A good week

Here is the San Francisco Symphony Hall.  It is very beautiful.  We went there Friday night and heard some Faure, some Schubert, Dvorak, Grieg, and Prokofiev.  Their guest artist was a world renowned concert pianist Yuja Wang, a young woman from China.  She played so powerfully, she broke a string on the grand piano, and they couldn't fix it, so she only got to perform one number, but it was amazing.

Going to "The City" was a great experience.  We were in the heart of downtown, and the traffic was horrendous, but Sheila Call, who is the lady we have talked about with the "Italian Villa", who fixes dinner for over a hundred people every other Sunday, drove us, and she is quite a determined driver!  She isn't intimidated by any one or any thing! We went with some friends of theirs , non members, who are amazing people.  He formed a startup company a number of years ago, having to do with electrical engineering, and they are very wealthy.  They are very into art, so got a long with dad very well, and had us into their home after to see all their art.  They have a gorgeous home.

Then we did visits on Saturday.  It sure is fun meeting all these intelligent, vibrant people.  We are learning a lot from them, and that's what makes us feel like missionaries.  We drive all over the place, knocking on doors, and only get in once in awhile, but those "once in awhiles" are the greatest.

We spoke in church Sunday.  Our topic was Prophets and Revelation, so I mainly focused on personal revelation.  I felt prompted to talk about David, and how I was helped to heal after his death by personal revelation.  I can't tell you how many people afterward had things to tell us about depression, dealing with hardships, etc., and thanked us for our candor and opening up to them.  We felt very loved and appreciated, and feel like we are being accepted into the ward family.

Today is the big mid single adult barbeque at the Call's home, and it is kind of the culmination of our big outreach.  We are hoping to get a lot of people there.  One guy yesterday in church asked us what our purpose was, and we said to help and support.  He said we could find him a wife!  Maybe we need to start a match making business on the side!

Here are the latest visitors to our pool!  We see them out there swimming around every morning.  I don't imagine chlorine is good for them, but how do we tell them that???

I will take another picture of our geese families.  The babies are getting so big it is amazing.  Also amazing is how much poop they leave all over the sidewalks!

Last night they had a devotional dedicated to the missionaries that are leaving, including our Mission President and his wife.  It was amazing.  The missionaries were asked to sum up their mission and bear their testimonies in 3 minutes!  It was great.  Then they had  some of the recent converts talk, and they had incredible conversion stories.  Several people performed musical numbers.  There is a lot of talent in those young missionaries, and the mission president's wife sang a solo, also.  Altogether a wonderful evening.

So we have had a great week, and plan on having a repeat of greatness this week!  We are going back to the Oakland temple tomorrow, helping with the Institute dinner on Wednesday, visiting the rest of the week.

We sure would like to hear about your weeks.  Let's hear some of your exciting adventures!  Tracy will have some to share from her cruise, and Amy will hopefully have time to share some of their adventures when they get back.  Even if you don't think you have anything exciting to report, please comment and let us know how you all are.  We love and miss you.

Hope your Memorial Day is good.  We got a picture Saturday of Bruce and Cailee at Grandma and Grandpa Crockett's gravesite, and it was fun to see them.  They also went to Dave's.  Ron and Leslie take them.  If anyone gets out there, send us a picture, k?

Sister Missionaries

Here are all the sister missionaries in our mission.  There are 107 of them (the young ones).  Plus another 20 or so senior sisters.  We had a sisters retreat on Saturday.  We had a guest speaker, Sis. Elaine Dalton, the just released General Young Women's President.  She was amazing.  Plus a social worker who talked about self esteem, and our mission president and his wife spoke also.  His wife is really a neat lady.  She planned the day (with the help of the Sister Trainer Leaders), gave a talk, and prepared all the food all by herself (Café Rio salads for 120 people!).  She looks very tired all the time, and its no wonder.  She is on the go constantly. They only have a few more weeks before their mission is over, and she is very tearful every time she speaks.

