Week Ending February 21, 2009 Week # 5

Elder Sevigny and Elder Turner near the font (dreaming of a baptism?). Elder Turner is from Riverside, Calif. and has been on exchanges with our son, Clint.

The Sister's Zone Conference picture. We take one at every conference.

Not the best picture of my new grandson, Bennett and his daddy, but the only one I have so far. I took it from the computer screen as you might be able to tell. Isn't he adorable?!!!

The highlight of this week was hearing the announcement from Ryan and Rachel of their first child and our first grandson and sixth grandchild. Bennett James Macdonald was born on February 17, 2009 after over 24 hours of labor and a C-section. We were able to see pictures thanks to email and Sister Macdonald was able to see him on the web-cam. I hope to see him later today. All is well with mother and son – dad is still a wreck. :>) Actually, he is fantastic! We are grateful that Rachel’s Mom could be with them, but this was definitely one of the tests of our resolve to stay in the mission field and not run off to be with them. We're doing well too.

Last Sunday, February 15th we spoke in a stake conference in Monmouth, in the Salem area, with Elder Merrell who is now an area 70. He had served as the mission president in Utah Provo mission where we had met. We had a non-documented Elder from our stake mission serve under him for about 10 months, so we had become fairly well acquainted and it was fun to see him again.

Some of you may remember that a few months back I wrote about Sister Macdonald and I speaking in Florence and a man (named Bob) who was not a member of the church had come up to us and told us it was the strongest he had ever felt the spirit. I told him great – please let me know when you are getting baptized and we will try and make it to your baptism. The Elders told me they hadn’t challenged him to baptism yet. I told them, well we have now. Anyway, on Sunday we were able to go straight from the stake conference in Salem to Florence and witness his baptism. The Florence ward is going so strong right now. Last week the Elders there had 22 lessons to non-members with a member present.

This week we held three multi-zone conferences in Medford, Corvallis and Eugene. It was good to see all of the missionaries. Sister Macdonald spoke about how peaceful the temples were and all of the missionaries agreed. She asked what made those temple peaceful and of course got many great answers. When someone said because they were clean – she had them, and then told them how important it was to keep their apartments clean too. She was masterful. Everyone got the message and in a good way. I spoke on how a mission prepares us for life and how we ought to give it our very best. {(He was masterful too.)note from Sis. Macdonald}

One of my counselors spoke in each of the conferences on doing the right things for the right reasons (ranging from fear, to pride, to love.) The Assistants gave a great workshop on winning the hearts of those we teach. They always get me involved in role playing which I love. I finished with the need to study the right thing on our mission and afterwards. We experienced another lift in those conferences and I believe the missionaries did too.

This week we also finished transfer decisions and I made leadership calls on Friday and Saturday.

The more we help missionaries the more we are personally strengthened. This week seemed to have a few more special needs / concerns than usual, but it all ended fairly well at the end of the day.

Well, that's another wrap. It doesn't begin to tell everything that took place in our lives, but we are grateful for the safety of our missionaries and for their faithfulness. Until next week …