September 7, 2014

It is Fast Sunday and that means that we get to be lazy a bit today and don't have to be to church until 1:00 pm!  Yay!  I think that we needed this.  Sundays used to be the craziest day we have and now that we are only involved in one ward we are able to actually call Sunday a "day of rest".  We are anticipating our ward changes and how we will fit in to those changes.  We will have lots of new people to meet and it sounds like our ward will now actually have about 6 young men!  We have had none until now.  The ward is have a "Break the Fast" dinner after our meeting schedule to give everyone a chance to socialize and meet each other.  We won't be able to stay very long because we have our very last MLS (Member and Leader Support) meeting.  We have had four other couples in the mission with our unique missionary calling and we have met together each month to encourage each other and find out how good ideas of what the others have done.  It has been such a wonderful experience to share and become such great friends.  We should have already gone with our original call of a year but with extending we will see them all go before us!  We will miss them.  I will fill you in on our day at the end of my blog.

Monday was Labor Day but there is no holiday for us.  Labor Day is a great missionary day.  So we were at work at 8:00am as usual.  We start our day with a devotional with Elder and Sister Soffe.  I enjoy this moment to remember what we are there for - not just to pay bills and organize the mission - but we are there to encourage missionaries, set the spirit of the mission, make it possible for the work to move forward.  I gave the message on Monday and used a book that Grandma Judy gave me for my birthday, "What Would a Holy Woman Do?"  But I changed it up a bit to include the men.  We put up a sign that said, "WWAHPD?" to remind us all to think about what would a holy person do.  It was interesting as the missionaries came through out the week and tried to guess what it meant.  We were able to talk to them about it and share our challenge with them.

We were also able to go buy two new cars!  Amazing how many cars the mission goes through.  We picked up Chevys.
We would have rather had Toyotas but when a car reaches 30,000 miles, the church wants it sold and a new car bought.  For some reason Toyota wasn't selling Corollas this summer ??? so we had to get the Chevys.  We have so much less problems with the Toyotas and it is so much easier to sell them used too.  I picked out which car I wanted but Elder Soffe didn't think that the church would go for it.  The dealership was cooking hot dogs and hamburgers so we even got a free lunch.  It was fun driving the new cars back to the office.

That evening was the Senior Couples Family Home Evening.  We had a pot luck dinner at a church in the area and it was a nice evening to socialize with each other.  We feel so blessed to be here with so many amazing people.  They really are the salt of the earth and we love them.  There are 23 couples in our mission.  We got two new couples this month and are loosing three!  So the end of our meeting was the wonderful opportunity to hear the testimonies of all of those good people and then our mission president.

The Scotts are the new couple taking over at
the La Jolla Institute of Religion.  She is in the
middle of cancer treatments!

The Painters are from Nephi.  They are leaving soon.
We will miss them.  They had such a hard time with
the "big city" and struggled with it all for awhile.
But they grew and were such a blessing here.

The Jensens have served for 18 months at the MCRD.
(The Marine Corps Recruitment Depot)  What a wonderful
assignment they had.  They worked with young men in
boot camp.  They have seen so many miracles and
baptisms with these wonderful young men.

The Van Ormans came right after us and
lived by us for awhile.  We became good
friends quickly.  They have served in a
multi-cultural ward.  They have Tagalog,
English, Spanish, and Tao missionaries
in their ward.  

 

President and Sister Schmitt!  We love them.
Don't they look young?  They are both 40!  

We love the Assistants.  It is a great part
of working in the office, to be associated with
them and the other missionaries.  

Part of the group

Tuesday was a wonderful day for me!  Yay!  It is P day for the missionaries and the Mormon Battalion sister were meeting for lunch and invited us to come along.  Roger didn't get to go but I did and was in heaven.  I love those girls and it was so fun to be in their midst.  I do miss them and it is nice to be in the office where I can see them more.  They are like family to us!

Sister Wells

These sisters are all Mardarin speaking sisters.
The mission is getting ready to have a
Mandarin branch.

La Jolla Playhouse

We were able to finish off the week with ushering at a play in the La Jolla Playhouse.  We were assigned outside duty.  Roger was in charge of getting a golf cart for handicapped people to ride into the theatre on and I was in charge of helping people use the parking machine. We enjoyed standing out in the beautiful La Jolla weather talking with people.  Roger even handed out Mormon Battalion cards!  The play wasn't that good this time and we even left a bit early.  But it was nice to be there and to enjoy the people.

Roger doing what he does best.

My job - the parking machine!

Saturday was full!  It is supposed to be our P day but there are always so many things going on that day that it is hard to get much of our stuff done.  One of our ward members was moving to a different apartment in the ward.  They are a couple where the husband is not active and the wife has become active while we are here.  Bart and Cheri.  We love them and made sure that we were there to help them.  There were three missionary companionships and several ward members there but it was still quite a process in the heat.  Roger had to leave a bit early so that he could help coach a girl's softball team.  We are excited about this opportunity.  Vera and Charles are the tour guide friends we have enjoyed so much here.  They just happen to live in the ward boundaries and their son does too.  His daughter plays in a league and when they found out that Roger knows the game they asked if he could help.  It will be a fun and wonderful opportunity to work with them!  The Lord works in mysterious ways!  What could be more fun missionary work for Roger than softball?  We hurried and changed after that and went to a retirement party for a single lady in our ward who just retired from Deseret Book.  It was a lovely evening.  Shoot I forgot to take pictures of it all.  

Well, the ward changes were made and it was really cool.  We now have some young men!  We also have some great active young women.  The chapel was full and we met lots of good strong people.  It will help so much to have a bigger group of people running the ward and helping out.  

Our MLS group men.  Elder Painter, Roger, Elder Brown,
Elder Van Orman and Elder Van Alfen

Our whole group together for the last time - here!

After church we went to our MLS dinner.  It was bitter-sweet.  It is the last time we will all be together here on our missions.  Two leave in a little over a week and a third couple leaves in a month.  We have all committed to keep this group together over the years.  

We asked them what they will miss the most when they get back and the answer they all gave was the people!  We all feel that we have made friends and loved ones that will be hard to not see on a regular basis.  

One of the couples gave us a quote that says, "You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere.  That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place."

Our MLS group women.  Sister Painter, Sister Van Orman,
me, Sister Brown and Sister Van Alfen.

Well, another week is about to begin!  Always new adventures around the bend.  We have to speak in church which will make the week that much busier with having to prepare along with all the other things that are going on.  Any good ideas on Scripture Reading and Baptism would be greatly appreciated.....

GOODNIGHT!