The Pleasures of Life

We have had another busy week in the office.  President and Sister Pendleton are making sure everything is ready for President and Sister Weston, and we are making sure all the processes and procedures are documented.  I am just a little bit of a control person as it relates to my environment, and worry about mundane things like the signature plate of the new President's signature so checks can be signed.  Our checks have the President's signature "automatically" inserted on the check.  I hope SLC automatically does that changeover on June 28 when the Westons arrive.  I can only hope that SLC deals with this type of thing every year so would have that figured out.  Still, it drives me nuts not knowing for sure.

I have made arrangements for the 2 "Service Missionary" couples that work with us in the office to have Fridays off.  They are very pleased with that arrangement.  These good people did not want to come across like they were not willing to give their all to the Lord, and would match us "stroke for stroke", but unlike us, they still have their homes to maintain and family events to participate in, and they were "killing" themselves.

As part of that arrangement we are giving ourselves Wednesday afternoons off depending on workload and what is happening in the office.  For example, the Westons are arriving this coming Wednesday, and Transfer Weeks are real busy, so for sure those weeks we could not be "off".  But I found that neither the Morgans or the Johnsons, or us, have been to the Temple since starting our work here in the mission office.

So this past Wednesday, Mom and I went to the Sacramento Temple and did an endowment session.  The Temple is one of the smaller designs, with no clothing rental or cafeteria.  It is an "in-line" design without a chapel or waiting room.  After you get dressed you step right into the session room and wait there for it to begin.  I will call it "the movie room" because after you are done there, you have to move to "the Terrestrial/Veil room", and then from there, on to the "Celestial" room.

Everybody was so nice inside.  We have wonderful memories of our work in the Portland Temple, and we just had a great day.

One of the food allergies Mom has is milk.  So she has to make her own ice cream with her soy milk. Well, that full trailer we brought, of course, included her ice cream maker.

It was 102 and 104 degrees this week.

We hope everyone has a great week.  Thank you for your love and prayers.

Love,

Dad

Reading 2nd Nephi

I have set the goal of reading 5 pages a day in the Book of Mormon, and am now on page 136.  I am amazed at how we set goals and how big a part determination and commitment or resolve plays into the success of achieving that goal. I have had experience and success with dieting where I get into that zone where nothing else matters.


I have been able to "power through" 2nd Nephi, a place where many get bogged down.  I heard a story of a soldier in an LDS platoon of the Utah National Guard deployed to Vietnam, whose life was saved by the BofM carried in his chest pocket. The bullet hit him there and he was knocked down by the force of the bullet, but it did not penetrate.  His reported comment to his buddies was: "See, nothing makes it through 2nd Nephi!"


Interestingly, I have found several "gems" in my reading in 2nd Nephi.  As you read the scriptures, you will often find the familiar passages, and say "Oh yeah!  That's where that was." 
Of all the grandchildren, I only remember the birth statistics of Katie Blanchard.  She was 7 lbs, 14 oz, and 21" long.  With everything being a multiple of 7, that was easy.  


The scripture that I found is also easy to find.  It is 2nd Nephi, chapter 2, verse 2.  Lehi is getting ready to die, and is giving his last blessing to Jacob. 


"Nevertheless, Jacob, my first born in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God, and He shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain."


My thoughts immediately turned to Joie.  Of all the times we spend on our knees pleading with Heavenly Father for her wellbeing. The struggles and the worries we endured and suffered.  But yet, she is the reason we are close to Heavenly Father.  She is the reason our family is so blessed.  Our "afflictions" have truly been consecrated for our gain.


I am grateful for His blessings.




Here is a family picture from Jeni and Jason that came today.  It was taken on Lindsey's baptism day last week.  Their son Eli is now 6 months old and is such a cutie.  I have this delightful "vision" of Eli, once he learns to crawl, terrorizing his 3 older sisters by getting into "their stuff".

Kamryn, Eli, Jeni, Jason, Maya, and, Lindsey.

Our love to our family.  We are doing fine and are busy preparing for the changeover of Mission Presidents happening in 10 days.

Dad

We made it through Transfers!!

We sailed through Transfers this week . . . .  well, almost.  This is President Pendleton's last transfer, so he got all the missionaries in the right place to make it as smooth as possible for the new President when he arrives at the end of this month. With the 13 Elders leaving, and 11 coming in, and all the other realignments, a total of 150 missionaries out of 190, were affected.  They either moved physically or stayed in place but had a new companion assigned to them.  I had to manually alter each change.

The parts I worried about doing, the programming in the MS-Excel worksheets, and the uploading of new address information into MS-Outlook, were actually not that bad.  My notes from the last transfer made sense and it all worked the first time I tried it.  That was a confidence booster.

The "stress" came the following day as I produced address and phone reports that are distributed throughout the mission.  The reports are extracted from an MS-Excel Database that is huge.  You eliminate the information you don't want, and then sort the information into the format you need and try to fit the data on a single width page by manipulating the printing font size and the column widths.

