President Castro invited us to dinner at the Mission Home to meet him and his family. What a lovely family! Such humble, sincere, down-to-earth people. There was a sweet spirit in that place. The children were very pleasant and polite. Joseph (17), is a junior in high school. He likes debate. He helped get food on and off the table and took care of leftovers while President and Sister Castro visited with us. Great kid! Samuel (12?) is home taught – rough middle school environment – and Hannah (9) goes to elementary school, but when she reaches middle school age, Sister Castro will teach her at home too. They have an older daughter who is married and lives back East. She is expecting her second child.
President and Sister Castro moved to Florida when their first daughter was little. They lived there for a while, then for several years in New York. He had been a professor at BYU-Idaho for four years when called to be Mission President. They loved Rexburg.
The Mission Home is located in Ventura and has been the Mission Home for many years, undoubtedly where Val and LaJean Clarke lived ten years ago when they served here.
President Castro reminded us then, and again in our visit with him on Wednesday at the office, that this is the Lord’s work, and that we will see His hand in it in many ways. Additionally, the temporal things that Elder Mecham will be involved with can make a huge difference in how effective the elders and sisters will be. He praised the Curtises for their work, but said now it is our turn – the new missionaries that come will not have known the Curtises, and it is us they will come to know and love. I liked that. Actually, the missionaries we’ve met, who knew and loved the Curtises, have been very welcoming to us.
Elder and Sister Blue, the other office couple, have been wonderful! They had us over for dinner the very first night we were here (Friday, April 13), then the next day, Saturday, picked us up and we went to IHOP for breakfast. Then they showed us around to the major shopping places, and we began to get what we would need for setting up a "furnished" Sr. missionary apartment. The Blues have been most pleasant and helpful at the office, and we think we are going to thoroughly enjoy working with them for the next nine months, at which time their 18 months will be up. We will have them over for dinner when we finish getting settled in. (We are getting there :)
We had to wait until the Curtises left on Tuesday to know exactly what they would be leaving for us before we purchased many things. Every day I write up a new list of what we still need to get.
We DO have a washer and dryer available here at the townhouse, but we share it with five other families, and it is coin operated. So we will just go to the laundromat around the corner. It is clean and close by, but not cheap!
We are in the Oxnard 2nd Ward. They were very friendly and receptive to us last Sunday. We were there only for Sacrament Meeting, then had to leave to receive training at the Mission Office. That evening, we were invited to have ice cream with Skip and Julie Johnson. Brother Johnson is the ward mission leader. While we were there, Bishop Sweet (our bishop) and his son Logan (16) dropped by. We had a very pleasant visit with them. Sister Johnson has some very evident medical problems, although I can’t say for sure what. Randy is going to be going with Brother Johnson to make home visits to some less active families in the ward.
The ward has some very talented music people. The sacrament meeting chorister is a trained opera singer :) And the pianist (yup, they lack an organist) also has a lovely voice – she rendered a musical number that day - "He Sent His Son," (primary song), accompanied on cello and piano - very pretty. And we hear there are others :) Nice!
Thursday, April 19. Happy Birthday Devin and Kendra!
Today Randy and Elder Blue had quite the experience at LAX. In the first place, traffic going there was horrible! They were taking an elder who was returning home to recuperate from mono. Elder Blue walked into the airport with the elder to make sure he got through security okay. And Randy stayed with the truck - which was running - a procedure which has been done many times in the past. He was standing outside the car. Well, some guy (one of three people who walked out of the airport to the car in front of Randy, which had been left unattended), walked up to Randy and told him he could not stay there and needed to move the vehicle immediately or someone would come tow it away. In hindsight, Randy thinks it was someone just being obnoxious because of his "name tag," but being caught off guard and not wanting be unChrist-like, he complied and drove away, thinking he would just make a loop and drive right back and get Elder Blue. But he could NOT get back to that level of the airport. He drove around three times and it was not possible without leaving the airport and then re-entering, to get back to the level from whence he came. Oh dear. Meanwhile, Elder Blue came out to get in the truck, and it was gone. So he called Randy, whose cell phone was dead (oops - gotta watch that one, since he is never to be separated from his phone :). Finally, Randy parked the car and walked to the level where Elder Blue was waiting (he had just called the office in Oxnard to see if Randy had called). Oh my. But they made it back to the office safe and sound some time later.
