Week Ending May 22, 2011 Week # 2

President and Sister Stewart, in Klamath Falls, have been a great support to our missionaries and missionary work. We will miss working with them!

One last picture of the Temple Zone in front of the Medford Temple. It was chilly, but the sun was shining so everyone gets outside to enjoy it even if just for a picture.

This week we started with our final round of interviews with the missionaries in the southern and eastern parts of the mission. It was surreal for us to make this trip, but the Spirit was strong and we knew it was important for us to visit with these good missionaries. We could feel that we were helping them along their path to be better missionaries and better people. Prior to holding interviews we studied Ether chapters 2&3 with the missionaries in the various zones we visited. We focused on the different ways the Lord answers our prayers and gives us counsel. Although we have read and studied these chapters many times before in our personal studies and with departing missionaries, we gained many new insights as we counseled together with these good missionaries of ours.

It was also a week full of many “last suppers.” We enjoyed dining with President & Sister Lathen from Salem on Monday along with their daughter and her husband, with President & Sister Morris in Medford on Tuesday, with President & Sister Stewart (along with all of the Klamath Falls missionaries) on Wednesday, with Presidents & Sisters Rau and Palmer on Thursday, with the recently released Presidents & Sisters Perdue and Wright from the Redmond Stake on Friday, and with our Eugene Ward Bishop & Sister Salisbury on Saturday. We also had lunch with the Grants Pass Stake presidency and the missionaries in that zone on Tuesday. Each one of these meals and the related visiting was full of pleasant memories and gratitude for the good people in these areas as well as our missionaries that we have come to know and love. Because each meal was so good, it was also followed with some time on the elliptical and/or the tread mill to try and work off those extra calories.

On Sunday we had Presidents & Sisters Smith and Lowary over to our home for dinner prior to our presidency meeting. While the brethren and I held what we envision to be our last presidency meeting, the sisters enjoyed a wonderful visit. I am grateful for the sage counsel of these good men over these years, and for the counsel previously given to me by President Stewart, a former member of the mission presidency. We are better people for having known and interacted with them.

Still later on Sunday evening we had Larry & Pam Marriott, whom I had done some work with years ago, who now live in Grants Pass, stop by. Larry had come up to us after a stake conference last February where we had spoken and reintroduced himself. We were pleased that they ended up having the time to stop by and say hello. The gospel and our interactions within it sure can make the world seem like a small place.