I love this picture. True personalities are really showing through. Did I just admit to that?
Now we look like missionaries. It's a little scary, but I see them change just this quick fairly often. All you have to do is go from meetings to lunch time. They are very well behaved.
Laura and Thales Smith, Andrea Stratton and TomThales is Tom's counselor that is over the senior missionaries. Sister Stratton works in the office and we wouldn't survive without her either.
We thoroughly enjoyed each other's company for the day. Dinner was good too, but the visiting was the best. Thanks to the Smith's for putting everything together.
Strattons, Dixons, Romeros, Kirkhams, Macdonalds, Christensens, Schulthies, SmithsThis is just after our meetings at the Chapel in North Bend. You can see the ocean from here.
The Dixons help in the office. We wouldn't survive without them. Here they are at Shore Acres. It was such a beautiful garden.
On Sunday night, July 7, 2009, I received more than the normal amount of phone calls from various missionaries with a wide variety of issues and health problems. Most of them could be handled over the phone. With one of them I asked my counselor in Roseburg to go visit a set of elders there. They turned out to be fine and I was grateful he was close enough to be there quickly. The one call that caused us the most concern was a call from an Elder who had been out only five days. He was calling from the emergency room of the hospital in Prineville (never a good place to be calling from). His companion was having an appendicitis attack. He was a bit nervous, but was handling it great. Prineville is about 2.5 hours away from us. I called the stake president in the area who was good enough to go visit with them. He met them after they arrived at the hospital in Redmond, about 30 minutes away from Prineville, where the stake president livesand where there was a surgeon to take care of the elder. The stake president knew the surgeon and after the appendectomy was completed he spoke with the doctor and called the missionary's parents to update them.
The next day Sister Macdonald and I drove to Redmond and spent a couple of hours with the elderand his district. He had been released that morning. We bought an ice cream cake from DQ and they all seemed to enjoy it. I was glad it went so well and that he was healing quickly. We have talked with him a couple of times this week and now he wants us to quit mothering him and just know that he is okay.
Tuesday was our zone leader’s council (ZLC) and Sister Macdonald always has a fair bit of food to prepare for that meeting. She was able to pull it all off like a pro even though her Monday prep time was significantly reduced since we drove up to Redmond. In addition to the normal items covered at ZLC I led a lengthy discussion on Christ-Like Leadership. It was great to lead these young men through the scriptures and discussion on how to lead their zones in love and try to do it the way the Savior would. They were so receptive to the idea and each contributed wonderfully to the discussion.
Normally this week allows a lot of catch up time as it is between interviews and Zone Conferences, but we added a seniors conferences into our schedule. We have 7 senior couples serving in the mission (we could use a lot more) . We have two sets in the office and five in various towns in the mission. Most of them are along the coast and one in Lakeview. The Lakeview couple had a son and his family scheduled to come visit them so they didn’t make it over to Coos Bay where we held the conference. However, the other six couples and my counselor, Thales Smith and his wife Laura, made it too. We had a chance to get to know them all better and train them in the expectations of being a senior missionary. We taught them that they don’t need to live by the exact hours of a young missionary, but they should make sure they get their hour of individual study time and their hour of companionship study time too. We then enjoyed an hour and a half or so at Shore Acres, a beautiful botanical garden by the sea. We all had dinner together before everyone headed back to their respective areas.
Sister Macdonald and I had traveled over to Coos Bay the day before the senior couples and interviewed the missionaries in the Pacific Zone earlier in the morning. After we finished the interviews and before the seniors conference we all had lunch together. It was great to see the young elders and the senior missionaries visiting throughout lunch. That and attending a portion of a combined district meeting on Friday, with some of Sister Macdonald’s homemade banana bread, was most of the interaction I had with the younger missionaries this week.
Oh, one more thing I should report. Saturday the assistants came by with a picture album. They had collected pictures from all of the missionaries who wanted to contribute to it. They had written personal notes on the backs of some of their pictures, to celebrate our one-year mark. It was a nice surprise and something we will enjoy looking at through the years. We think Sister Stratton might have had something to do with it too. She's a sneaky one. It's wonderful.
Tuesday was our zone leader’s council (ZLC) and Sister Macdonald always has a fair bit of food to prepare for that meeting. She was able to pull it all off like a pro even though her Monday prep time was significantly reduced since we drove up to Redmond. In addition to the normal items covered at ZLC I led a lengthy discussion on Christ-Like Leadership. It was great to lead these young men through the scriptures and discussion on how to lead their zones in love and try to do it the way the Savior would. They were so receptive to the idea and each contributed wonderfully to the discussion.
Normally this week allows a lot of catch up time as it is between interviews and Zone Conferences, but we added a seniors conferences into our schedule. We have 7 senior couples serving in the mission (we could use a lot more) . We have two sets in the office and five in various towns in the mission. Most of them are along the coast and one in Lakeview. The Lakeview couple had a son and his family scheduled to come visit them so they didn’t make it over to Coos Bay where we held the conference. However, the other six couples and my counselor, Thales Smith and his wife Laura, made it too. We had a chance to get to know them all better and train them in the expectations of being a senior missionary. We taught them that they don’t need to live by the exact hours of a young missionary, but they should make sure they get their hour of individual study time and their hour of companionship study time too. We then enjoyed an hour and a half or so at Shore Acres, a beautiful botanical garden by the sea. We all had dinner together before everyone headed back to their respective areas.
Sister Macdonald and I had traveled over to Coos Bay the day before the senior couples and interviewed the missionaries in the Pacific Zone earlier in the morning. After we finished the interviews and before the seniors conference we all had lunch together. It was great to see the young elders and the senior missionaries visiting throughout lunch. That and attending a portion of a combined district meeting on Friday, with some of Sister Macdonald’s homemade banana bread, was most of the interaction I had with the younger missionaries this week.
Oh, one more thing I should report. Saturday the assistants came by with a picture album. They had collected pictures from all of the missionaries who wanted to contribute to it. They had written personal notes on the backs of some of their pictures, to celebrate our one-year mark. It was a nice surprise and something we will enjoy looking at through the years. We think Sister Stratton might have had something to do with it too. She's a sneaky one. It's wonderful.
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