Sister Blue and I went to Subway for lunch. We had a nice visit. She told me it was nice to have someone to go to lunch with – she and Sister Curtis never, not once, went to lunch together. The relationship between the Blues and the Curtises was pretty strained. Sister Blue said she wished she could say she was sad to see the Curtises leave, but she wasn’t. Both she and Elder Blue have said more than once that they were happy to have us come to the mission. We don’t know the details (and that’s the way it should be), but we could see a little of the problem in the short time we had with the Curtises. That said, they left things in good order - just did not "share" their knowledge in a meaningful way with the Blues. We do, however, anticipate that the next nine months will go well and that we will have a great working relationship with the Blues. Plus, we intend to have some fun with them too.
I am going to insert the LAX incident as written by Elder Mecham:
The first week went by in a whirl and was pretty uneventful. Well, mostly uneventful except when I lost Elder Blue at LAX (that’s the Los Angeles airport for those of you in Idaho). But enough about that, let’s move on to other more interesting things.
Oh, all right. I’ll give you the details. You see, there was this elder who needed to go home for a while for medical reasons. President Castro told Elder Blue to drive him to LAX on Thursday and to take me along to show me the ropes. When we got to the terminal Elder Blue took the missionary inside and told me to wait with the vehicle. So there I was, standing by the truck, minding my own business. (You have probably noticed my complete innocence in this scenario.) Then this guy comes up to me and tells me I can’t park a vehicle and wait outside the terminal and if I don’t move it immediately it will be towed. Then he starts calling for a tow truck on his cell phone. So what would you have done? That’s exactly what I did, I moved the truck.
I figured I could just circle around the airport and pick Elder Blue up on the next round. It wasn’t that easy. I made one round and no Elder Blue. So I made a second round and somehow got detoured off through a parking garage before I got back to the terminal where again there was no Elder Blue. Along about in here I began conjuring up what I was going to tell Sister Blue. I wondered if she would buy the excuse that he had been translated. As I was leaving the terminal to make a third lap of the airport, I realized things didn’t appear just right. It dawned on me that there were two levels to the roadway. I had left Elder Blue on the upper level and I was on the bottom level. So on the third lap I looked for a way to get up one flight. It was not to be. I later found that you have to completely leave the airport and come back in to get on the upper level. So I drove into a parking garage, not the one I had made a lap through earlier, and walked up a flight and down the terminal to where Elder Blue was waiting. Oh, I might mention that I tried calling him, but my phone, the one they make me carry, had run the battery completely down. I never did like phones. In my whole life none of my friends have ever been a telephone.
You can see the predicament I was in and how none of it was of my own doing, except perhaps not charging my phone the night before and maybe not paying attention to which level we stopped at and I guess I could have drug my feet for a while before moving the truck or maybe have talked to the guy a while and tried to get him distracted or come up with a really great excuse or maybe . . . Well never mind, you can see how totally innocent I was.
I found Elder Blue at LAX and he had not been translated.
Actually some good came from the whole thing. I am now very familiar with LAX, and President Castro, always concerned for the preservation and well being of his elders, has not sent me back there since.
Fri - Sunday, April 20-22, 2012
Friday morning we and Elder and Sister Blue had a meeting with President Castro. He is such a kind and loving, yet effective and efficient administrator and leader. I have many things to learn and responsibilities to "conquer." It will happen - I need to be patient with myself. Elder Mecham has a lot to learn too. We will get there :)
Saturday we left early to complete our shopping. Whew! I think we have finally set up house. Knowing what I know now, I would have packed differently and brought more stuff, but, oh well. Honestly, we didn’t have room to bring more "stuff," so it’s just as well. One thing we purchased was an area rug for our living room. It has really "warmed up" that part of the house. We really like it. Also, we bought a half flat of strawberries. Oh, my! They are wonderful – so sweet and delicious! They grow them here locally 11 out of 12 months. Mmm mmm mmm! We froze several of them to use in smoothies. They are soooo good!
Sunday morning I made homemade pancakes (mostly to use up some expensive buttermilk Elder Mecham bought and hated, so that it doesn’t just go to waste [instead, it’s going to waist!]) They were delicious – then we topped them with vanilla yogurt and cut up strawberries! Most excellent!
