We had the opportunity last Saturday to do three workshops at the Regional YSA Conference and that was a fun experience. It was fun because so many recently returned missionaries came to our class which was titled "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" We are around missionaries all of the time, and it was fun to see how enthused they are even after they are home. Then on Sunday we spoke at our first Stake Conference. We spoke in the Sacramento North Stake and it was a little stressful getting there. It is the church the farthest away from us. I know we are blessed to be in a small mission, because it is only about 45 minutes away. Scott had to teach at a leadership meeting early and so I just drove out to meet him there. The first problem I encountered driving down my street was when my gas light came on. Thankfully Ethan's car had gas so I quickly switched him cars. Then they were doing a bunch of weekend road construction... Long story short, I left in plenty of time, and I pulled in 8 minutes before the meeting started. I was so worried I was going to have to walk up on the stand after the meeting had started. That would have made a great first impression. The best part of the meeting was the choir from the Hmong Branch. The spirit was so strong as they sang "I believe in Christ" in a language that we could only understand through the spirit.
I feel like this week has been a bit of a reprieve, as we got Zone Conferences done, and we are planning for transfers next week. Scott did all 21 of the departing missionary interviews and that was a high point for him. What a blessing to be able to talk with these consecrated missionaries who have given their all, and hear about the things that they have learned and done over the past 18 months or two years. We are really going to be sad to say goodbye to this group next Saturday.
One of the hard things this week was missing our grandson, Porter's first birthday. We really love being here, but there are days it is hard not to be home. I am grateful for facetime, which helps us kind of feel like we are there. We got to see him devour his 1 year cake. First baby I've ever seen finish off the whole personal cake. He's a boy after my own heart.
We got to go teaching with Elder Mayne and Elder Dougherty on Wednesday night. They are great teachers. We have noticed as we go teaching that one of the biggest challenges of teaching is that the investigators can easily get off topic and the lesson goes places it doesn't need to go. These two did such a great job of continually reeling it in and bringing it back to the Sabbath Day, which they were teaching. This is a funny story and maybe not completely appropriate, but it shows how funny missions can be. At the end of the lesson Elder Dougherty was going to say the prayer, there was a lady there who was an older, probably less active sister. She was super nice, but quite a character. As he started to say the closing prayer, she yells "you're supposed to stand up, Turkey Butt". I was trying so hard not to laugh out loud and was shaking trying to keep it in. We told him that will be a story that will be told and retold by him for years to come. He handled it with complete dignity.
The rest of this blog is going to be about some of the fun things we have done this week. Because missionary work is hard and tiring, but it's also a lot of fun! We got to go to a Zone Activity with the El Dorado zone on Monday for P day. They went up to President Bitnoff's (who is one of Scott's counselor's in the mission presidency) beautiful home where we played outdoor games, and some fun indoor games and the Bitnoff's provided a delicious lunch for us. They live up in the mountains and I had never been that far East in our mission. It was absolutely gorgeous and was nice to be in the mountains again.
On the way down the mountain we found a golf course and stopped to play 9 holes. It was p day after all. It was a super hard course, so I actually only played 5 holes, I opted out of a few and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and driving the cart, which, hello, is the best part of golf anyway.
Early Thursday morning, we got our first overnight visitors. Ethan and Preston's friends drove all night Wednesday night to get here on Thursday. It has been so fun having a house full of boys again. I guess they are technically men, but they will always be the boys to me. They have been to Folsom Lake, San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, with plenty of time to have fun here at the house. They have team ups with the missionaries tomorrow night, so they are going to dust off their missionary skills and we are going to put them to work.
And finally, and most importantly, THE reason we are here. We were able to attend the baptism of Ian tonight. We have a saying in our mission that we stole from Elder Anderson. "When one baptizes, we ALL baptize." We love every one of our hard working missionaries and know they are each doing all they can to bring souls to Christ through the waters of baptism. We tell them we are all in this together, we help each other and we rejoice when anyone, no matter who taught them, enters the waters of baptism. It made my heart so happy to see how much love and support Ian had from so many of our amazing missionaries tonight. Just look at all of these happy faces. How could you not LOVE this work?
We love you all! Thank you so much for your love and support, because no matter where we are or how we are serving, we are all in this together!
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