Dear family and friends,
Monday: Each
week we are thankful for the blessings of modern communications that we can
visit with our children by phone or FaceTime or email or text. When I was growing up, as many of you may
have had similar experiences, if you lived far away from aunts, uncles,
cousins, and grandparents as I did, long distance phone calls were expensive so
that was very infrequent, so there were letters. I still have some of those letters. Today we
have such ease of communication but then where is there a written record to
keep? Thankfully we can always
communicate with God through prayer and we have the written record in the
scriptures for His communication with others. Written records are important and
many of them have eternal consequences.
Monday
at the office was pretty normal except for dealing with a power outage on one
of the circuits in our office. That
unfortunately was the one that ran the refrigerator and we lost all the food in
it, which unfortunately was a lot. The
building maintenance man was able to discover the faulty device, which happened
to be on the outside of the building and on the same circuit. He removed it and everything now works fine.
Pat had some letters and emails she sent out and worked on her revision to the
Secretary’s Handbook reference.
Tuesday: This was a busier day,
with plenty to keep busy. There were
apartment issues to settle for a new couple coming the end of the week, and
broken cell phones. Patricia spent time
updating a four year missionary address list that is kept, and some email problems
that several missionaries were having.
May transfer is pretty small.
Wednesday:
The last couple of days have been nice, but it rained all day today. I guess that is why it is all green
here. The emergency radio in the office
kept going off all day long, reporting severe thunderstorms north and south of
Little Rock, and several tornado watches for those areas. There were power outages too. We worry about our missionaries as they are
about serving. There were a couple more
cell phone replacements today. This has
been a much more frequent occurrence lately, so maybe there are a large number
of phones about the same age and are starting to fail. Pat processed four
missionary recommendations and updated the arrival and departure list. Tomorrow
is the Missionary Leadership Council (MLC) meeting here in our building, so
after work we had to go do some grocery shopping for the luncheon.
Thursday:
We had all the missionary leaders here today for the MLC meeting with President
and Sister Wakolo. Patricia and I picked up the chicken strips for lunch at
Chick-Fil-A. There was another broken
phone, wow this is getting ridiculous. I
also had to set up a motel stay for the new couple arriving in Memphis on
Saturday. Their apartment won’t be
available just yet. Pat worked with
Sister Hess on the three letters that go to the new missionaries whose recommendations
we just got this week. One letter for the parents and two different letters for
the missionary. There is always a lot of media that Sister Sorensen boxes up to
distribute to the different areas after the meeting. After work we drove to our son Larry’s house
to celebrate our granddaughter Harper’s birthday. That was fun.
She had order cauliflower soup for dinner and donuts for desert. She is
a cute little girl, just turned 6.
Friday: We
have had a fairly light week as to work load.
Next week will be busier since it is the week before Transfers,
missionaries arriving and leaving, and there is extra things to get ready for
them. We did the office cleaning today,
and celebrated Elder Hess’s birthday. Pat
had to do a stake president letter and certificate for a missionary who’s going
home early. After work we both got our hair cut. Patricia always has cut my hair since we were
married, so this the first commercial haircut I have had in 44 years. Quite a savings in all that time.
Saturday:
Today instead of watching the soccer game, we picked up Harper and took her to
lunch, and then to a Nature Center in downtown Little Rock. It isn’t very large, but had fun displays,
including some live animals, fish, turtles, a small alligator, and some
snakes. There were other stuffed animals
and some pelts to touch. It was a fun
date with her. We did our apartment
cleaning too, and I had to go back into the office to deal with the credit card
authorization document required when I paid for the new couple’s motel on
Thursday. I had anticipated this
yesterday and called the motel to ask about it, but had been assured it wasn’t
necessary. Well you can see how well
that turned out.
Sunday:
Wow what a night last night. We had a
continuous thunderstorm all night. Lots
of rain, thunder and lightning. The
alarm on the phone went off three times related to flood warnings. Just before
we were ready to leave for church Pat saw a text from the member we have been
fellowshipping that stated that there was a power outage at our building we
attend and were going to just have sacrament meeting at the building where
Larry attends church. We were glad for
the text or we would have been at the wrong place. It was a good meeting, which included the
Spanish Branch also. One of the talks
was about not taking offense, and referenced a talk by Elder Bednar. The speaker commented that Elder Bednar
commented that taking offense is a choice we make, and not the result of what
someone else does or says. We can decide
not to take offense, even if that was the intent of the other person. The last speaker spoke on how the bar has
been raised and continues to be raised as it relates to how we need to do intentional
parenting. We need to choose Christ in
all our doing and per 2 Nephi we need to press forward or we will be pushed
back by the world. She ended with a
quote from President Eyring that stated that whatever was enough in the past,
will not be sufficient in the future.
We hope
you are all doing well. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all,
Love, Elder & Sister Hartzell
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