I also spent one Sunday morning in the emergency room with a companionship of Elders. For privacy I won't say who or for what, but we got a call around 5:30 one morning and one of our Elders was heading to the hospital. Scott was leaving early to meet with several Stake Presidents that morning, so I quickly got ready and headed to the hospital. Thankfully, we were able to leave after a few hours when they figured some things out, and we actually had quite a nice time chatting and getting to know each other pretty well. One thing that really touched me, we were sitting there in the hospital room, and in walks their ward mission leader. The Zone Leaders had told him they were at the hospital and he headed right over to check on them. We love the members here so much and know they take care of the missionaries so well. They interact with them daily and love and truly care for them. It did my heart good knowing all of our missionaries are in such great member hands.
It's also been full of teamwork, unity, miracles, spiritual enlightenment, memorizing The Living Christ, and helping others onto the covenant path through the covenant of baptism.
We had our Zone Conferences February 19-21. As always, we love being with our missionaries at Zone Conferences. It is one of my favorite weeks of the transfer because we get to be with all of them at the same time. At our mission leadership counsel a few weeks earlier, the mission leaders reworked our mission culture statement. We felt it was time to update it, Scott led them in a discussion/counsel on what we are and what we want our mission to be. We came up with a really solid culture statement and so Scott presented that to all of the missionaries at the beginning of the conference and had a great discussion with them, getting their input on each point. They are very wise and enlightened and I learn so much from their comments. That was a perfect beginning for a few really incredible, spirit filled days.
We were able to hear from missionaries on the Christlike attribute for this transfer, which is patience. We also love hearing the departing testimonies of those missionaries who are finishing their missions. It is amazing to see the growth from the time they come in to the mission, to the time they are giving their departing testimonies. That is one of the biggest miracles of a mission. Our assistants gave a fantastic training on keeping our nets in the water and how little time we really have to do that. In Preach My Gospel it says in order to do missionary work you have to have your line in the water. Meaning, you can't catch fish if your line isn't in the water. We say we want our nets in the water, because you can catch more fish with a net than you can with a single line. They broke down how much time is actually spent proselyting, after you take out time for studies, eating, sleeping, etc. It is shocking how little time we actually have and I think it was a great wake up call to be urgent and use every minute we have, in the most productive way possible. We also had some break out sessions where some Sister Training Leaders taught on how to have effective personal studies, and some Zone Leaders taught the section in PMG on How to begin teaching. They were great trainings and I learned a lot. I got to talk for a few minutes about our Missionary Restoration Firesides that we are doing for all of our members the three weeks leading up to General Conference. At the firesides we are going to recite The Living Christ that we have been memorizing, so we went through that, up to the point we have memorized so far. It gave me chills to hear His disciples reciting those sacred words, testifying of the Savior. We also had some wonderful musical numbers.
After lunch Scott and I tag teamed our trainings. To keep the fishing analogy, I cast the line, and he set the hook. We are so excited about our new focus that will take us through the end of May. I got to talk about miracles, which is my favorite thing to talk about. I had all of our grandkids send a video of what they think a miracle is and it was not only darling, but insightful . Then I asked our missionaries, 'What is a miracle?' We talked a lot about them. We talked about how the some of the children of Israel wouldn't look at the Brass serpent on a pole, because even though many looked and were healed from the bites of the fiery flying serpents, some didn't look because they didn't believe it would heal THEM. Do we ever think miracles only happen to other people? And how do we develop the faith to believe they will happen to us/me? We talked about three principles of developing faith to see miracles, illustrated through the 24 hour period that began with Jesus feeding the 5000. He magnified 5 barley loaves and 2 fish to feed the masses, but it started with a little lad giving what he had. We love hashtags in our mission, so our first hashtag to help us remember how to see miracles is #bringyourbarleybread. Offer what you have to offer and let Jesus do the rest. Next we talked about the disciples on the Sea of Galilee in a huge storm, after the 4th watch they saw Jesus walking on the water. Peter wanted to walk on the water too, and so he got out of the ship to try. And walk on the water he did. Some people think it's a story of Peter's lack of faith, but I don't. I think it shows Peter's incredible faith because he actually did walk on the water. He's the only one who had the faith to get out of the boat, so that was our next hashtag #getoutoftheboat. We're never going to 'walk on the water' sitting in the boat. Once he started to sink, he looked to Jesus and Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and saved him, so the most critical part of seeing miracles in to #reachforJesus. Those were miracles of old, but do they still happen today? Yes. I then told the story told to us by a missionary friend of ours who served in The Czech Republic, where they were part of an amazing miracle in Slovakia. They were asked to 'go to the edge where miracles happen' and as they did, the miracles were big! So the last hashtag is #gototheedge. If God has wrought so great miracles then, 'Why not in Sacramento?'
