Finals Week

This week has been a doozy.  Not sure if doozy is a real word, but that's what it's been.  Sunday night it felt a bit like we had just finished finals week. Transfer weeks are always big, but we had a special visitor at the end of the week that made it just a little bit bigger.  

I think it was a week ago Thursday we were at the office finalizing transfers that were beginning on Monday and Scott got a call from Elder Kevin Pearson who is a member of the Quorum of the Seventy and the new area president for the North America West and North West areas, which is all of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.  He had a free weekend and so he told us he'd like to come and visit our mission on Thursday of the next week, which was the day after transfers.  We had our Mission Leadership Council scheduled for the Friday and so he said he'd join us for that.  Which was awesome, but also added a little pressure since we were planning on preparing for MLC after transfers were over.  We always try to prepare trainings that are spiritual, uplifting, motivating, etc.  But the pressure to do that is amped up a bit when a General Authority is going to be joining you.  Especially when you have very little notice and even less time.

In addition to that, it was a big cooking week. I had to fix dinner for 30, for the new incoming missionaries and the office staff that help welcome and process them on Monday night.  Dinner for 12 on Tuesday night for the departing missionaries, lunch for 16 on Thursday for the new leader meeting, dinner for Elder Pearson at our home on Thursday night and prepare enough chicken salad to fill croissants for 50 for the MLC lunch on Friday.  We didn't have any grass growing under our feet this week, that's for sure. 

On Monday we welcomed 14 new missionaries to the mission.  It is such an exciting day when we get to welcome these excited, enthusiastic new missionaries to Sacramento.  It never gets old.  

I'm reaping the benefits from this blog.  Hermana Nielson got off the plane and handed me a bag of Reisen candy and said she had heard it was my favorite.  I kept asking her where she heard that and she was pretty sheepish about telling me.  She finally said she saw it on my blog, I forget what I put on here, but I must have mentioned that being my favorite candy at some point, and it got me a nice sweet treat. 

We got this group off to the office and Scott and I waited for one more elder who was coming from the Mexico MTC.  Elder Wells was coming from Mexico through LA and the plane from LA landed and everyone came down and all of the luggage besides two pieces were collected from the luggage carousel and they didn't have name tags on them, but we didn't have our missionary.  It brought back memories of a year ago when we lost Elder Chase who had come from the Mexico MTC and missed his plane in LA.  We started checking with the office and with the airlines to see where our missing Elder was.  About 15 minutes later he came down the escalator.  He had lost his wallet, we think in LA and he had to wait for everyone to get off the plane and for the crew to check the plane to see if they could find his wallet.  Not the best welcome to Sacramento, but at least he made it safe and almost sound. 

We finally all got back to the office and had dinner, got them all interviewed by the president and medical and finance, got their pictures taken and paper work filled out.  Thankfully our awesome Carmichael sisters came and went through our mission culture statement, did role plays and otherwise kept them occupied while they were waiting for their turns.  We got them all processed and sent off to where they were staying the night and then met back up with them first thing Tuesday morning.  

We have about a three hour training they have to sit through, which isn't the most fun in the world.  Scott and I usually do our trainings first so we can get out to the parking lot to participate in the transfer line up that is going on while the new missionaries are being trained.  It is so fun to see all of the missionaries coming and going, picking up new companions and saying goodbye to the old ones.  This time I missed that because in addition to my regular training, I had to do the training on Adjusting to Missionary Life.  It is a booklet the church has put out to help missionaries, well, adjust to missionary life, socially, emotionally, etc.  We have a wonderful counselor from LDS Social Services who helps us with some issues and he usually does this training but he was out of town so it fell to me.  Luckily I had done a zone conference on finding balance a few transfers ago and used a lot from Adjusting to Missionary Life so I didn't have to prepare a whole new training.  

I have so many favorite things that we do here, but one of them is when we march the new missionaries into the cultural hall, all of the trainers are in there singing called to serve, and then we match them up with their companions, have lunch and head to the temple for pictures.  

