First of our good-byes

With only a couple of weeks remaining before we leave the mission for Springville, we began saying our goodbyes to some of the missionaries. Elder Tuipulotu (from New Zealand) is one who claims he will miss us the most! His companion, Elder Wigington, actually taught his first lesson on the mission while Gary was with him and his companion at a less-active sister's home. He is from Hales Corners, Wisconsin, where Gary once served as a summer vicar to Pastor Pieplow at Hales Corners Lutheran Church.
The next photo is of 'Healey's Angels.' Our wonderful referrals and baptisms secretary came to the mission a couple of weeks before we did and hails from Orem, Utah. Her 5 sons came down on their Harley Davidson motorcycles to escort Sister Healey and her two daughters home. They have often ridden down from Utah to California to take her out to dinner and then turn right around and return north to their homes in Utah. It was fun seeing them all in the parking lot with their beasts!

Sisters Nai, Seumanutafa and Tili are the Samoan sisters and are all from Samoa. They frequently dress alike. (Yesterday it was orange tops.!) Finally, the ASL Sisters Brennan, Meagher and Riestra (who is really deaf). Sister Brennan is going home when we do.

It's been a great Sunday. We first went to our own Palmyra Ward, then we went to the Anaheim 10th ward to see our niece Michelle West's Primary program, which she also wrote. We also made friends with a new young family in the ward, the Thomander family from Logan. Wendy has some common interests with Signe, namely essential oils and foot zone therapy. Two weeks ago, after having us over for dinner, she gave Signe some therapy. Tonight, after we return from a baptism at the Santa Ana stake center, it will be Gary's turn. We will really miss our friends and relatives down here but hope to visit when we can in years to come. Making many new friends is one of the really wonderful blessings of a mission!

Local color

Last Wednesday night the Senior missionary sisters gathered at the Mission Home to wrap 170 Christmas presents for the missionaries, including hand-crocheted bookmarks by Sister Watrous!

Elder Monney tagged along so that he could barbecue some ribs for everyone: Texas-style done with mesquite wood. Gary stayed home to memorize his OCMCO Christmas music.

You can tell it's election time at the corner of Memory Lane and Bristol Street: the candidates are Vietnamese, Chinese, Hispanic, and Anglo.

Below is the church of the matron saint of Santa Ana, St. Anne's Catholic Church and School, on the historic Main Street of Santa Ana, which has been here for 150 years. It is typical of much of the Catholic mission architecture all over the valley. The wooden door is very unique.

Elder Monney is not only good at vehicle maintenance and Texas bar-be-cue, he also loves tending our beautiful hibiscus flowers outside the Mission Office. It is quite unusual to find an orange blossom on a pink blossom plant!

Whether we like it or not, we've slowly begun to pack for our trip home. Sister Healey is leaving November 4, while the Monney's are leaving a week later. Signe will be training Sister Hair from Cedar City beginning in a week, and Gary is already training Elders Byers and McClain (from Springville) to do the vehicle work. Sadly, there aren't enough senior missionaries in the church to go around for us to have a couple here before we leave.

Mom's Visit

Signe's 91-year-old mother, Wanda Slangerup, along with Signe's sister, Lisa, came via Amtrak for a visit. The Santa Ana Train Station is a beautifully maintained Old-Spanish-style building with gorgeous landscaping.

We had the most wonderful time! We visited the Newport Beach Temple grounds, went to Balboa Pier for lunch at Ruby's Diner, and drove by Little Saigon. At the apartment, Signe gave her Mom and sister massages, then we all went down to the hot tub for a soak. We talked and laughed and remembered. It was great!

Signe's brother, Jon, and his wife, Tracey, came on Sunday morning. We visited a little while, then they all left to spend a day at Jon's in LA.

Dragons and Chevy Trucks

When we went grocery shopping the other day, we saw the most amazing fruit! We asked the clerk what it was, and he told us it was Dragon Fruit (native of Mexico). We decided to be brave and try one. Look what it looks like inside! That is it's true color! The taste was very bland, however, and we don't think it's worth paying $7.99 per pound for it! It was fun for the experience, though. As a side note, Signe was born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon, so here she is; Dragon lady eating Dragon Fruit!

We've also been exploring around the neighborhoods, and the other day Gary told me to "quick!grab the camera!" He slammed on the brakes, and we took this picture of an early '50's Chevy truck.

The other pictures show us at the office hard at work. The baptism display board is all full now, and we still have a quarter of the year to go! The pictures will just have to spill over onto the walls!