Scott then finished by talking about miracle of the Restoration, the Book of Mormon, and the Gathering of Israel and the blessing and opportunity we have to be a part of this great work. He talked about his 5 c's that are critical for missionaries to see miracles, which are Commitment, Crying unto the Lord, Consecrated obedience, Capability, and most importantly, Christ. No miracles are ever going to happen without Christ at the center of the work and our lives. He then presented the new mission focus for the next 3 1/2 months and we are calling it 'Go To The Edge'. We know we can see miracles as we apply these principles and so our goal is to bring 100 people to the waters of baptism by the end of May and we will do that as every companionship has someone at church every month. And every companionship will either have someone on date, or baptized every month. They were really excited about this new focus. He ended with this quote by Elder Holland:
"We must believe and build on what our forefathers have done. We are just going to putter along, be average until we wind up to the level when our heart is up in our throat and if we opened our eyes, we would expect to see angels.
If this is God's work, and if He still lives, then the miracles and angels are still there. We must live up to our potential. God will bless us with whatever we need, God wants us to just see what he sees and know what he knows. He wants us to ratchet up the vision. God is easy to please and hard to satisfy. This is not convenient easy work.
We have got to take things to the edge. We have to move into the realm of the miraculous. We have to live in such a way that we cannot do it alone anymore, where we will resort to the Lord, where we will cry, without thy help, I will fall. Help me fly; Go to the edge where miracles happen. Move into the realm of the miraculous. Welcome to the apostolic work."
Day 1 was held in the Eastern Avenue Building with the Sacramento, Cordova, East Sac and Elk Grove Zones.
Cordova Zone
East Sacramento Zone (or as we call it 'The Elder's Quorum)
Elk Grove Zone
Sacramento Zone
Day 2 was held in North Sacramento at the Rio Tierra building and was for the Folsom, El Dorado, Carmichael and North Sacramento Zones
El Dorado Zone
Folsom Zone
Carmichael Zone
North Sacramento Zone
Day 3 was held in Manteca at the Northland Building and included the Lodi, Stockton and Manteca Zones.
Manteca Zone
Stockton Zone
Lodi Zone
The weeks before and after zone conferences were full of a lot of missionary interviews. I continued to have so much fun taking pictures of our missionaries with the notes they wrote to their families and sending them off by text or messenger. The responses I got back were priceless. I know any mid week touch with your missionary is like a surprise gift so I am so happy I got to share some happiness during interviews this transfer. And I got some really good stories of inside family jokes, based on the questions I got to ask about the messages they sent! Just look at all of these happy faces we get to visit with every 6 weeks. We really do love our one on one time with each of these awesome Elders and Sisters.
We interviewed the Cordova Zone the Day of their District Counsel and so we got to sit in with them, do some role plays and participate in their District Counsel. We love when we can go to District Counsels, we always learn so much from our missionaries.
I think the Valentine Swig cookies were a pretty big hit.
We had another surprise on the day we went to the office for interviews with the Carmichael zone. We met Sister Weckesser's mom. They are from Canada and she was one of the last people we would have anticipated running into in the mission office. She had been in town and was dropping off a Valentine's package for Sister Weckesser. We were so glad the timing worked out to be able to visit with her for a few minutes. Sister Weckesser is blonde haired and blue eyed and I would have never guessed this was her mom, but though the physical resemblance is hard to find, she was as awesome as I would have expected her mom to be.
We were blessed mid transfer to receive two great missionaries from the Hong Kong Mission. Due to the Coronavirus, they closed that mission, sent the missionaries home to be quarantined for 14 days and then reassigned them in their home countries. We are thrilled to have two more Mandarin Chinese speakers join us. And couldn't be more thrilled to have these two wonderful missionaries, Elder Pitt and Elder Watson as part of our mission family. After being quarantined for 14 days, they were antsy to get right to work!
Elder Pitt with is companions, Elder Allred and Elder McLeod
Elder Watson with his companions, Elder Passey and Elder Swainston
This past Monday we were able to join two zones for their zone p day activities. We started in Rancho Cordova where we played chair soccer, signs, do you love your neighbor, and then President and I introduced them to ship wreck.
We ate lunch with them and then headed straight to Folsom, where we played volleyball, a variation of volleyball using an exercise ab ball, never have I ever, do you love your neighbor and a few other games.
That evening we hosted the senior missionaries for FHE at our home where President and Sister Kanzler told us about their experiences serving in Sierra Leon on their first mission. What a different experience than serving here. We were even more impressed with their consecrated service there after hearing some of their stories.
We had a few visitors the past few weeks. We were thrilled to see Ashlyn Gilbert, her parents and her sister and spend some time visiting and reminiscing about her mission with them.
We were also so happy to see Nick and MJ Newton, who last time we saw were Elder Newton and Sister Baird. It was fun to visit with them and see them so happily married. It's awesome to see our returned missionaries doing such good things in their lives.
And finally, Spring is busting out all over in Sacramento and I can't quit taking pictures. Everywhere we turn there is another tree or flower that is just too beautiful to pass by without snapping a picture. I wish I could capture the smells of the blossoms as well, but a picture will have to do. Also, I couldn't help take a picture of this cute house across the street from the church in Ione. I have always loved it.
These are in our neighborhood
And these are the almond orchards in Manteca. They are spectacular and go on for miles and miles. To see miles of beautiful, orderly almond orchards in bloom is a sight to behold.
Under the direction of His Father, he was the creator of the earth. 'All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made'. -The Living Christ
We can't believe we are almost into March. Time is flying. There is much work to be done. We are cherishing every minute. We love this work!