 Grateful to have these 15 new missionaries here with us in Sacramento

         Sister Tatafu training Sister Law                           Sister Rowley training Sister Dickson

     Hermana Keller training Hermana Bowen           Sister Simonsen training Sister Ho Ching

    Sister Fausett training Sister Bayless             Hermana Melendez training Hermana Nielsen

Sister Ellsworth training Sister Knaphus                 Elder Carter training Elder Caldwell

Elder Miller training Elder Hansen                           Elder Lilly training Elder Wells

Elder Kemp training Elder Everett                             Elder Henry training Elder Hart

Elder Steel training Elder Peterson                              Elder Coleman training Elder Balser

Elder Bailey training Elder Allred

We got the new missionaries and their trainers off to their areas and came back up to the temple with the departing missionaries. 

After our temple session we came back to our home for dinner and a departing testimony meeting.  That is a sacred meeting, I love sitting with these seasoned missionaries and listening to their strong testimonies and the things they have learned and how they have grown over the past two years.  This is the first time we haven't had any sisters going home and I kind of felt like 'one of these things just doesn't belong'.  I told them I felt like I was crashing priesthood meeting.  However, at the end of the meeting, since they were all Elders, I asked them to sing "Ye Elders of Israel" for me for the closing song.  That was powerful and it's a tender moment I will never forget.  

The next morning it was off to the airport bright and early.  The night before they leave we give them a Book of Mormon to write their testimonies in and we ask them to find someone to give the Book of Mormon to as they are traveling home, to make one final contact as a set apart missionary.  

I kept snapping pictures of Elder Nelson trying to give his Book of Mormon away.  Turns out this first family was someone he knew from one of his wards, the second contact was not interested, to say the least, but he was trying. 

I know I'm a broken record when I continually say how hard it is to send missionaries home, but it is and I'm sure I'll never stop saying it!

It was really hard saying goodbye to Elder He. He is from mainland China, he couldn't even tell his friends what he was doing in the United States and he had a whole packet of things he could and couldn't do as he went home to China.  He had to take off his name tag as soon as he got on the plane and couldn't talk to anyone about the church.  He was a fabulous missionary and was heaven sent here to help with all of the Chinese people we have here.  I don't know when we will see him again, so this one was tough.  I told him though that I think when China opens to missionary work he is going to be one of the first Mission Presidents in China. 

            
                  Elder Morin                                                            Elder Nettesheim

           Elder Christensen                                                     Elder Lillian

          Elder Manley                                                                  Elder Nelson

Hugs all around and they were off.  I did have to smile, and hold back the tears at the same time when I found this one last selfie of our assistants on my phone after Elder Nelson had left.  All of these returning missionaries were terrific and they will be sorely missed in the mission. 

Wednesday after the airport drop off  we had about 36 hours to prepare for our visit from Elder Pearson.  In that time we also had a meeting on Thursday morning with the missionaries who will be returning home next transfer, to help them finish strong and expect and ask for final transfer miracles.  We also had a meeting for our new District and Zone Leaders, followed by lunch.  Then if was off to the airport again to pick up Elder Pearson.  

We brought him back to our home and had dinner with him and just visited the entire evening.  He was amazing.  He was kind and thoughtful and had great vision for the work in California.  It was a wonderful night and we felt so blessed to have him in our home.  

Friday morning we had Mission Leadership Council at our home.  It was such a privilege to have Elder Pearson join us for that meeting.  Scott started it off with a great discussion about the use of Facebook Messenger in the mission, then the assistants did a training on using the Book of Mormon in contacts and teaching, I did a training on the Role of Hope in Leadership using the examples of Nephi and Joshua to find patterns they could apply in their own leadership responsibilities, and Scott finished up with a good training on the importance the Savior places on baptism.  After that we went to lunch and then Elder Pearson took the rest of the afternoon.  He taught non stop from 1:30 to 4:00.  It was like drinking from a firehose, he gave us such great counsel and ideas to think about and implement.  It was an amazing meeting and we all felt so blessed to have him join us. 

