Storms and Conference

Dear Family & Friends,

Well, we have just finished the wonderful weekend of Conference!!  So glad for the wonderful messages and feelings of love that were expressed.  Now we look forward to reading them over again and again, getting new insights and remembering thoughts that touched our hearts.  We were especially buoyed up by Elder Holland’s final talk, reminding us not to let the world/Satan get us down after being on such a wonderful high of spiritual impressions.  We are all doing all we can, and we are so glad to know that the Lord loves us all so much, that the Prophet and Apostles pray for us and want us to succeed.  We need to not be down on ourselves, but instead give ourselves some credit for being on the Path! 

We were also touched by Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk about how we are known by the Good Shepard when we are lost, as he felt as a 4 year old refugee in WWII, and then the talk by Elder Kearon about the plight of the 60 million refugees worldwide that suffer due to no fault of their own, other than being from a war torn country.  How blessed we are, and what great need others have for assistance and help.

This past week was busy.  We were able to get things done each day.  Elder Hartzell did go back on Friday night (since Wed. was our date night) and got a lot more done in 2 hours than he does in 4 hours during the day because of having NO interruptions!!  There was a Mission Leaders Conference (MLC) on Thursday for all the Zone Leaders, District Leaders, and Sister Training Leaders.  We brought in the food for it and were able to say “hi” to many of our great ALRM missionaries.  We did have to get together a Departure Book for a sister who had to leave her mission early because of a torn ACL.  She would have been done in June so got an honorable medical release.

We had some severe weather this week on Wednesday. It rained hard all day and the emergency warnings for flooding were going off.  We received a special emergency weather radio Tuesday and set it up after we got home on Wednesday.  All evening it kept going off.  We didn’t have any flooding near us, but there was in other areas.  The Greens in our office live in Conway and they had a hard time getting home for the downpour. There was one tornado watch, but all the rest was about flooding.  I took the radio in the other bedroom and slept with the doors closed so at least one of us got some good sleep.  I was awakened three times during the night and was pretty tired by morning.  Thankfully it has been quiet since.

We had a fun dinner out on Friday night with Pres. & Sis. Wakolo and their daughter Jasmin, Sisters Hugentobler and Womack, the office elders, Elders Lundell and Phillips, and the Assistants, Elders Crane and Cunningham, in honor of Elder and Sister Green, our Trainers.  Next week will be their last week in our mission.  They have served 17 months of a 6-month mission!!  That’s correct!  They live here locally and started out October of 2014 as Service missionaries, had to leave from January to April to help a daughter with a difficult pregnancy.  Then they came back in May and served until September, when they thought they were done.  They went on a super vacation to Spain for a month.  Came back last October and Pres. asked them to please stay on as what Sister Green calls “Part-time Temps.”  They thought they would be done when we came, but had to jump in to help when the couple that were in charge of Secretary and Finance had to leave suddenly because of a medical emergency.  So now the Greens are planning to leave for good (or until the next crises comes up!).  What good faithful people they are!!!  So glad to know them!!

We hope you are all doing well.

We love and miss you,

Elder and Sister Hartzell

Elder Brooks and Sister Kathleen Green