Week ending 15 July

It’s been a very full week, ending with a little fun last night (after laundry and shopping during the day). At 6:30 we met at Elder and Sister Budge’s apartment, and along with Sister Healey and Sister Skinner, the six of us played Mexican Train, had all kinds of treats, and watched the Disneyland fireworks at 9:30 outside their north window. The conversations and joking were just what all of us needed after a stressful week. And why was it stressful?

For one thing, President Watrous got really sick Friday, just he was preparing for an influx of 16 new missionaries (and the departure of 12) tomorrow and Tuesday (Transfer day). All of us in the office were either covering for him in some areas, praying for him, or both. Elder Budge’s dictum of “No two days are alike in the office” certainly was true this week. Gary: "He trained me how to deal with a gas credit card that two sister missionaries couldn’t use any longer because it was compromised (phone calls to Salt Lake and such), preparing a 2004 Dodge Caravan to sell (checking tires, fluids, washing the car, etc.), dealing with another missionary car that hit a pillar (insurance and Salt Lake again), going with the Office elders to sign the lease on a new apartment in Newport Beach (near the temple – an area where we’re putting more missionaries), buying three vacuum cleaners for the apartments, ordering supplies for the missionary effort: in the month we’ve been here I’ve ordered (on demand) English, Spanish, German, Russian, Cambodian, Thai, Tongan and Vietnamese copies of the Book of Mormon and pamphlets, getting ready for July’s temple tours, and sending out letters to new converts."

Signe also had fun Saturday afternoon practicing with two other fiddlers in the Orange Stake in preparation for Pioneer Days next Saturday. They are doing Irish, American and other fiddle tunes.

Dr. Francis prescribed water therapy for Gary's back pains, so with the blessing of Pres. Watrous, he is now doing leg and back exercises in the pool, using kicks from the crawl, back stroke, side stroke, breast stroke, and dog paddling. Also very helpful is walking as fast as he can in the shallow end of the pool (3 feet) for a few minutes. He gets winded with all of this exercise, but wants to enjoy it, for it takes the place of his biking and playing basketball.

Week leading up to the 4th of July

Sunday, July 5. It's been a very busy week. Last Sunday we attended Ward Council meeting so that we could talk about less-active and missionary contacts, ward choir practice (we sang in
Sacrament meeting), all three of our meetings, home for 90 minutes for dinner, and back again for stake choir rehearsal for stake conference coming up next month.
The highlight of the week was contacting a chiropractor to take care of our back needs. The mission president's wife, Sister Watrous, gave us the number for Dr. Arthur Francis, who also happens to be a stake president in this area. He treated us like royalty, giving us the most thorough physical exam we've ever had and starting us on treatments. He is a giant of a man, both physically and spiritually.
Tuesday I went with Elder Lee (from Seoul, Korea) and Elder Koerper (from Kentucky) to Newport Beach to rent another apartment for the elders. It was an educational experience: dealing with the management as well as seeing how well the elders in this wealthy area of the mission will be living. (I was ready to move in myself: only half a mile from the ocean.) The end of the week I was taught by Elder Budge how do compile the gas receipts and mileage for our 59 vehicles so that it would be ready for the mission president on Friday -- and to send to Salt Lake. There's a lot of detail involved, but I think I can handle it. The big trick is getting the elders and sisters to submit their gas receipts on time. Signe had a significant challenge this week since her trainer, Sister Peters, finished her 18 months and returned to Canada. But Signe is doing very well with her responsibilities.
Yesterday, Independence Day, was a very full day. We took Sisters Skinner and Healey with us to our Orange Third Ward's 42nd annual July 4th breakfast at Hart Park. Great food and an opportunity for us to meet more members of the ward. Then home to do laundry and to wait for our first visit from family, Edwin and Amy Benson and their family, who were here in the Downey area for Edwin's sister's husband's funeral. (He leaves a wife and 10 children!) It was a short but sweet visit we had with these 8 family members in our small apartment.
Then, with the sisters with us again, we drove down I-5 to the Irvine stake's annual barbecue for investigators of the church. It was a huge gathering of 1200 people, with live bands. They served barbecued chicken, Korean barbecued beef, and steak, with all the trimmings and desserts. We had a great time. Then we drove over to Corona del Mar (Crown of the Sea) to the home of Brother and Sister Hanna, who live on Spyglass Hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean and most the valley to the north. When it came time for fireworks we were able to simultaneously see major fireworks displays from five cities below us and into the distance: Newport Center, the Canyon, Cerrito, and several others, including Disneyland. (This is not counting the many backyard parties people were having.) Truly a spectacular sight. Desserts (again), complete with an ice cream scoop that oinked like a pig!