We enjoyed our ward again this week. A young sister was sporting a new hairdo – shaved very close – as she is having brain surgery tomorrow to remove a tumor. At this point, they do not know if it is malignant or not. Very serious surgery – at least 5 hours. Her name is [something like] Mahda Jansens, and we are keeping her in our prayers. She and her mother appeared to have lived a pretty hard life. In our gospel essentials class, she shed tears as she spoke of how the Priesthood and the "elders" (missionaries) had blessed her life. It was sweet.
Tuesday, April 24: The elders who serve in our ward said they heard that Sister Jansens was doing good. That’s all they knew. Elder Garrett sprained his ankle playing basketball and was suffering quite a lot. He is from Provo, and Elder Wood, the other elder serving in our ward, is from Rigby, Idaho. Great missionaries! We will feed them dinner next month :)
Wednesday, April 25: Laundry day. I think I shall not take my washer and dryer for granted when I return in 18 months.
President Castro and the APs have been at the Mission Office a LOT this week – next week is transfers. So they are working things out and mixing things up. We are not involved with this. President Castro indicated that this is done with much thought, prayer, and fasting. Next week, we will be busy, that’s for sure. For one thing, we have to hold the mail from Friday to Wednesday (and there will be a lot of it!) so that the system can have all the updates made with the transfers and with new arrivals. So I should appreciate the fact that things are a bit slow this week, because that will all change Monday afternoon!
Thursday, April 26: Things are slow at the office this week for Sister Blue and me, but that will all change next week! Sister Blue is having surgery on her knee tomorrow to repair a previous surgery that didn’t do what it was supposed to do. She can only bend her leg 45 degrees, so hopefully that can be corrected tomorrow. Elder Mecham and Elder Blue gave her a blessing at the end of the work day.
Several elders were in today for interviews with the President. It’s fun to meet them and put faces with names. Of course, I’m still learning names as I sort mail. Some missionaries get a lot of mail, like almost every day – others not so much or next to none :( Met Elder Brodie from Ririe, another Idaho boy :)
We purchased a TV today, which we will take home (to Pocatello) with us to put downstairs. Saturday, Time Warner is supposed to come hook us up. Can’t wait to get the Internet at home. SKYPE! Yay! I can get email and look at fb at the office, but there are no pictures, nor can I download anything.
So, a couple days ago, we had lunch at a Taco Bell. A man came up to us and visited with us. His name was Anthony. We exchanged phone numbers so that we could "keep in touch." Tonight, the elders in our ward dropped by and Elder Mecham called Anthony, but he didn’t answer and hadn’t set up his voice mail. The elders stayed only about ten minutes. Just as they were ready to walk out the door, Elder Mecham’s phone rang. It was Anthony. They have set an appointment to go meet and talk with him tomorrow around noon. We will see how that goes and if he is serious about learning more about the gospel.
Friday, April 27: Even though Anthony had given "his" address, it turned out to be his work address, and he evidently was rather busy and couldn’t really visit freely. He didn’t completely close things off, though, and gave the elders his home address, where they will be contacting him again next week. Hopefully. He must have some curiosity, or we hope spiritual inklings, about the church. Time will tell.
Sister Blue had her surgery, which went well – they did put her out, she didn’t get real sick (like she has done in the past with anesthesia), they didn’t have to do orthoscopic surgery, just move the knee (crunch it), and she will start therapy tomorrow! I am taking in a little meal tomorrow, so we’ll visit more then. Love the Blues!
Went to Von’s grocery this evening after work. It was freezing cold in there. We were looking for uncooked tortillas - nope! - and decided to leave and do our shopping back at Ralph’s (which is just around the corner from us and not so freezing cold). We pushed our cart out the door and tried to return it to its place, and the darn thing locked up. As we were struggling with it, an employee came up and said that’s what happens when you leave w/out going through the check stand (we had not purchased anything). How weird! How does the cart know if you’ve been through the check stand? Crazy! Now, if we could just find a place that sells raw tortillas. You’d think in a place that is high percentage Hispanic . . . .
Made blonde brownies tonight. My first time baking here. Some for the Blues and some for the Hardisons, a member family that lives just up the street from us. Sister Hardison commented that now that we live on the street, it is no longer the "ghetto." She came by after church last week with a bag full of produce – melon, kiwi, avacados, tomatoes! And some nice kitchen hand soap. So sweet!
No comments:
Post a Comment