Week 56

October 8, 2011

Dear Family and Friends, 

What a wonderful week this has been. This morning we are here in the Mission Home listening to last week’s General Conference Sessions. We have looked forward to this time. It is a special time that we can get together and listen to a prophet’s voice.

As we look back over this week there is not anything remarkable or interesting that has happened. We continue to learn new things about our new assignment in the office. It is a totally different assignment for us but we are grateful for this assignment and know that there is a reason that we are here. 

President Stucki has asked that we prepare the office to be moved around January 1^st, so we have a lot to do. We currently live in an apartment inside the mission office. It is a little different because we have the office elders and assistants continually in and out of the office and staying late to finish work. Part of our work is to get the elders out to work their area by 6pm each evening. The new office couple will be living in an apartment close to the new office so they will not have to deal with this. It should be fun.  We get to go back to our first branch to attend church on Sundays since that is where the Swensons attended church and President Stucki asked if we could go back and help them as we had opportunity. It will be good to see old friends.

  

We said goodbye to the Swensons on Tuesday evening. They returned home on Wednesday morning but not without some excitement. The Area Office had difficulty in getting Elder Swenson’s passport (the US Embassy could not find it). So, he needed him to go to the US Embassy on Tuesday to get a temporary passport to leave. After a few hours of frustration, the Embassy finally found his passport and could now process it. They finally delivered his passport after 10pm on Tuesday evening. We can only imagine what anxiety that caused. We were happy that they were able to fly out on time. They did a wonderful work here and will be missed. 

We hope that everyone is doing well. We understand that the first snowfall of the year already blessed you. We hope you are staying warm and dry. The weather change is always so beautiful and signals a definite start to a new season.  We are still experiencing rain and warm weather. We have been blessed with a couple of days this week with sunshine but last night we again had a heavy rainstorm. It is so predictable. Part of our responsibilities is to keep a watch on the weather to monitor for typhoons and severe weather so that we can notify, prepare and plan for emergencies that would affect the missionaries. We found a number of websites that give us the weather forecast.  The funny thing is that the 30-day forecast is the same every day – Temp 82 degrees 65% chance of afternoon showers.  So, we look for the monsoon storms and see what is developing. One of the most interesting sites is the earthquake monitor. It shows all of the earthquake activity around the world. We were very surprised to find that the southern islands of the Philippines have earthquake activity almost weekly (there have been 4 quakes since Oct 1 that measured over 4 on the Richter scale). 

Well, we are doing well. We are happy and busy. We look forward to the new challenges and the opportunity to learn new things. We hope that you are all doing well. We love you and pray for you every day. Thank you for your love and support. We hope that you are all healthy, happy and enjoying life. Remember that it just doesn’t get any better than this!  

We love you. Remember to BE good, DO good, and BE men and women of Christ.  And always remember to say your prayers.

Love,

Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Janene and Grant