Oh time is flying by. Last week was a bit slow and this week has been crazy. The couple that we are replacing is leaving tomorrow and there have been lots of little things that they kept saying they needed to show us but we both kept putting off. We have had a couple of days where we were gone early in the day until 9 or 10 at night, changing clothes from Mormon Battalion clothes to normal clothes then back again! 

Church gets better each time we go. We are getting to know people better and they are so good to the missionaries. They love us without even knowing us. Just because we are missionaries. That puts pressure on us to be loving and kind back and to be helpful. It is good for us to watch how we act more and try harder with everyone. It is amazing how wearing a name badge seems to help us be braver. Maybe we think that people are expecting us to do that. You returned missionaries know what I am saying. The rest of you will have to go and experience it. It is so cool.

We are working with several different people in our ward. It is fun to get to know them and love them.  a couple of them are investigators and one is an active member.  Missionary work is so fulfilling and we get excited to see in them the good things that can be magnified by the gospel.  I am trying not to think of what I will feel if they decide to not accept it.  I am trying to have faith that they will.

Monday was a big day. Gone around 10:00 am and didn't get home until after 10:00 pm. Lots of Mormon Battalion stuff. Saying goodbye to the people we are replacing and trying to learn all that they know before they go.

Yesterday we were gone from 8am - 10pm. Mormon Battalion meeting at 8. Worked there from 9-5. Dinner with the Senior Couples after and then we hit a play in the theatre just a block away. Fun. We forgot to take clothes to change in to so we had to go down in our Mormon Battalion attire. People were giving us lots of strange looks. One man from England came up to me and said, "Excuse me. Can I tell you that it is so nice to see a lady in a skirt!" He went on to say how the way women dress these days is awful and he loved seeing us dressed this way." I had to explain to him why I was dressed like I was and he seemed disappointed. 

Today we are taking off in a few minutes to help with car inspections. The missionaries when they come to zone conference drop off their keys with us as they go in and while they are in the meeting we check a billion things on their cars to make sure all is OK. Then we HAVE to hit a beach for a few hours, then the Mormon Battalion for a shift from 1 - 5. While there we have to help prepare for the Professional Tour Guides Meeting that will meet at the MB at 6:00. So that means we are in Pday clothes to check cars and need to change to beach stuff, then into MB costumes and finally normal missionary clothes for the meeting. Oh the trials of missionary life! It is fun that we are involved in so many different things. It keeps things interesting. 

We have had time to enjoy San Diego too.  We first and foremost have found a great beach. The sand is wonderful, white and clean. The beach goes out slowly into the ocean and there are bathrooms and a shower there too! Nice waves for little kids and bigger ones just down the beach for big kids. We went to Point Loma last week. It is an amazing 360 degree view of the bay and the ocean! There is a lighthouse there that is beautiful. What an incredible view! 

Soldier Olivia

Lots of our gang last year in the Campfire room

Olivia, Emmie and Kamree panning for gold

Mormon Battalion

My son Mike just told me that sometime we would have to explain what the Mormon Battalion is. Maybe there are more of you that have no idea what we are talking about when we say the Mormon Battalion. So here we go.....

The Mormon Battalion is not a visitor's center but an Historic Site. So we have to be so careful not to proselyte or make people feel we are being missionaries. We try very hard to not make people uncomfortable and just tell the history of what happened.  We help tell the story of a group of 500 soldiers who march from Iowa to San Diego. They were recruited through President Polk to go help secure the area here in the war against Mexico. It is told is such fun way. It is a great interactive program that is well done and wonderfully moving. We go to five different rooms. The first room is a room where talking pictures help tell the story. The next room looks like a camp ground that the Mormon's were in when they were recruited and tells the story in a video presentation. Brigham Young tells the camp that they won't have to fight if they keep their faith and are true to the gospel. The third room is the outfitting room. It looks just like the outfitting room that the Battalion actually went to. There we get a volunteer from the group to dress up as a soldier. I will put a picture of Soldier Olivia, our grand daughter, when she came with us to the MB last year. The fourth room is depicting a campfire on the Santa Fe plains.  It again is a video presentation showing as a movie what it was like to be there. It shows their challenges and the things they accomplished. We move on to the last room where we are finally back in San Diego. It is a room that depicts the courthouse that the Battalion built after they arrived here. They taught the Mexican's how to make bricks and it was the first brick building in the city. We talk again to pictures and they help tell the end of the story. We explain that these were "ordinary people who did something ordinary through their faith in Jesus Christ". We remind them that the Mormon Battalion was a great success story. They didn't have to fight like they were promised. Everywhere there was supposed to be an army to fight them - no one was there. They help forge new trails that helped others when they came west. They were paid and were able to send money back to help buy wagons, food and supplies for their families to come west, and they helped build the city of San Diego and great relationships with those that were already here. 

