Mission Week in Review

It is hard to believe weeks come and go so quickly.  We are constantly busy with many things so we do not notice the days passing.

Firsts:  a very sad one--the mother of one of our missionaries called first thing in the morning asking to talk with President.  Her son, the brother of our missionary, had lost the second of his preemie infant twins.  So very sad.

Another sad thing--the mother of a missionary who was scheduled to go home next week called to make different arrangements to meet her son, pick him up from his mission and tour around the mission and the northwest together.  It was complicated but was probably going to work out fine.  That was not the sad thing.

 The sad thing was that just a few hours after getting this together she called to say that the missionary's  father was in the ICU and not expected to live.  This was late in the day so we did not hear the rest of it until morning when we learned that the missionary was on his way home.  Even later we learned that the missionary made it home in time to be with his father before his father died.  Life goes on for these missionaries even when they are serving the Lord full time.  They learn to accept and deal with it and continue on with their service.  They really are wonderful.

And life goes on for, and all around, us, too!  I think last time I mentioned the Jesus scripture reading Project.  Despite my best intentions, it was several days before I read the Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd references.  They were worth reading and being reminded of His glorious shepherding of us all.

Another first for Dear One and me, was that we were there at the office for a 'staff meeting' with President and Sister B.  It was a good meeting.  Moved right along efficiently and got a lot accomplished. I had several assignments which I was able to finally finish before we left for the day.  Honestly, I was afraid that I would forget them if I did not do them immediately.

On a rather hokey note:  we had planned to go to a pizza business that has a buffet of salad and pizza one night a week.  I was too tired to brave the rush hour traffic so we just went home and ate leftovers.

The big excitement in the office was that on Monday the UPS man brought in the five new computers we had been expecting since we arrived in field.  We just watched them sitting there in a pile for a day or two, then one morning at Devotional we had a long discussion about them in the business part of the devotional.   There are seven missionaries in the office, four full-time and three part-time.  The four full-time and one of the part-time missionaries are to get the new computers.  What to do about setting them up was a concern.  Fortunately there is a stake technology specialist who is responsible for this job so we called him and he agreed to come on Friday.  (Finding out who the tech was and contacting said tech was one of my assignments at the staff meeting.)

He came on Friday as planned.  He was there for more than five hours.  When we left the office Friday night, the computers were all up and running, and my computer was connected to my printer.  Because there was a lot more uploading and downloading and side loading to do we left the computers running when we left the office near 6 PM.  The brother technology specialist is a saint, truly.  On Monday morning we will go into the office for a little while before going to help with the newly arriving missionaries and the transfers.  We hope we have thought of everything that needed to be done on the computers before that happens...just in  case the computers do not perform as we need.  We have Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 365 and OneDrive now.  New stuff.  Hope to up to the challenge....

On the subject of new missionaries:  there are 27 new Elders and Sisters coming!!!  27!  That is a lot. The mission provides a pillow, a fleece blanket, and a comforter for each of them. Plus a lunch and bottle of water. We bought the water at Costco.  On Wednesday I ordered the lunches.  On Saturday Dear One and I went to the storage garages to pick up the bedding and put it in the bed of the mission pick up truck.  We then went to an apartment the Housing missionary (Dear One) arranged for a set of new sisters.  We needed to bring light bulbs, a power strip, and trash bags.  We failed to bring toilet paper! Yikes!

After that we went to the Jacksons' apartment where we ate a wonderful supper of tacos and burritos and apple pie along with chips, French onion dip, vegetables, and homemade hummus while we watched the General Women's Broadcast on LDS.org.  The talks were very uplifting and motivating.

We hope we are ready for transfers, which is tomorrow as I am writing this post.  We still have to get the rest of the mail we have been holding at the office...some for missionaries already here, some for incoming missionaries.  The car is almost as full as it was when we loaded up to come west!!!