17 March 2014
What a wonderful week!
What a great place to be! All my
feelings of inadequacy have been replaced with appreciation and gratitude for
all those who remembered me in their prayers.
Believe me it really helped.
Sometimes I noticed better remembering on my part and other times I
learned that it is OK to not be perfect and maybe I needed to have more
humility!
I am impressed with President and Sister Jensen! I don’t know where they get their energy, but
they are always going to another city to a Zone Conference, Specialized
Training, Stake Coordination Meeting, Staff Meeting, calling concerned parents,
putting out fires between missionaries and ward mission leaders/Bishops,
calling and caring for sick missionaries and the list goes on and on. He responds every week to 287 emails from his
missionaries. His wife is one of the
most loving people I know! The
missionaries love her and I do too.
This weekend we were privileged to go to Nauvoo for a
Seniors Couple Temple Session. Just
coming around the bend and seeing the sign “Welcome to Historic Nauvoo” was
touching. The temple was beautiful, as
are all the temples, but this one was so significant because of its
history. I thought so much about how the
pioneers built the first Nauvoo Temple while in poverty. I have a hard time understanding why the
people of Nauvoo, not of our faith, felt so threatened by a people who just
wanted to worship according to their beliefs.
They were constantly being threatened and run out of cities until they
finally migrated to the west to the Salt Lake Valley. The first Nauvoo temple was trashed, then
finally sold for a meager price, then burned and finally torn down except for
some stones. I hope to express my
gratitude someday to them for their sacrifices.
We were able to have President David M. McConkie of the
General Sunday School Presidency speak to the missionaries in a special meeting
about teaching. It was very
enjoyable! Essentially, he taught that
to be effective you need to believe and love what you are teaching and love
those whom you teach. If you feel
inadequate you just open your mouth and do your best and the Lord will make up
the difference!
We had a sweet Sister Missionary transferred to Iowa Des
Moines Mission from El Salvador.
Apparently she had come down with Dengue Fever. I guess there are several types and she had
the most serious. She had been in the
hospital there for a month. They said if
she were to get it again it could be fatal.
So she is here with us. Her
parents are so delighted. She seems to
be okay and I hope she can adjust to a whole different mission. She will be a Spanish Speaking Missionary and
they are the ones who seem to be doing a lot of converting.
Some interesting stories:
First some Sister Missionaries called and wanted to know if they could
have someone baptized who wasn’t sure where he was born. He thought he was born Kenya or Sudan but didn’t
really know for sure. He was orphaned as
a boy and was brought to the United States as a refugee. He had a passport that gave his date of birth
as January 1, 1968, but even that was questionable because the Sudanese government
would assign them a birth date if they didn’t know for sure. He thought he lived in Kenya as a child, but
the passport says he came here from Sudan.
Another member of the Church who had come from Africa said that most
people have to go to Sudan first to become African refugees to the United
States. To complicate things a little
more, he was deaf. The Sisters had been
teaching him with a little ASL that they knew.
He could read a little. Apparently,
he was familiar with some Christianity and had learned about Christ. We assured them that someone could be
baptized if they do not know or have a birth date or a birth city or
country. The Sisters knew they had to fill out a form
for it to be recorded on the records of the Church, and they didn’t want to do
anything wrong.
Second, a man spoke in church a couple of weeks ago. He was talking about teaching and loving our
youth. He told a story about his very
young child who was learning to talk. He
was learning little phrases. One that he
said over and over again was “Go away”.
They had no idea where he learned it.
One time when they had called the grandparents, they called this little
one to the phone to say “Hi” and listen to the grandma and grandpa. He went right over to the phone and said, ”Go
away”. They tried telling him what to
say, but he just said “Go away” over and over.
He compared our youth to this example.
Sometimes they are learning something new, but haven’t quite learned how
to use their new-found skill appropriately!
We should not scold or get upset, but should just help them and teach
them patiently how and when to use it correctly.
Third, we had the father of one of our missionaries call the
office on the Friday that we were in Nauvoo all day at the temple and leave a
message on the answering machine. He was
concerned because his daughter had been called to jury duty and unless they got
the missionary call letter from the First Presidency or a letter from our
Mission President on church letterhead she would need to be at the courthouse
this Monday, March 17th. They just wouldn’t budge on requiring her
to be there. This was now Saturday. I sweated that one. The parents thought she had her call letter
with her, but could we reach her and get her to a post office to overnight it before
it closed at noon. The President was
out of town, I could type a letter on church letterhead, but how to get him to
sign it and get it overnighted to Arizona was going to take a miracle. Well, I called the father back and a little
miracle had happened. They had prayed a
lot about it and contacted the courthouse again and this time was able to talk
to someone who knew about Mormon Missionaries.
He couldn’t dismiss it but was able to extend her time for jury duty
until June. Whew, that was wonderful! Now there is time to get the call letter to
the courthouse.
We are enjoying spring-like weather most days. But then this morning we woke up to 3 inches
of snow. But, the forecast is for it to
gradually warm up to the 60’s by the middle of the week. One thing you can count on in Iowa is the
wind…..it blows most days. We spotted
about 6-7 deer right next to our apartment complex a couple of days ago. We stopped, so they stopped and just stared
at us. We live where there are lots of
office-type buildings and other apartment buildings, but they didn’t seem too
afraid of us. Also, robins have been out
for a couple of months or so even during the snow. They sure are plump and I have no idea where
they got their worms. The ground has
been frozen most of the time. I had
heard that it froze the ground down to 30 feet.
Some ponds and lakes are still mostly frozen, but you can now see a
little thawing.
Thanks for all your prayers.
Love you all soooooo much!!
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