It is a beautiful building. The sister missionaries usually do the tours. On Tuesdays, it is their P day so the senior couples do the tours then. The sisters really are great and darling. They really make the tours wonderful. And they are so much fun to be around. We really enjoy being there with all of the good people who work with us. 

There used to be more talking about religion but we are totally to refrain unless people ask us. We just tell the story of these wonderful people and what they accomplished. 

We are going to the San Diego Tourism Authority tomorrow all day. We are making relationships to market the Mormon Battalion try to let more people know how great it is. 

I would love it if you all would do me one favor. Go to the Mormon Battalion Historic Site FaceBook page and "like it" and then go to Yelp and put on a positive review of the Mormon Battalion. That would be a good way to help us do some missionary work! There are only 39 reviews on Yelp and three or four of them are negative. But that gives us a bad overall rating. We are thinking that if we all put on a positive report we can bring up the rating. 

We love you all! We also love any and all emails and letters we get!  Thanks so much for your love and support.  It means a lot!

This is our group of Senior Couples that we work with at the Mormon Battalion and President and Sister Clayton in front of the Mormon Battalion.  The director of the MB is in the front of the picture.

The Elders at Elder Seegmiller's birthday party.

My very first business card!

September 9,2013

We are starting to fill in our days with lots of interesting things and go to bed tired and happy to be busy.  We gave talks this week in church.  I talked on Missionary Work and Roger talked on Temple Marriage.  I think that we did fine and now we won't have to give talks for awhile.

We are enjoying the Mormon Battalion more and more each time we go.  We love the couples.  They are wonderful - each in different ways!  We love the Sisters!  Oh they are cute and fun and loving and smart and kind............  They love us too and show it so abundantly.  They are so much better at giving the tours than we are.  We have had several of them take us aside and have us practice with them and then tell us what we can do better and what we did right.  They all think I am so lucky to have Roger for a husband.  They watch us carefully and notice everything we do.  I think it helps us step up in how we treat each other and it is lots of fun.

The miracles are there at the Mormon Battalion everyday.  Tuesdays are the Sister's Pday and so we have to take care of the Battalion with the other Senior Couples for the day.  It is a long day - from 8 - 5.  Today we had the equipment go down.  As luck would have it Roger was the one giving the tour.  He sat there in the dark and had to tell the people what they would have seen in each room.  He said it worked out OK because the men had lots of questions about the church and he was able to talk to them and answer them specifically.  The couple elders started working on the equipment madly hoping to get it going before more visitors came.  The couple sisters wondered what we could do to help.  We went into the other room and had a prayer for the equipment and our husbands that it would get working soon.  We also prayed that those who were planning on coming to the MB would have their plans delayed so they could see the presentation.  There is such a strong spirit with it.  It took about almost an hour for things to get running again and only one couple came during that time.  As soon as things were running again we got visitors coming in consistently.  The Lord is in the details.

We have visited and helped many people in our ward.  We are learning to know them better and to love them.  We enjoy serving and teaching them.  They have such good hearts.

We had our first visitors a week ago. Roger's friend Gary Snyder and his wife Lynette came to San Diego and spent last Sunday with us.  They came to our wonderful ward and then to our house for dinner.  We don't have tons of stuff here to cook with so it was a bit of an adventure to have some one over for dinner.  But it worked and was so much fun to have them here.  We took them over to the Mormon Battalion after and got them on a tour.

We love our friends and miss you.  We would love to hear from you.  My email is martsyg@gmail.com. 

From Preach My Gospel : There is no more compelling work than this, nor any which brings greater satisfaction  We challenge you to rise to a new sense of commitment to assist our Father in Heaven. 

Address

Oh by the way, in case any of you are thinking about sending us cookies or letters our address is 4490 Collwood Blvd. #39, San Diego, California 92115.

September 4, 2013 

Three Weeks in California!

Oh wow!  Have we been here that long - has it only been that long?