Lunchtime with Elder Pearson, Scott, and President Bitnoff

My awesome lunch helpers, Elder and Sister Gunnell and my friend Carrie Crockett

A few weeks ago Sister Coombs and Sister Bustos showed up somewhere with these twin mustard skirts.  I had ordered one and told them when it came we had to all wear them at the same time, well, MLC was that time and it turns out, mine wasn't as mustard as I thought it was.  Sister Gunnell also had the mustard theme going. 

This was Sister Wilding's last MLC, which makes me very sad, and this is what it looks like outside of our house after MLC.  I'm sure our neighbors wonder what goes on every 6 weeks when lots of Toyota Corollas with bike racks pull up and park up and down the street.  

After MLC we took Elder Pearson to Roseville to meet up with President and Sister Ward and then we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out.

On Saturday and Sunday we had the Sacramento Stake Conference.  We just have to laugh when we think of our lives.  We had to speak for 20 minutes on Saturday night in Stake Conference and the way our lives go, we started thinking and preparing for it Saturday afternoon.  In our old lives we would have been preparing for weeks.  

This was the most unique experience we have had yet in a Stake Conference.  The Stake President is amazing, he is such a great President and one of the things that makes him so perfect, especially for that Stake is that he is a little unconventional.  So Saturday night went fine.  For Sunday he had contacted Scott a few weeks ago and told him that he wanted to stress the unity that members needed to have with the missionaries and so for his talk on Sunday he would like to stand at the pulpit with Scott and just kind of bounce ideas back and forth.  He said he usually doesn't prepare a written talk, he just has ideas and goes with them (which he can do because he is an incredible public speaker and very well spoken.)  He told Scott that he seemed like he is good on his feet too and so they could just get up there and have a little fun together.  Then he said "we'll just see what happens, it's kind of like the wild wild west out here."  They also have two session of conference.  One at 9:00 a.m. for half of their Stake and one at noon for the other half.

Sunday morning we arrived bright and early, and I didn't have a care in the world.  Until we walked up onto the stand with 10 minutes until the meeting started and President Cassinet came up to us and said "I've come up with a new scheme". And proceeded to ask us if we remembered the old game show on TV called 'What's my Line'.  I didn't, but apparently people came on the show and said what their occupation was and then there was a celebrity guest who asked questions to find out which one really had that occupation.  So, he says he'd like he and Scott to stand at the pulpit and to both introduce themselves by their names and they would both say they held the keys to missionary work in the Sacramento Stake.  Which he does.  Scott holds the keys for the missionaries, but the Stake Presidents hold the keys over missionary work in their Stakes.  His goal was to reinforce to his members that is takes both missionaries and members, or both sets of keys, to effectively do missionary work. Then he looks at me, with a gleam in his eye, and says "now, this is where you come in.  You are going to be the celebrity guest who asks us questions to help figure out which of us really does hold those keys".  I responded that I would be happy to do whatever he would like me to do, and asked him what questions would he like me to ask.  It was when he responded, oh, you'll come up with some good questions, and then he was off and the meeting was starting that just a tiny bit of panic set in.  I hate to admit I didn't get a lot out of the first hour as my mind was running a hundred miles a minute trying to come up with questions that I could ask about each of their priesthood keys.  Oh, and he also told me to ask questions that would make him win, because he is the key holder.  Needless to say, it was the most unconventional Stake Conference we have been to, with the three of us standing at the pulpit, with me as a 'celebrity guest' participating in a 'game show' I have never seen, and wasn't given much warning about.  I think it went ok, at least we had people laughing and they probably won't forget it.  

I failed to post this picture of a wonderful baptism we were able to attend last Saturday

And that was our week in a nutshell. The work continues to roll forth, we continue to be anxiously engaged, and our missionaries continue to be a great source of joy for us.  

Lately...

