Sister Sterzer learned how to make fudge and was a huge help along with Sister Toomey and Sister Wood. We accomplished a lot in a very short time.
Take the Zone Leaders from around the high council table and they start looking just a little strange, but nothing like.....
Poor President is always trying to look dignified.
It snowed today – Saturday 12-13-08! I got up to go to the gym at 6:00 am this morning and I found about 2 inches of snow on my car. By the time I drove down the hill and hit Williamette there was no snow on the ground. This little hill we live on is just enough higher than the office and town to get snow even when they don't. Eugene is only at about 400 feet above sea level and our little hill is just enough higher. It looks great. In the higher areas of the state, like Bend – about 3,600 feet above sea level – they will get more snow and the mountains between here and there are expected to get a foot or two with this storm.
Although this week is normally not an interview week, we decided to start early so we could see all of the missionaries before Christmas and give them a small gift and some of Sister Macdonald’s home made fudge and short bread. Unfortunately I have been having some with each group (just to be sociable of course) but I need to stop this or I will end up looking more like Santa than I want to!
We did interviews this week in Klamath Falls, Bend / Redmond, and Coos Bay. Since the snow didn’t come until Saturday we were lucky to get the traveling done on the roads that are more subject to heavy snow early in the interview process.
Christmas is a great time to be in the mission field. We feel so much closer to the Savior as we are doing His work full time. It is nice to be able to put up some of the decorations and have some help since we are trying to fit in extra visits right now. Several missionaries have given service to us: one companionship put up the lights on the house, another helped decorate the tree, some sisters will come today to help with a little more cooking and wrapping, and several companionships have helped us eat some of our food and goodies. It has been fun to have about 15 different missionaries (in addition to the arriving and departing missionaries as well as the zone leaders) come and share the holiday spirit with us in our home.
I received a letter telling me that our compliment of missionaries will be increasing. It is scheduled to go up by about 13 companionships. It will be both a challenge and a blessing to prayerfully determine where to put the additional missionaries.
We also found out that two new sets of senior missionaries will be coming. One couple will be coming the week of Christmas and the other one in late January. We are excited to have them come and help build the kingdom here.
While I am well aware that the real signs of success in this type of work are the inner changes that are made in individual people, it is fun to watch the great growth in lessons being taught and people joining the church as missionaries do their very best to become "Preach My Gospel" missionaries. The office missionaries found records by individual month in the office for the last five years and we hit a record in November in the key indicators related to lessons taught, people with a baptismal date, and baptisms. I am so happy that our missionaries and the people here are being blessed to teach and receive the gospel.
I am so lucky to have the companion I do! Sister Macdonald is the best.
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