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!!!