A few weeks ago we were talking to another mission president that we know and he summed up our past week or so when he understatedly said "there's never a lack of someone to talk to."  Last week we got to talk to about 60 of our missionaries one on one as we had a week full of interviews.  With the addition of three new zones and lots more missionaries, our interviews take up a lot of our time.  We love being with the missionaries and look forward to chatting with them one on one each transfer.  I realized how much I enjoy it when I missed several of our zones interview days because I was home for our son's wedding.  When I saw the missionaries from those zones at Zone Conference it seemed like it had been forever since I had talked to them.  So, although it takes a lot of time, it is time well spent.  

Last week we went down to Lodi early Tuesday morning and interviewed the missionaries in that zone and then headed to Stockton to do the Stockton Zone interviews in the afternoon.  We got done around 6, grabbed some dinner and went to the hotel we stayed in for the night.  The first time we stayed down there I had found a hotel online that looked decent, but since I didn't feel comfortable taking off my shoes until I hopped into bed, we decided that would be our last stay in that one.  Luckily we found a great little hotel down there and made friends with the manager and so we will be staying there every time we have to go down for interviews or Zone Conferences.  Monday morning we got up and headed out to do the Manteca Zone Interviews.  They took most of the day and then we headed back home.  Friday we were with the North Sacramento Missionaries for their interviews.  

Thursday we had a day to prepare some things for transfers that are coming up.  I also ran to the Folsom Zone's District Counsel Meeting.  While I was gone Scott did their interviews and forgot to take their cookies that I had ready in the freezer for them.  I heard about it from several of the missionaries so I ran cookies to them for their District Counsel Meeting. Meanwhile, Scott was working with Elder Gunnell. We got 40 new missionaries with the addition of the three new zones, and we are getting a lot of new missionaries over the course of the next three transfers.  That means we need to open about 5 new areas every transfer for the next three transfers.  Before our mission I wouldn't have thought much about that, but opening 15 new areas in the space of 3 months also means finding housing for 15 new companionships that will go to those new areas.  Elder Gunnell does an incredible job of finding good places for our missionaries to live but it is not an easy task, so he came over Thursday morning to try to understand where we are going to need more housing over the next three months and so he can get a head start on securing lodging for all of these missionaries.  I had no idea what goes on behind the scenes of running a mission, but I am ever grateful and humbled by our Senior missionaries and all they do to help things run smoothly with the soon to be 185 missionaries under our care.  

We were blessed to get together with all of them on Labor Day at President and Sister Bitnoff's lovely home up in the mountains of Pollack Pines.  It was fun to just get together to socialize and have fun and relieve some of the stress of our day, and night jobs.  It was also a nice night to honor our dear Sister Skank who will be leaving us at the end of the month.  She has been such a joy to work with and has brought such a happy, positive feeling to the office.  We have loved having her here and she will be sorely missed.  We will have to say goodbye to the Bitnoffs.  President Bitnoff has been Scott's counselor in the Mission Presidency and we could not have asked for a better counselor, friend, advisor and missionary.  And Jenni has become a dear friend of mine.  They have just received a calling to serve in the Sacramento Temple Presidency and so he will have to be released at the end of October in order for them to begin their new assignment.  We are grateful they aren't going far and we will still see them, but we will really miss President Bitnoff and his wisdom and willingness to serve in any way he could to ease the burden on Scott.  The missionaries are going to miss him as well. 

 The whole crew

 The Elders

The Sisters

 The Nivens arrived about a month ago but we failed to get a picture with them. They are serving in the Cordova Stake as MLS missionaries and are already working miracles

This is Brother and Sister Bird. Sister Bird is one of our mission nurses, helping out in Stockton, Lodi and Manteca.  We are so grateful for her and they are a joy to work with.