We feel more like missionaries and have had some good experiences in this last week.  We were loaded our first Sunday with lots of people to visit and find.  There is a list of those who are on the ward list but haven't been seen at all there.  We have been finding out what is going on with them.  Many really never were active in the church for very long.  They got baptized without really being converted.  Most of them were cordial and kind.  It was fun talking to them and hearing their stories.  Some of the addresses were not even real addresses.  A few are interested in getting involved again and want home teachers and some contact.  It was a grueling three days searching, knocking, driving, talking etc.  A bit of a taste of what missionaries used to do all of the time.  We have enjoyed talking to others from the ward who have been less active and have good hearts.  We still have some that we haven't found home and keep going back to see them.

We were still wondering what we really would do to fill our time once this list was done.  We still had not heard from the Seegmillers or the mission president so we forged on to find other things we might do.  We went to the Family History Center which just happens to be a few minutes drive from our apartment.  Oh my!  We walked in and met the director of the center.  I told him that we were new missionaries in the area and we were just checking out what service opportunities there might be there.  He just lit up and said that he was hearing the Tabernacle Choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus!  They are so understaffed.  He showed us around the wonderful renovation that they have just done there.  They have doubled the size of the center and added two large teaching rooms.  There are 30 brand new touch screen computers with huge monitors on each in a room with a large screen for viewing and teaching.  There is another large teaching room with tables and hook ups for people to bring their own computers and to learn directly on them.  They have a nice library and the regular desks to use the book on and a large screen area there to do MORE teaching.  They also have 20 other "normal"computers and cubbies to do genealogy work and searching on.  They are the center for the whole area to teach and train the young men and young women.  They have youth groups come in the evenings and teach them.  The director really was looking for someone to replace his wife and him and thought we might be that couple.  He kept us there for over 3 hours overwhelming us.  If any of you out there want to some to beautiful San Diego and be the directors for the Family History Center here there could be a wonderful opportunity here!

Finally we heard from the Mormon Battalion director and he said that he was going to ask the mission president if we could serve there.  He would let us know.  So we were still waiting and still looking for things to keep us busy.  We spent time visiting with the list we were given and visited with several semi-active people from the ward.  What a wonderful opportunity that was!  To sit in a living room with wonderful people and teach them the principles of the gospel was so sweet.  We heard wonderful and sad stories, listened to a sweet lady pray for the very first time out loud, invited her to read and pray, made new friends, taught a lesson, went to a baptism in Spanish, helped clean the church building, help a sweet grandma move, ate pancakes with a bunch of wonderful young families in the ward, and finally heard from the Battalion.  We are going to be able to serve there.  We are more and more excited for this opportunity as time goes on!

We went to lunch with the Battalion directors and spent all afternoon learning about what our responsibilities there will be.  We will be giving tours, manning the Mormon Battalion Historic Site, working with civic leaders with public relations, working with tourism to help get more people to the site, and so much more.  Our heads were swimming.  We have been trying to learn our script!  Oh!  Our brains don't memorize like they used to.  We spent an afternoon with the wonderful couple who are leaving in 6 weeks trying to understand what they have been doing on web sites etc.  We have a lot to figure out.  Since then we have spent several shifts in the center training with the other couples there. The Sisters are darling and loving.  And the couples are good people trying to serve the Lord and are doing a bang up job of it all.  The theme of the Battalion story is, "These were ordinary men that did something extraordinary because of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!"  As I was struggling with all we had to learn one of the Elders turned to me and said, "You are an ordinary person who can do extraordinary things through your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!"  And I can - we can!

We spent all day the last two Tuesdays at the Battalion.  Usually the Sister Missionaries are there and we only have to do four hours shifts but Tuesdays are the Sister Missionaries Pday so the Senior Couples do the whole thing.  We are finally learning things and both of us felt that we had the script down pretty good.  So yesterday we did tours by ourselves!  Oh that was scary!  It was so much harder to say when there are people on a tour looking at you and there is all kinds of media that we have to interact with.  It was a little bit of a train wreck my first tour but I told the people that it was my first tour and they were so much fun and got me through it.  All in all I am sure that we will love working there.  On Sunday we had 910 people through the center.  It is slowing down now with kids getting in to school.  Then we start 4th grade tours for the schools in San Diego!  We can't proselyte there unless asked a question.  But there still are plenty of opportunities to teach the gospel.  The Spirit directs these good people in so many ways to our direction and we are able to give them a taste of the gospel.

People make this work wonderful.  Those that know and feel as we do and those that don't.  Good people and good hearts!  We love it!