The June Senior Social

Dear Family & Friends,

            Last Monday I was busy all day long (unlike Jim who is busy all day long everyday)—lots of letters to write and send out, emails to take care of, and phone calls to respond to.  Also, we have not been able to access our phone messages as no one knew how to get into the answering machine or what the password was.  So Sister Cahoon contacted the phone company and was able to get the correct procedure.  Then I proceeded to listen to 155 phone messages from way back in November.  Ok, I didn’t listen to all of them, just the June ones.  The rest I deleted as soon as each one came up.  So now we are up to date and everyone is taking care of their own messages on the phones on their individual desks.  Now we don’t have the incessantly blinking light on our phones!!  Hooray!! 

            Tuesday we got two new missionary recommendations, and I had to put together a Departure Book for a sister who was going home early because of a leg injury from playing basketball with members and investigators on a Saturday.  It is the second one to go home early in the last 4 months, and they are awesome missionaries, so now the President has asked that the only basketball be played on Mondays with other missionaries who are under strict rules to not play aggressively.  We just don’t want to have any more injured if we can prevent it.  Several apartments are dealing with bed bugs.  They are really hard to eliminate once they get started.  Two of the apartments had to have professional exterminators come in, and that is really not cheap.  In the evening Jim worked on some family history and we installed some 2x4s as bed slats to keep the box springs from sagging to the center—it works great now.

That afternoon was our Staff Meeting with Pres. and Sister Wakolo.  Things are going well throughout the mission and there were only a couple of extra things that he wanted us to do.  Then we, the Office Staff, took turns going in to see him for interviews as couples, or Sister Hugentobler went in alone.  He made us feel really good by telling us he would like to clone us so that we could always serve here!!  Guess we are doing okay!  Also, the Greens stopped by for a quick visit and it was good to see them again.

We also found out that Shelley’s little Maxwell’s arm is all healed!  Thank you so much for your faith and prayers.

            Wednesday I sent out the letters to the stake presidents with the Honorable Release certificates for the missionaries going home in July.  There will be @ 14 going home and 21 coming out.  We got a new Senior Couple in our mission yesterday—Andrew and Lori Rasmussen from Alpine, UT.  They are getting adjusted and are excited to get busy with the missionary work.  We did our grocery shopping, then went home, ate, and did our 3 loads of weekly wash.  We got a phone call at 9:50 from Pres. Wakolo asking us to make an emergency run to the Office to get the passport for the sister who was leaving at 5:45 the next morning, which we were happy to do.  We got home at 11:00 and went to bed!

            Thursday was a much slower day and mostly did letters and organized a few things and made up a new chart to help me keep track of stuff.  We also did our weekly office cleaning today since we would be busy Friday morning.

            Friday was a really fun day.  It was our Senior Social held at the Mission Home!!  They are held every 6 months and involve all Seniors who are serving in our mission.  We have about 24 serving, some are local people who are called to evaluate missionaries’ apartments and try to help them keep them cleaner.  The rest are serving away from their home, except for the Just Serve couple who are to coordinate service efforts of the missionaries in the Just Serve program.  All of the couples either brought appetizers/finger foods, or desserts.  The Wakolos provided the lunch.  It was all so delicious and we had such a good time visiting!!  The Seniors were from all over and had interesting stories to tell.  We loved being there and making connections with the others.  Of special interest were the Milks who are from Las Vegas.  I had talked with Dennis before (he was a year behind me at Vegas High School), but not his wife.  Turns out they were brought into the church by one of the good friends that I grew up with—Sharla Richards Humphries!  What a small world it is!!  It ended at 4:30 and we helped clean up, then went home and relaxed.  We checked with Brent on how his son Asher is doing after some surgery on his legs that day.  He is doing well but it will take him 4 to 6 weeks to recover so we are asking for your faith and prayers.

            Saturday, our P-day, we exercised, cleaned bathrooms, caught up with some stuff around the apartment, then went for a nice drive (too hot and muggy for any walks) around North Little Rock to see where things were.  We went to see a war memorial statue,

a pedestrian/bike bridge that crosses the Arkansas River called “The Big Dam Bridge,” 

 and a red covered bridge that is part of Burns Park (a huge sports park with areas for multiple baseball, soccer, golf, and tennis fields and reportedly the second largest park in the United States).  

We picked up some dinner and ice cream and went home to just hang out!!

            Today has been a lovely Sabbath Day.  We have enjoyed our meetings and talking with wonderful people in the Little Rock Ward. 

            Some quotes from this week: 

            “If you want to be tutored by the Lord daily, serve a mission.  You will be taught and strengthened in ways you never thought possible.”

            “We need to stand with the leaders of the church, be they at church headquarters or locally serving.”

            From a quadriplegic who had been in a hospital for a long time and was finally taken outside and started crying, “The breeze is a gift from God.”  We need to recognize all the gifts from God that we might overlook or take for granted.  The scriptures are a gift from God that are often left wrapped.

            From a Church News article quoting President Ronald Reagen:  “Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience . . . without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure.  If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”  Sad to say we see this happening all the time.  I am so grateful we have God in our lives!!

            Sure do love you all and wish you a wonderful week!

            Elder and Sister Hartzell