We've also been able to get out and work with our missionaries a few times this past week.  Last Saturday we went out with the Sacramento Zone on a blitz to help the Hermanas in the Spanish Branch.  It was a really great afternoon because not only missionaries, but members showed up to help.  A blitz is when everyone in the zone works in one specific area for a couple of hours to help find new friends for the set of missionaries in whose area they are working.  Since the Hermanas cover a large area it was great to have so many people helping.  They spilt up the missionaries and sent one or two with either a Spanish Speaking missionary or one of their members.  Scott went with Hermana Sutherland and Sister Vang and I got to got with Hermana Quizon and Sister Workman.  I was reminded of a few things while I was out this time.  The first is that this is HARD work.  And it was hot.  And the Sisters never get discouraged when people either aren't home, won't answer their door or tell them they aren't interested. They are tenacious about continuing the conversations and even when someone isn't interested they still always ask if they can share a scripture about Jesus Christ.  We did get a few referrals for the Elders who cover the area we were working in, and we found two pretty solid friends for the Hermanas to teach.  Not bad for a few hours of work.  And we had a lot of fun together.  We always tell our missionaries that if they aren't having fun and finding joy in the work, they aren't doing it right.  We tried to have some fun and I think we succeeded. 

All of these people were out finding new friends for two hours on Saturday. #strengthinnumbers

Having a little fun along the way

Our new friend Olga and her cute little granddaughter who speaks three languages: Spanish, English and Lao.  Impressive!

I also got to go out finding on Wednesday with Sister Ellsworth.  She and Sister Kacksaetter are training Sister Stephens and they asked if I would go out with one of them so they could get twice the work done by splitting up.  Smart girls.  

Sister Ellsworth and I went out together and again, it was hard, hot and fun and we met so many nice people and even had a few miracles along the way.  One of them was finding a friend named Gabriel. We had gone to an apartment complex looking for a potential and she wasn't home. So we decided if she wasn't home we would knock the door above, we heard a huge dog on the other side of the door, and a man telling the dog to be quiet, but as many times as we knocked, he didn't want to answer.  So, just as we were leaving, Sister Ellsworth said "Let's knock one more door, that one (pointing to a door smack in the middle of the complex.)"  But first she said, "Let's say a prayer".  So we stopped right in front of the door and said a prayer, knocked, knocked again, and to our surprise Gabriel answered the door and even invited us in.  We couldn't go in because he was home alone, but he was so nice.  He had gone to Boy Scouts as a kid with some 'mormons' and so he knew a little bit about the Book of Mormon.  He set up a time to meet with the sisters for them to teach him.  That in and of itself is a miracle, but he also told us that between his work and his school schedule, he is home for about an hour a week, on Wednesday afternoons, and it happened to be a Wednesday afternoon that Sister Ellsworth was inspired to go check on a potential, who wasn't home, but Gabriel was! 

We have been blessed as a mission to see a lot of people brought into the church the past few weeks. As much as we'd love to make it to every baptism, it's just not possible (which is a good problem to have).  We were able to go to the baptisms of two great families this past week.  

The baptism of this amazing family was one of the most tender, spiritual baptisms I have been to.  I was moved to tears to see an entire family come into the church.  And what was really tender was to see the bond between the family and Brother Hansen(the gentleman on the far right), who invited them to start listening to the missionaries in the first place.  He was definitely as happy as they were.  He is the Cub Scout leader in the ward/community and the son was in Cub Scouts with him.  He got to know them and one night he was going out with the missionaries and he said "I'll go with you, but I want to visit someone I know" (music to any missionary's ears).  He called this family and asked if he could bring some of his friends over to meet them.  They said yes and the story began.  He is an inspiration, he told me he has about 40 cub scouts and only 3 of them are members of the church. At Christmas time he has a night where they all come with their families and share their Christmas traditions and then he shares his and gives them all a bag with a Book of Mormon in it.  I love that he is so missionary minded and willing to invite others to come unto Christ.  As the mom of this family was bearing her testimony after her baptism, she looked at Brother Hansen and just sobbed.  She just kept saying Thank you over and over to him, through her tears.  There weren't many dry eyes in the congregation.  It made me realize once again, what a gift we have, what a gift baptism into Christ's restored church is, and how we should be more willing to share this gift with others because it brings unspeakable joy to them, and to those sharing it.  

We also got to see the baptism for this great family of four as well.  I don't know as much of their story as I do the other family, but anytime you bring an entire family into the church it is a day of much joy.  Look at their happy faces!

