Dear
Family and Friends,
Monday was a pretty light day for me—answered
some emails and took care of a few things.
Jim was busy as usual. At 3:30 Jim
and I drove to the Mission Home to help Sister Wakolo with dinner. Elder and Sister Cheney were already there working
hard. The dinner we prepared for the
Departing Missionaries was: ham, cheesy
potatoes, chicken curry with rice, green bean casserole, rolls, spinach salad, cookie
salad, cut up fruit and melon, chip and dips, and brownies and ice cream for
dessert. We came home stuffed!!
Jim: Today I gave the spiritual
thought in our morning devotional time at the office. I had been reading 1 Ne 13:35 and was
thinking about Nephi, a teenager, wanting to know what is his father Lehi had
seen in his vision, and had been shown the future of his people falling away
and being destroyed. I was just struck
by how hard that would be to know of that future. I think I would have been very discouraged,
and maybe would have said what is the use in trying? But not Nephi. He pressed forward, ever faithful, testifying to
his brothers who never asked to know, and lead his people as a prophet
does. I am glad I don’t know the
specifics about my future. There may be
sadness that I am very glad to not know about ahead of time. With faith and pressing forward we can apply
the atonement in our lives and get through any of these challenges, but I am
glad to not know about them ahead of time.
Nephi is one of my great heroes.
Tuesday we celebrated the one-year
anniversary of our beautiful Payson Utah Temple!! We loved all we did to help during the Open
House, and the Dedication itself was so special and beautiful. What a treasure it is!!! In the Mission Office, Jim and I worked
together on the Transfer Board online in IMOS.
It took about 2 ½ hours, but we got it done and submitted. The Office Elders changed the Transfer Board
around in the President’s Office. Then I
went in and updated all the photos with their new positions. I also went with Sister Cahoon to Sam’s Club
to buy a lot of bottles of water, granola bars, and candy for the Mission
Tour/Zone Conference next week. No new
missionary applications came in, which was a surprise as it was the second week
in a row! Sister Cahoon and I drove to
the Mission Home to help with the Arriving Missionaries Dinner. Elder Hartzell
and Elder Cahoon came about 1 ½ hours later.
This time we had pulled pork, beans, coleslaw, cookie salad, cut up
melon and fruit, and just ice cream for dessert. We had 8 missionaries leave and 8 come
in.
It
is wonderful to see the seasoned missionaries return home and new enthusiastic
missionaries come out.
Wednesday was our 43rd
Wedding Anniversary!! We gave each other
our cards in the morning, and at the end of the day we went to see a
movie. At 9:00 that morning we had our
training at the Rodney Parham building, teaching the new missionaries things
that they will have to know as they do their work in the field. Then I was busy sending out lots of email letters
to parents with accompanying photos, plus emails to parents of missionaries who
have new leadership assignments. We
found out that night that our grandson Maxwell, who is 5 months old, was being
turned over by a brother and his arm got caught and his humerous bone was
fractured! Shelley, his mom, ended up
spending Wed. afternoon, evening, night, and Thursday morning and early
afternoon in the hospital while they did various x-rays of him. He was finally released Thursday about
3:00. He does not need a cast, but does
need to keep his arm bound to his body. The
family was vacationing in San Diego, so they didn’t have a lot of help, but
Derek took care of the 4 other boys while Shelley stayed with Maxwell. It was traumatic for everyone, but the Spirit
was with them and helped them do what needed to be done.
So Thursday was spent a lot of time
praying for little Maxwell and Shelley and her family, and was glad to hear he
was released that afternoon. I entered
info in IMOS on CO/smoke detectors in the various apartments. Our wonderful Apartment Advisors from each
stake are installing them, while they also check the cleanliness of the
apartments. We are surprised to learn
how many missionaries don’t know how to clean anything, how to take care of a
vacuum so that it does not get all clogged up, and several apartments have
problems with bed bugs or lice. No
fun!! I got a haircut Thursday afternoon
(too short but great for summer). It is
really starting to heat up—95 degrees and getting hotter, plus humidity of 95
degrees, so that makes a heat index (like chill factor in the winter) of 105
degrees. So now we are breathing bricks
like we did in Japan in the summer!!
