Dear family and friends,
Happy
Mother’s Day to all you amazing women or as Sister Linda K Burton at the Women’s
conference would say “certain women”.
Certain in your testimonies of the Savior and in your role to bless the
lives of others.
Monday
May 8, 2017: This is Transfer Day and so the office was extra busy with lots of
missionaries ready for their transfer to a new area, waiting on their companion
to return from the temple. Each transfer
the missionaries with birthdays or if they are completing their mission have
the blessing of going to the temple. Since it is Pday they use the internet
connection to do emails, they play volleyball and basketball and visit a
lot. Sisters Hess and Sorensen made
several dozen cookies, and somehow they about all disappear during the
day. You would see an elder come in and
get a half dozen and say “they are to share”, yeah right. We had lots of changes in assignments. One
area of Memphis there were some stake boundary changes which affected where the
missionaries are serving. We will need
to move two companionships because of that change and find one new apartment. Finding new apartments is always
challenging. Pat and I input all the
changes into the Church tracking system, which took several hours. Pat also had some missionary tablet issues to
deal with.
Tuesday: I spent this morning
working on some apartment rent payment issues, it was much quieter today. I was planning on inputting the needed
payments but all afternoon the internet was down due to a local provider issue.
We only had two new missionaries come this transfer and four went home. Pat updated
the arrival/departure list. Her wrist is
doing better, but it is a slow process. She exercises it 3 times per day, and
is usually very sore by the end of the day.
Wednesday:
We did our training for the new missionaries this morning at the chapel and
then drove to the mission office. The rest of the day was quite busy and,
because of the internet back up, I had both yesterday’s and today’s work to
do. The new apartment that we needed to
find in Memphis has been finalized and we will be in it next Wednesday. Pat processed 5 new missionary applications,
answered emails, and assisted with tablet problems.
Thursday:
This was a calmer day and I got caught up with the work and had time to work on
some “c” priority things. One activity
was to send out rent replacement checks to two different apartments which both
had their rent payment returned to Salt Lake as undeliverable. The addresses were correct, so hopefully
sending them with tracking they will actually get delivered. This has happened a few times now, three
times this month, and is quite bothersome and causes a lot of extra work. Pat
did more letters for the new missionaries, and sent photos to parents of the
new missionaries that arrived, and photos to the missionaries who departed.
Friday:
Back to raining again all day today. We
cleaned the office this morning and had a slower day, which is nice. Some bills to pay and follow up on apartment
renewals. One I have been working on
since February that there seems to be some problem with their email
delivery. She receives my emails but it
turns out none of hers get sent in return.
She has had problems with email delivery too so it is not just with us.
Pat’s arm is getting a little bit better all the time, and can do more little
things herself. We did help her get some
baptismal photos up on the bulletin board this afternoon, and she had some iPad
and tablet issues to address. We got her
a compression sleeve for the hand and wrist on Wednesday and that seems to be
helping also. This evening we attended a
piano recital that our two grandsons performed in last evening. They played well so that was fun.
Saturday:
Pat did some food shopping this morning at a local farm stand that the historic
Catholic Orphanage runs which we have gone to last year. All their produce is certified organic so we
are getting some good produce as well as supporting a good cause. We cleaned our apartment and then I had a
service project to help our son Larry with a sprinkler system repair. Pat just took it easy all afternoon.
Sunday: We
had a wonderful sacrament meeting at Larry’s ward that we attended. The focus of course was on Mothers. In our Priesthood and Relief Society meetings
we talked about the need to read the Book of Mormon. It was pointed out by one sister that President
Monson only spoke for 3 ½ minutes and it was all about the importance of
reading the Book of Mormon, so it must be important. Their
ward has several annual goals they are working on and one is for everyone to
read the Book of Mormon each day and finish it by April next year. It is a good goal and good promises when we
do what the prophet asks. We have been reading that great book ourselves daily
for years and just start over again when we finish. Pat remembered a story that happened at the
office about three or four weeks ago. A fellow came in who was not a member of
the church. His partner in business had passed away who was a member of the
church. He said that though they were different religions, they respected each
other a lot. He knew his business partner would want his last tithing paid so
this man brought his business partner’s tithing in to be paid. Pat took him
over to the bishops office, gave him a tithing envelope, let him fill it out
and put the money in and seal it, and they pushed the envelope under the door
of the bishop’s office. What respect
that man had for his business partner. We had a fun evening having dinner at
our son’s house and visiting with them.
What a blessing to be serving here.
We hope you are all doing
well. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all,
Love, Elder & Sister Hartzell
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