I wrote about the Tovar family a few months ago when the mom, Pilar had Scott announce her baptism to her daughters at a member/missionary fireside.  We saw them at the North Sacramento cultural festival and they invited us to dinner last Sunday, along with two sets of Elders.  It was a lovely Venezuelan dinner and they even helped Elder Shafer celebrate his birthday.  They are such a lovely family. They are going to Utah for General Conference. The Elders invited them to read along with our Book of Mormon reading as a mission and they said they were already reading the entire Book of Mormon before they go to conference.  

We have transfers next week, but when we get a Hmong speaking missionary they always come in one week before transfers because of the timing of their language training in the MTC.  On Monday we got to welcome Elder Everett to the mission. 

His companions are Elder Kemp and Elder Obray.  We call our investigators 'friends'.  We took the picture of Elder Everett and his companions and they posted it on their facebook messenger chat.  Their caption was "We found a new friend, and we are going to keep him"  

We have spent a good amount of time this week working on the transfer board.  It is always an exciting time when we anticipate new missionaries arriving.  Thursday is the day Scott calls the new trainers and calls them to be trainers.  It is apparently a day of much anticipation on the missionary end.  When they see a call coming in from President, there is much excitement.  I've always said I would love to be on the other end of that phone call just once.  Thursday we kind of got a taste of what it's like on the other end.  We had a missionary who had to have his appendix out and so he was in the hospital.  We were there visiting him and his companion and two other elders in their zone were there as well.  One of those Elders is going to be a new trainer.  The Elder who had his appendix out (who is one of our zone leaders) said, jokingly "president, did you come to tell me I am training?' And Scott said, "no, but Elder Coleman is".  The look on Elder Coleman's face was priceless and it was fun to see his big smile and in essence, be on the other end of the call just this once. 

And finally, I sound like a broken record, but we LOVE being so close to where so many of our returned missionaries live so that when they come to visit, we get to see them again.  We had a really special day last Saturday as we were able to go to the temple and meet 2 of our former Sister Missionaries; Jessica Brown and Aly Moffett (now Buhler) who were there with one of their recent converts who went to the temple to receive his endowment. 

As I was reading that morning in 1 Nephi 14 I was struck again by the magnitude of the work and the tremendous blessing it is to be part of this Latter Day Gathering of Israel.  In verse 7 the Savior is quoted talking about the restoration, calling it a great and marvelous work.  Great means significant or meaningful, marvelous is something wonderful or incomprehensible, and work is an act or an accomplishment that is everlasting.  Think of the blessing we have to be part of this significant, incomprehensible, everlasting work.  

Seeing the joy of Jessica and Aly at the temple with this man and his wife was a great example of the scope of this work we are involved in. They were filled with so much joy as they were able to witness him making more covenants with our Heavenly Father.  As we were talking to them, we saw three of our current sister missionaries approaching the temple with one of their recent converts and some of their ward members.  They were bringing him to participate in baptisms for the dead in the temple for the first time.  It was a wonderful opportunity for us to be there to see the everlasting impact the temple has on new members of the church.  Baptism isn’t the end. We are involved in a significant, incomprehensible and everlasting work. 

 On Labor Day Morning we got to go to breakfast with Aly and meet her husband Dave and her parents.  It was a delightful morning, what a great missionary she was and we were so happy that she married so well. Dave was wonderful, as were her parents.  

Today we got to meet up with our dear Hermana Barrera (Jessy) who came into town with her parents for the weekend. We had a lovely brunch downtown with them and it was so great to see her again and catch up, and to meet her wonderful parents.  Truly a blessing to see so many of the people we love this past week.

And finally, just had to post this picture of Sister Gunnell and I.  I walked into the office one afternoon and we were color coordinated so we had to snap a picture of us twinning. 

We are grateful for the blessing to be serving in Sacramento, and try to never forget the magnitude of what we are doing here.  There are long, discouraging, hard days sometimes, but remembering the significant, incomprehensible and everlasting work to which we have been called, helps us in the discouraging times as we view the big picture of the restoration. We are blessed to be part of this great and marvelous work.