week and talking about anything else besides our son Ryan seems disrespectful. What Ryan and his family are going through is ROUGH, HARD, TERRIBLE....you get the idea. I posted in my blog last week that Ryan has a tumor in his nose that appears to have spread to his lymph nodes and we were waiting for results of the biopsy of the tumor. We finally got the results on Thursday which was a long wait. The results were not good. Ryan has been diagnosed with a very rare kind of head & neck cancer called Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. It originates in the nasopharynx which is at the very back of the nose near the Eustachian tubes. It is most common in Southeast Asia and is frequently, but not always, caused by Epstein-Barr virus. Why Ryan has this kind of cancer is a mystery.

Ryan is now waiting for a PET scan and appointment with an oncologist. We will not know the Stage of cancer until those things happen. So far the appointment is two weeks away which seems like an eternity when you just want answers. Our prayers right now are centered on a sooner appointment. In the meantime, we had a tender mercy because Matt was able to talk to a med school friend who is a radiation oncologist to get a little more information and that was helpful. It sounds like the treatment will be radiation with chemo and will be brutal!! But if it does the job it will be worth it!! Surgery is not usually an option with this kind of cancer because the tumor is too close to many critical parts of your head.

I thought it was going to be really hard to leave our mission and it will be in many ways, but truthfully, I can't get home fast enough now! I just want to wrap my arms around my boy and hold him close. Please include him in your prayers. We love you Ryan and we'll be there soon!!

The only good thing about this week is that we were busy and the time went by quickly. We were busy with the young missionaries and that is always a sweet experience. On Sunday night we had our District Council at the home of some 2nd Ward members, the Barnes. They live on 60 acres of beautiful forest land and they invited us to use their property for District Council. It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many trees and greenery.

Before District Council started Elder Rowan and Elder Kent realized they were wearing the same tie. Second time in a month that has happened with Elder Rowan :). Elder Rowan's tie is older than Elder Kent's and it looks like they have changed from a pastel yellow to a mustary yellow. Which one do you like the best?

The next night our District decided they wanted to have a Movie Night for P-day. Our District has P-day from noon to 9:00 PM because most of them are in Office Staff Mtg in the morning. We gathered at Larsons for some yummy beef stroganoff and watched Testaments. Several in our District had never seen it. It is starting to get dated now and it seems more sappy that I remember but it is still a great watch!

Tuesday was MLC where we feed a group of about 45 missionaries. It also happened to be the day before President Phillips' birthday so we decided to combine the events and have cake and balloons for the President. It was a little outside of his comfort zone but he was a good sport and it worked out well! We were so pleased with the fun cake the local bakery made for us!

During MLC Elder Rowan was busy in the parking lot trading out old cars for new cars. One of our local missionaries snapped this picture of Elder Rowan in his element. Doesn't he look happy?

We also had the opportunity this week to train with the Zahlmans. Elder Zahlman will take Elder Rowan's place and Sister Zahlman will take Sister Larson's place. The Zahlmans have just completed a 2 yr mission in the Kentucky Louisville Mission as the Vehicle Coordinator & General Secretary so they are well trained. After (2) days Elder Zahlman thought that was all he needed to come in and take over on September 2nd. Sister Zahlman is sharp and knows what she is doing. Our way may not be her way but she will adapt and take the best from both missions.

It is always fun when returned missionaries come back to visit so we were happy to have Sister Womack, her fiance, and some friends drop in. Sister Womack is getting married in two weeks after being home for a year. I continue to be amazed at how quickly these missionaries are getting married. We wish her the best!

With only 3 1/2 weeks left until we return home it was time to start packing up our apartment. We wanted to get a good start on it so then we can sit back and enjoy the next few weeks. They will be busy weeks with welcoming our replacements and training, transfers & new arrivals, zone conferences, a visit to Crater Lake, and a day volunteering at the McMinnville Air Shop with the Thunderbirds! Whew!! And then we will be home to give Ryan that hug !

August 4, 2024

As I typed the date on this blog post I was reminded that today was the birthday of my step-father, Dennis Stone. He would have been 97 today but he passed away at the young age of 49. Coincidentally, I was just talking about him with my granddaughters, Danica & Alyssa, this weekend. There were many great things about him and I loved him very much but I was talking to them about the fact that he was an alcoholic and what impact that had on my life. I was warning them about the dangers of drinking and that it is like playing Russian roulette, you never know if you are going to be the one to become an alcoholic. His death at 49 was a result of too much drinking and smoking and his heart gave out. We missed having him be a part of our adult lives because he said he would rather die than give up drinking and smoking. So sad and we have missed him all these years. I was 21 when he died.