After distribution of the reports, I discovered that one set of Elders did not have their address and phone number listed.  That is a system issue, and needs to be corrected in the Church Missionary Data System before you can download the massive MS-Excel Database, and start the process of "slicing and dicing" the information to get the reports you need.  So, the process starts all over.  After correcting that information, re-printing upteen copies, and re-distributing the corrected version, we discovered that we had 2 Sisters assigned to the same apartment with . . . . . . . . . .  2 Elders.
Well, that was just not going to work !!

So we have to find out what the address is of the Sister's Apartment and go back into the Church' System to update it, and then again download the database into an MS-Excel format and get it back into the report we need.  BUT WAIT !!!  THERE IS MORE !!!

After I had done it the 3rd time, the Housing Administrator, Elder Johnson, who was out of the office, calls me to give the address of the girls (Sisters), and it is different from what I had been told it was earlier.  The house numbers were the same, but the street name was slightly different.  ONE MORE TIME !!!!


We will be better at it the next time.  After all that "extra practice", transfers next time will not nearly be as scary.

And now for some pictures.  Here is one for the Grandkids.

At home in Washington, we have Slugs that are always attacking grandma's garden, but they are not the kind that carry their own house like the slugs they have here in California. (Guess they call them Snails).

Here is a visual update on "Grandma's California Garden"

We have already eaten the tomato.  It was delicious.

Here is a picture of the 11 missionaries that arrived from the MTC this week. There was only one foreign missionary, Sister Hurtado, from Lima Peru. They are a good looking bunch.

Elder Smith, Truelove, Pres. Pendleton, Arnett, Sis. Pendleton, Simons, Sis. Hurtado, Tervort, Sis. Walston, Rich, Vernon, Dryer, Angell.

And here is a picture with the missionaries going home last transfer.

Top row: Elders Sopalski, Yeoman, Shirk, Groberg, Hessing (Outgoing AP). 

Middle Row: Elder Osborn AP, Kolditz, Sis. and Bro. Whiting (Mission Nurse), Elder Dyhre AP.

Bottom Row: Sis. Brown, Sis. & Pres. Pendleton, Pres. Chapman (Mission 2nd C).

We are having a GREAT time!  We love our Savior and know we are doing His work.

Love,

Dad

Slow Week Preparing for Transfers

I am finding that our lives revolve around transfers. Either preparing for them or making sure everyone's addresses, phone numbers and companionship's transferred properly in the new directories we publish and distribute after the transfers have been made.

We have 12 Elders going home on Tuesday, and 11 Elders and 2 Sisters arriving that same Tuesday. One of the Elders leaving is Elder Hansen from Shelley, ID that Louise knows, and another is Elder Ryan Wood from the Friendswood, TX 2nd Ward.  Maybe Jason and Jeni know his parents, Todd and Jolene Wood.

We have 2 Elders going home from our "District".  They live with their companions in an apartment here in our apartment complex.  We had them over to our apartment yesterday morning to feed them a GOOD breakfast, kind of as a "farewell" breakfast.  One set is Spanish speaking, and the other is English speaking.

These guys are smart and with-it.  Of the Spanish speaking set, one is going home to UT, and the remaining Elder is from Ecuador. He went to the MTC to learn English, and they joked that he now speaks Mexican Spanish.  The one going home, Elder Denning, spoke of their contact a Pentecostal Minister, and their progress.  They are concentrating on the Book of Mormon rather than countering scripture with scripture.  The minister is a Lamanite, and the book will touch his heart.  After leaving the BofM with some passages to read, the minister has decided that he must read the whole book.  The plain and precious doctrines are "calling" him.  It will be interesting to follow his progress.

Earlier this past week, on Memorial Day, we made another little trip.  We have a lot of rice fields here.

They start out with a flooded field, and use spray planes to seed the fields.

 Then as the rice plants matures, they get harvested.  Look forward to seeing that part of the process.

We found our way to another lake called Clear Lake.  It is not a reservoir like the earlier one was.

On Thursday we had a Mission Couples dinner at the Mission Home.  It was fun to see the other couples from the mission, including the local couples that had been released.  President and Sister Pendleton will be released at the end of this month, and this was kind of a farewell dinner that they put on for us.

One of the Couples serving a Leadership/Proselyting Mission in Paradise, CA, the Baxters, were neighbors of Lonny and Glenda Adams in Kaysville, UT. 

"Elder Adams" is the one that 49 years ago taught and baptized my family. All these years he has stayed close to Grandma and Grandpa.  He attended G-ma and G-pa mission farewell in 1988 when they served their 1st mission.  He would write or call G-ma every 2-3 months, and in his letters, would bear his testimony every time.  More recently, he attended G-pa's 90th birthday celebration.    He also had called me to congratulate Mom and I on our mission call.  He has got to be 70 years old now, and he has been a part of our lives all these years.  Now THAT is a missionary.

President and Sister Pendleton and us.

This Tuesday is TRANSFER DAY.  Last transfer was stressful because we were not sure what to do.  This time around we know what to do, but it is "Remembering how to do it" that is our cause for concern and stress.

Thanks for all your love and prayers.  We really are excited to be here, and feel we have been called with a purpose to fulfill.

Love you lots,

Dad