We got to Coloma and were met by Brother and Sister Gomm. They are in the El Dorado Stake and are Church History missionaries. They are moving and this may be the last time they guide our tour and we are so sad about that. They have been wonderful to us.
After a brief introduction at the James Marshall Monument, we walked down to see the Old James Marshall Cabin, The Jail, the Blacksmith Shop and the Mormon Cabin. Members from the Mormon Battalion made their way from San Diego to Sacramento and were working on Sutter's Mill at the time Gold was found.
After our visit to the Mormon Cabin we went to try our luck at panning gold. It's a lot harder than it looks. Also, special treat for me, my mom and dad and my brother Matthew, sister-in-law Beth, and niece Abbie met us up at Coloma. They came to visit for a few days of Abbie's Spring Break before they made their way down the coast to Carmel. It was so fun to see them and to share our missionaries with them.
Elder Damon found the best gold of all!
No one struck it rich, but we had a lot of fun. After Gold Panning we headed back to the Mormon Cabin where Brother Gomm showed us some tools they used, and also had some gospel applications for all of them. He even had my mom and dad demonstrate the two man saw. They didn't know they were going to be put to work.
Last stop before lunch was the actual Saw Mill they were working on when they found gold.
Aren't my mom and dad SO CUTE!!!
We had a great time at Coloma, it's always a highlight for the missionaries. Kind of a right of passage when they are old enough in the mission to make the Coloma cut.
We had a quick turn around. We got home and from Coloma and headed to Sacramento where we attended an interfaith Passover Seder Dinner. It was a fun experience and it was especially fun to watch our missionaries from the Sacramento Zone, who were the volunteer servers for the night. They were most impressive!
That's grape juice on our table!
Seder Selfie
It was pretty fun to see our missionaries walking around all night with Books of Mormon tucked into the back of their pants!
On Tuesday morning we had Mission Leadership Council at our home. We were blessed to have my parents there to speak to them. Scott talked about General Conference and about following a prophet and then turned some time over to my parents to have them talk about some of their experiences with different prophets and with missionaries when my dad was a General Authority. We could have called the meeting right then and there. They were mesmerized listening to them tell their stories. The assistants gave great trainings, I was able to train on our mission culture and building unity as we are one with Christ, united in doing the will of the Father. Scott talked even more about establishing a Christ Centered Mission Culture and things we can do to ensure our mission is based on the foundation of our Savior Jesus Christ and his teachings.
After MLC Scott had a lot of missionary letters to read, but I went down town with my visiting family and showed them around our city a bit.
We have been doing a lot of interviewing the past week and a half, and I don't take many pictures (or usually any) at interviews. But we do love getting out and visiting with each individual missionary every transfer. I had to miss going to a couple of the zones and I was really sad to miss out on that one on one time.
Today we had to say goodbye to two wonderful Elders. Elder Anderson has been having some health issues and needs to go home to get them figured out. He flew home to Guam and had to be at the airport at 4 a.m. That was an early airport run that President did by himself. We are hopeful that everything will turn out well for Elder Anderson. We love him and are praying for him.
He got home and we headed right back with Elder Thomas. He was supposed to go home with the last transfer but had wanted to extend for a bit. He is a Hmong speaker and we only have two other Hmong speakers in the mission at this time, and they have both been here 2 transfers or less. So we were able to get the church to let us keep him for 2 extra weeks to help these two young elders (who are fabulous, so no worries about the Hmong work in their capable hands). We really hated to say goodbye to Elder Thomas. There is no one quite like him and the energy level of our mission has decreased substantially as we sent him back to Texas. We were so sad to see him go.
We also had a treat today, a good friend from home, Lance Tempest flew into town on the same plane that Elder Thomas flew out of town on and so we were able to meet him at the airport and squeeze in a late breakfast with him at our favorite breakfast place in town. Chances are, if you come to visit us, you will end up at Bacon and Butter at some point.
We were also blessed to be able to meet up with Gary and Carol Bergeson, our son in law's parents, who just finished a mission in Fort Worth Texas. They have been traveling the country visiting all of their scattered kids and one happens to live not far from us. They drove over to attend the temple and we were lucky enough to have dinner with them. It was so fun to see them and compare our mission experiences. We all agreed this is a very hard, tiring work, but there isn't a better work we could be doing and we all love the opportunity we have had to serve our missions. It was great to see them and catch up, and of course we talked about our perfect shared grandchildren. We sure love them.
Finally, this is what brings us so much joy. We were driving down Madison Ave and looked to the side and saw this.
Elder Torres and Elder Ravston teaching some men in the parking lot of the Home Depot. It made us so happy we had to pull over and take a sneaky picture of them. We love our missionaries and we love to see them preaching the good word, even in parking lots!
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