Good-byes

This was a week of fond but sad goodbyes, as we saw seven missionaries complete their missions. Two of them were Sister Nekesi, a Samoan who lives in Utah and who lived in our same apartment complex for awhile, and Elder Queen, whom we met in the Orange Third Ward in our first Sunday here in the mission before we met any other elder or sister at the mission office or elsewhere. He was on his way home to Colorado

and then to BYU-Idaho. (He wants to be a chef!)

The week went fairly skidding by before we knew it. More baptisms this weekend, plus a funeral on Friday for Gary, who had been asked to sing in a men's choir for Dr. Andrew Bauer, an aeronautical engineer for McDonell-Douglas in Long Beach. How singular that of the two funerals Gary attended this summer, they were both for aeronautical engineers! Dr. Bauer actually invented a wind-powered vehicle which could go faster downwind than the wind pushing it. His wife has been one of our wonderful ward organists. Speaking of which: Gary was also asked by the organist at the funeral, Jim Anderson, to turn the pages for him while he played prelude music of the masters like Bach, Dupre, Franck, Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens. It was a trip for him to not only hear this great music but be seated next to a very good organist who has played organs all over Orange County. (Finally, speaking of organists, we have discovered a fabulous new organist who not only has fabulous technique but is a great showman as well. Go into Google with the name of Cameron Carpenter and watch him perform "Stars and Stripes" on YouTube. He is fun to watch and listen to.)

Baptisms, Baptisms, Baptisms

What a week it's been! The most fantastic news is that Karl and Ana had their eighth child on Friday. Joshua was born on his mother's birthday and makes 70 grandchildren for us!

As you can see by the photo below, we are beginning to fill the top row of the bulletin board with baptism photos, and we have still have four months to go this year! (Yet we don't want to think about statistics: these are souls whose lives have changed in the direction of the Savior and increased happiness. We attended two baptisms this past week: one of an Hispanic young lady, at which Gary played the piano and accompanied the choir, and the other a 42-year old Filipino brother who was bursting with happiness.

The other photo is of our monthly bulletin board. This month we chose photos of the temples in each of the missionary's districts back home. (There is a lot of duplication, of course, and not all of the 130 some temples throughout the world are represented.)

We continue to be blessed -- and do our best to help others. Wednesday night we had dinner with Brother and Sister Bates. He taught Biology at Santa Ana College for almost as long as Gary was at BYU, and this wonderful couple shared many of our same interests. A recent heart transplant recipient, he is a former bishop of the Palmyra Ward. Then today Gary was asked to teach the High Priests group: they wanted to know about his life history and also about Hugh Nibley. It was amazing that several High Priests had copies of Gary's Nibley quote book, Of All Things!

Finally, Gary had had it with his PC laptop and its crazy machinations lately. Four years old, he was afraid he was going to lose everything, even after saving it all. So he returned to an Apple MacBook -- and loves it. Just before working on the blog we relived our 2008 trip to Italy with the choir by reviewing the photos we took of that trip. Life is full of wonders, miracles and joys!

Exploring the neighborhood

The last couple of weeks have found us exploring our nearby neighborhoods. On our way to the LDS distribution center in Fountain Valley, we approached the Vietnamese American cultural center on Newhope St. Children were learning from teachers on the porches, and there was a feeling of peace. The next photo was taken just a few blocks from our apartment. Flower Street in Santa Ana is aptly named and is a wonderful street to explore slowly -- with the windows down -- to catch the wonderful fragrances. But on this street there are no cookie-cutter homes. All are distinctive in architectural design. This is one of our favorites.

One evening Signe wanted to go to someplace different for dinner. Knowing that Signe likes ribs, Gary asked Elder Monney -- also a ribs-lover -- if he had found an authentic place for ribs. We ended up at this place, whose owner looked like a transplant from New Orleans. (In fact, there was a house across the street that looked like it was moved from New Orleans, it was so different from the Hispanic barrio homes surrounding it. Anyway, we had a wonderful meal outdoors.

Our Facebook page has lately been festooned with former missionaries from our mission. We have about 20 now, and half of them will be at BYU when we get home. We hope to have a party for all of them to show our appreciation for their wonderful service and friendship. (Three of them are from Korea and two served as office elders.)

The work progresses. Gary had three accidents to report last week, including that of an elder who ran into a fire hydrant on his bike. He also finished upgrading 50 missionary cell phones by using the programing from Sprint to make them operable. Today both of us were involved in the Palmyra Ward sacrament meeting by giving the two prayers and by Signe playing the Bach Double Concerto for violin with another member. Gary played the prelude, postlude and congregational hymns on the organ.

John McClintock has been learning from the missionaries for nearly a year now. Well, yesterday he was baptized into the Church and told everyone that the people had made a big difference for him. His family was not very supportive, but he was finally confident in making the decision: and his countenance showed it. He was absolutely radiant, and very different from when we first met him many months ago.