Friday is our cleaning day in the
Office, and this time I did the dusting in all our offices including the foyer
and hallway near our Office. It takes
over an hour. Then I did lots more
emails and letters all day long, making a few mistakes along the way, but
correcting them quickly. We stopped at
the store for a couple of things on the way home, then ate our anniversary
dinner at the restaurant called Kirin Garden that had both a Chinese and
Japanese buffet. It was very good. Then
we spent the evening watching movies.
Saturday we slept in, then
exercised, ate breakfast, worked on bills, cleaned the bathrooms, ate lunch,
took naps, did some aerobic exercise, cleaned up, drove to the Otter Creek
building where we ate dinner (sandwiches) and attended the Adult Session of
Stake Conference. Our General Authority
was Elder Mervyn Arnold, the one who did the talk in General Conference about
going to the rescue. We had various speakers
who gave short talks, including President Wakolo, and then they spent an hour
doing demonstrations about different kinds of councils. It was very interactive with audience members
giving comments, too. We really enjoyed
it.
Elder Arnold’s parents in their
council they had 5 goals for their children:
1) have a personal testimony of Jesus, 2) teach them to pray, 3) observe
the Sabbath day, 4) learn the value of work, and 5) get an education. Then Sister Arnold talked about 7 principles
to guide a family council discussion: 1) make it interesting, and an
appropriate length for the age of the children and teach about divine position,
God controls when we come to earth and to what families, we are here at the
right time, 2) start with a question 3) focus on how you need to improve, ask others
for input, 4) talk about the hard stuff, 5) listen, you have two ears and just one mouth, 6) Keep it positive. One thing that was shared by Sister Arnold was
that for every thing that you say to a child or family member that needs
improving, you need to say 5 positive things to them. Someone once gave her a acronym of PIE
(praise, instruct, and encourage), and 7) persevere.
Another thing that the Temple President,
President Griffin said was that everyone that comes to the temple needs to be
treated like our nearest and dearest friends.
Can you imagine how much better we would all feel if we treated our
family members, our extended family, the people in our wards and stakes, the
people in our sphere of influence, as our “nearest and dearest friends.” That would sure make everyone feel better
about themselves and others.
Today was Stake Conference and we
saw a miracle as our Stake President, Elder Beheshti, was released, and a new
stake president called with his new counselors.
Elder Arnold and Elder Carter had interviewed many, many men in the
stake, and the Lord told them who the new president was to be. And it has to be done so quickly (in less
than 24 hours). It is really amazing—especially
when one of them in his testimony in the meeting said that he had been feeling
that this was coming and had been trying to ignore it. Truly, the Spirit of Revelation is working in
our lives!!
In Elder Beheshti’s testimony he
shared a gem: “the greater the truth, the greater the opposition” and then
spoke about the sacred grove, leaving us with a challenge to read the first
vision account and ponder it. Jim: That was how my journey began to membership
in the church. I did not see a light or
hear a voice, but I received that witness I heard in my heart which lighted my
soul.
Sister Arnold spoke about the
troubled times we live in and there are many voices, and quoted President
Monson who spoke about that the voice we need to be listening to is the still
small voice of the Spirit. We are
transparent to God, He knows our hearts.
No trial we suffer is wasted. We gain and build up our character when we
suffer in faith and endure in joy.
Elder Arnold then spoke and shared
some of the trials that he has faced in his life and how thankful he is for
those trials that have helped him to begin to understand the atonement of the
Savior. As we give our wills to God he will heal us. He testified that this is true for him and
can be for all of us.
Tomorrow will be our Mission
Tour/Zone Conference for us here in Arkansas, and Tuesday it will be held in Memphis,
Tennessee, part of our mission. We will
tell you all about it next week.
Love to you all,
Elder & Sister Hartzell
No comments:
Post a Comment