This week has been a busy week, a fun week, and a hard week! Dealing with so many new cars has been overwhelming. We think we have picked up all but one of the new cars which means we have 26 new cars this go around. We have 18 RAV4's, 6 Maverik trucks, a new Highlander for the President, and a new Transit van for the mission. We went to get new cars on Monday & Wednesday but in the mean time we were also trying to trade out some of the cars we got last week. Trading out the cars is not a simple process because each trade takes about an hour because the Orb Com devices have to be removed from the old cars and installed in the new cars. We have to figure out how to meet up with each set of missionaries---will they come to us or us to them? Then everything has to be tracked in the computer. Old cars have to be put for sale and new cars assigned and synced with their area. Cars have to be cleaned out, license plates removed, etc. We are hoping to get these all out and gone before we go home but it is going to be close.

In the midst of new cars we were also busy with other things. Our replacements, the Kanzlers, were in town for a grandson's wedding so they wanted to put some items in their apartment. Originally they were going to have our apartment but with the Bready's leaving it worked out better to put them in that apartment. The Bready's left the apartment in great shape but we wanted to do just a little last minute cleaning and staging of the apartment. That went well and we had a nice visit with the Kanzler's when they came by. We also fed the Elders and that is always a treat to have their spirit in our home and be given a little lesson by them.

We tried to get as much done as we could at the first of the week because on Thursday afternoon we left to go out to the coast to meet up with Tracey, Danica, & Alyssa. For my birthday I told the kids I wanted to do a crabbing experience. They all pitched in and Tracey was our host for the event. We rented a house in Rockaway Beach for 2 nights and had a great time. For the crabbing experience we went to Kelly's Marina about 5 miles north of Rockaway. They rent you a boat for (2) hrs, (3) traps to catch the crabs, and then cook them for you when you bring them back. We got our boat and traps and set out for our adventure.

To catch the crabs you throw your traps out in (3) different locations and then come back in about 15 minutes to haul your catch in. In the (2) hrs we had we did this over and over again. The tricky part is to haul the trap in fast enough to not lose most of the crabs. The traps are kinda like basketball nets with dead fish secured to the bottom to attact the crabs. The net rests deep in the water and it was AMAZING how many crabs would come in to the trap to feast on the dead fish. Most times when we pulled the traps up there were 15-20 crabs in the net. A few times when we did not pull fast enough we only had 5-8 by the time we got the trap in to the boat.

Once we had the crabs in the boat we had to decide if any of them were male and big enough to keep. You identify if they are male or female by the markings on their tummy and we had a special ruler to measure if they were big enough. The rest all had to be thrown back. That means lots of touching of the crabs and trying not to get pinched! It is a very fast activity with crabs flying every where as they were tossed back overboard. Usually we only had one from each haul to keep and after a while we decided that even some of those weren't big enough and we threw them back. In the end we had (8) crabs to take back but we must have hauled in over 150 crabs!

Once back on shore Kelly's crew took our catch and determined if all (8) of our crabs were keepable. They weren't, but we did get to keep 4. They boiled them for us in a special cooker and then the fun (not) started when we got to clean them and work on extracting the crab meat out. The girls, and even Elder Rowan helped even though it was not their favorite thing to do. We ended up with about 2-3 cups of crab meat. I enjoyed eating some dipped in garlis butter but none of the rest of them would eat it. I am planning on making some crab rolls and eating the rest with a little lemon butter!

What a fun birthday experience! Thank you kids for getting this for me. I loved the experience and feel so much more educated on what it means to go "crabbing." Would I do it again? Probably once was enough but I am glad I had the opportunity. We enjoyed visiting and ended our trip with a visit to Short Sands Beach. It will probably be the last time we go while on our mission so it was a perfect ending for us even if the girls were not too excited!

Our week has not been without it's stress. We are very concerned about Ryan. He has a tumor in his nasal cavity that appears to have spread to his lymph nodes. He first had a biopsy on his lymph nodes but the doctor did not get a good sample. Then they realized he had the tumor in his nose too so this week they did a biopsy on that. They kept him on the table until they made sure they had a good sample and we are waiting for the results now. Hopefully Ryan will know something by Wednesday but we are all scared. It could still be benign and the problem with the lymph nodes could just be from the infection in his ears. We are trying to keep the faith and remember that with our Savior all things are possible. But that doesn't mean he will not give us trials, just that he will help us make it through those trials. I am reminded this week of the scripture from Alma 26:12, "Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things." Ryan has vowed to fight whatever this is and we know with the Lord's help he can do it!