Our Day at the Newport Beach Temple

Today we spent five hours helping with the tours at the Newport Beach Temple. President Watrous assigned us to take over the duties of the current Elders who have been setting up the tour presentation. The duties include setting up the video called "Between Heaven and Earth," to show the investigators in the chapel of the Stake Center, which is across the street from the temple. We also will be getting the refreshments prepared and set out on a nicely decorated table, to be served to the visitors after they have completed the one-hour tour of the temple grounds. For today, since we are learning, we actually took the tour with a small group of visitors, so we could listen to the tour guide doing the presentation. In the preliminary meeting, I was asked to direct the hymn, and Gary played the piano. There were 70 people in the first tour, broken up into several small groups, and guided by an Elder (ours was Elder Lee from South Korea, who spoke excellent english, and has been a Latter-day Saint all his life. He did a beautiful job.) The second tour was for all Spanish-speaking investigators. I again directed the hymn, and an Elder played the piano. The presentation, including the video, was all in Spanish.

It was a long time on our feet, but the spiritual feeling made the time spent well worth it. The Newport Beach Temple is incredibly beautiful, and the grounds are breath-taking. The story behind the temple is that the people in the area wanted a temple so badly, that they donated all the money for the entire project, including collecting enough extra to buy a 27-rank pipe organ for the Stake Center, along with many very nice paintings.

Anyway, this additional assignment makes for more variety in our mission duties, and the drive to the Temple is beautiful.

On the way home, we decided to go out to dinner, so we drove through the towns until we came to our favorite little city of Orange. It is an old town, with a quaint downtown square and shopping area. We parked in a free public parking place, and walked around until we found a likely restaurant (there were many possibilities; our next will be a mediterranean one). Lucca's is a little Italian eatery, with very good food, better even than we had in Italy! Naturally, for dessert, we both had chocolate gelato! It was a very pleasant end to a very good day.

Wednesday the 24th I ran across a quote by Elder Dallin H. Oaks which I want to remember -- and which I've summarized here: "To have a testimony is to know and feel. To be converted is to do and become." Today Elder Budge, who is still the vehicle coordinator, had to deal with two missionary Corollas who were the victims of parking lot scrapes: one caused by the elder, another by hit-and-run. I shadowed Elder Budge around with the accident reporting, assessment of the damage, the report to Salt Lake, and a mild chastisement of the elders. Then we finally sold the 2004 Ford Club Wagon that had been used for transporting the missionaries from the airport to the mission home. A Sister Kimball and her son came with the check, and once again I watched Elder Budge throughout the whole transaction. (He will be leaving November 5, and at this point we don't know of a replacement office couple: so I may be doing it.) Finally, I boxed up 200 VHS videos so that Elder Wong could take them to the Los Angeles Deseret Industries next week. (It's out of our area, so our resident part-time missionary has to do it.) Meanwhile, Signe spent the whole day with Sister Peters learning all of the Financial.

Thursdaywas more of the same, except that in the evening all of us office staff, plus President Watrous and his wife, met at the Harbor Blvd. Outback to have a farewell party for Sister Peters. (She flies back to Canada on Monday, her 18 months at an end.) She knows more about all of the office procedures and details than anyone else, so Signe is rightfully nervous. At the party we met the Gibsons, who had been the Housing Coordinators earlier. He told me he is available for housing questions at any time. (They also live locally.)

Friday I learned a lot more from Elder Lee, our Korean office elder. He is quite intelligent. Our weekly staff meeting with the president lasted for 90 minutes, partly because of Sister Peters' leaving and partly because we had more to discuss than usual. After work Signe and I went straight to the Redbox at Albertson's so that we could relax in the evening with "Australia," a fine movie with three of my favorite pieces of music: Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze," "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and Elgar's "Nimrod." A movie of epic proportions, it lasted for 165 minutes. It was dedicated to the aboriginal tribes of Australia.
On our way home Signe and I noted that we have yet to fill our gas tank since we arrived two weeks ago. The last time we filled up was in Baker on June 12! And we have a third of the tank yet to use!

Wednesday the 17th was another day of training, except for one humorous moment when a cockroach decided to make his home in the Xerox machine. The two elders and I finally succeeded in terminating him.

Thursday the 18th found us with more training, sending letters from the Mission President to those who had just been baptized, designing a new Supplies form, and redoing the "Mold" information for the missionary packet. (Mold is a real problem here in So. California, so we all have to learn how to take care of it.) In the evening Signe and I did some more exploring, finding a Target and Trader Joe's. We ate a nice dinner at Carrow's next door, one of my mother's favorite restaurants in Lancaster (CA). There we had a server named Violet, who told us she had a friend who goes to our church: so she was going to give us a discount! We wish we had had some pass-along cards with us to give her. This experience taught us to be prepared.

Friday was another training and work day, with a staff meeting with the President at 11. The evening was very special, for President and Sister Watrous took us out to dinner at Polly's --as a welcome to the mission. We had a delightful two hours together, talking about everything from our families and Hugh Nibley to the Mission and missionaries. What great friends!

Saturday was our P-day. We ventured a little further by finding a Sam's Club in Fullerton -- at the northernmost part of our mission. It was also laundry day. Then Gary got out the AT&T kit so that he could set up the Internet. Well, it ended up taking him three hours -- 90 minutes of that was with a tech support on the phone. But it's nice to be back online again.

Sunday the 21st in the Orange Third Ward was even warmer than last week. Steve Trumbo, who used to play BYU basketball in the 1980s, was visiting, and in High Priest, a brother Craig Miller, who works for a defense contractor, talked about his three week business trip to Turkey. The branch in Ankara had 12 members: one of them came from Romania every Sunday for 3 and a half hours on the train and bus, both directions. Talk about dedication to the Gospel!

Monday and Tuesday was more training. Gary spent a considerable amount of time both days doing his librarian thing: reorganizing and rearranging the supply room with the thousands of pass-along cards, copies of the Book of Mormon, and various pamphlets. It looks much neater now. We saw even more of the sun today, but the temperature didn't go above 72. Unfortunately, the humidity makes it seem hotter.

We hope to add to our mission blog every Saturday. Unfortunately, we got behind because of our getting ready to move out of our Springville home and because we were then without Internet service until yesterday. The following will be a brief recap of the past two weeks.

The last two days of our first week in the MTC were as spiritually enlivening as the first three. We were so well trained to be teaching missionaries, that we all set to go! On the final devotional of the week we both sang in the small choir, Signe played her "Meditation from Thais," and I was asked to give the closing prayer for the week. Then we said our goodbyes and gathered for a group photo of the 53 of us that you see on the upper left corner of our blog. Some of these couples we have kept in contact with, including the couple going to Italy Milan, whom we have recently heard from.

Because of our need to be separated from the younger missionaries, we surprised out ward by attending all three meetings on June 5 and spending time with the family.

The next four days at the MTC were not as spiritual as the previous week, mostly because we were trained to do everything from mission finances, referrals, vehicles, housing, Microsoft Word 2007, etc. We were exhausted each evening after this intense training. Wednesday evening Matt and his friend brought a 12-foot trailer to load our household goods into for the trip. We appreciate them so much. Thursday night, June 11, we finished packing for the trip to California. And at 6 in the morning (Gary's 65th birthday) we left Springville with our Prius full to the brim. While we were on enroute Adina called to tell us that had arrived and were unpacking our things at the apartment. (Then they went on their three-day cruise.) Thanks to them, all of our furniture and boxes were already in the apartment -- and even our bed was put together in the bedroom! We met our landlady, our neighbor, and the two Senior sister missionaries, Skinner and Peters.

Saturday was a day of unpacking and deciding where everything should go. We took a break by exploring the area a little, finding both the nearest Wal-Mart and Albertson's for some necessities. Meanwhile, we were visited by Elder and Sister Budge, who will be completing their 18 month mission in November. President Watrous and his wife then dropped by to welcome us to the mission and to express their deep gratitude for our accepting this call to work with them. Then we had our birthday dinner at Sizzler, since my birthday was yesterday and Signe's is tomorrow.

Sunday we drove to the Orange Third Ward with Sisters Skinner, Peters and Healey. Wed were assigned to this ward by President Watrous, with the enthusiastic approval of stake President Goodman. HThe bishop immediately assigned us to work on re-activating a sister in his ward. When we returned home we had dinner at the Budges, along with the three sisters. We had a delightful evening of conversation for more than three hours.

Monday the 15th Signe was trained in Finances by Sister Peters, who is leaving in two weeks. Gary was given general training by Elder and Sister Budge, while in the afternoon he was trained by the office elders, Koerper and Lee. (They are so intelligent at their young age! They seemed to coordinate the housing with humble aplomb!) They showed Gary how to keep up the supplies copies of the Book of Mormon (in English, Spanish, Tongan, Samoan and many other languages), as well as the pass-along cards, pamphlets and other supplies. Gary then began to inventory 244 VHS tapes which we need to dispose of. Gary was also issued a church cell phone.

Tuesday the 16th was Transfer time, with twice as many missionaries arriving because of the swine flu problem at the MTC. All of the office staff had a word to say to them, followed by an inspiring message by the mission president.

Following are a few pictures of our new apartment and it's courtyard. Very nice and comfortable, except for a six-lane main street on our bedroom/balcony side. We're getting used to the noise, and we are so tired at the end of each day, that we sleep like stones!