The Sister Trainer Leaders put on a skit that was hilarious.  They did a little piece about each Disney Princess, singing songs they wrote the words to based on the songs in the Disney movies, and had costumes and props all related to how each sister is unique and special, and has an eternal destiny.  It was so incredible. Everyone was laughing so much it was hard to hear all the dialogue, but was really fun.  They are a very talented group.

Sister Dalton was very funny also.  She was up there giving her talk when her phone in her purse rang.  She said, "I'm just going to see who it is."  She went to her purse, looked at the phone, and answered it, right in the middle of her talk.  It was her son.  She told him she was in San Jose giving a talk to a group of Sister Missionaries.  She then put him on speaker phone, and we all heard him say, "You're in San Jose?  I was going to ask you to babysit tonight!"  She told him she had him on speaker phone, and asked him to say a few words to all the missionaries.  He said, "Just tell them to stay happy and keep smiling."  She then said, "Well, I'm kind of busy, so I'll call you later."  When she hung up, she said, "He'll never call me again!"  Isn't that incredible???  She then went on to tell us her "Be a Pro" program.  It has 4 elements:  pray twice a day, read the scriptures every day, be obedient, and smile.  She made amazing promises to us if we would just do those 4 things.

Sis Watkins, the mission president's wife, told a story about when she was in college.  She had been studying the scriptures a lot, and trying to know the gospel so well she could someday serve a mission.  She and a friend went to a protest one day, where a bunch of people were protesting the church.  She was confident she could talk to someone and help them see how wrong they were, so she got into a very animated discussion with a young woman.  This gal had been dating an LDS guy, and when she told him she had read the Book of Mormon and knew it wasn't true, he broke up with her.  She became very bitter.  She and Sis. Watkins "Bible bashed" for about a half hour, and they each became more and more frustrated.  She finally realized she wasn't getting anywhere.  Her friend finally stepped forward, took the lady in her arms and hugged her.  She told her that Heavenly Father loved her, and wanted her to know the truth.  She said, "Won't you give it another try?  Open your heart and read the Book of Mormon once more, and then ask again.  Will you do that?"  The lady burst into tears, hugged her back furiously, and said, yes, she would.  That taught Sis. Watkins that love speaks louder than words, and is more powerful than all the knowledge we think we have.

We had a very busy week, training the missionaries in 4 Stakes how to start our Mid Single Adult outreach, and visiting some of them ourselves.  It's good to be busy.

The heat has broken, and it's back to being in the 70s.  Feels good.

Glad to hear that Rob is posting on Facebook.  Dad and I really need to get back on there so we can be friends with our family!

Hope to hear from everyone this week.  Have a great one!  We love and miss you all.

Getting lost in San Jose

We are actually getting around pretty well, but we do seem to lose our way or take the wrong turn or miss a turn at least once a day.  We have found a Costco that is close to our apartment, and have been there a couple of times taking the freeway.  We have had need of printing services at an OfficeMax quite a bit lately, and have found a back roads route there that is easier than the freeway.  So we were getting some printing done today, and they needed an hour to finish it, so we drove across the street to a shopping center.  There was a Trader Joes, etc. and we shopped and looked around, killing time.  We were walking down the storefronts, and saw what looked like a Costco.  We said, "Oh, there's another Costco!".  We then realized it was our Costco, from a different direction!  We were completely turned around, and once again, lost in San Jose!  Oh my...

We've had a busy week, with lots of meetings.  We were able to catch one person home for a visit (it's very hard to catch people), got lost trying to find her apartment (big surprise), but had a wonderful visit.  She is a single member whose family lives in SLC, has an advanced degree in something - audiology? - and works with hearing impaired people; very bright and sweet.  We enjoyed getting to know her.

For Mother's Day, we went to church/meetings, and instead of coming home and having the super dinner Dad had put in the crockpot for us, we went to that lovely "Italian Villa" again for dinner.  The crockpot roast and potatoes was just as good tonight!  The couple who have all those people to dinner at their home twice a month invited us to go to San Francisco with them in a couple of weeks to a classical piano concert.  Such nice folks!

Dad and I are enjoying the treats everyone sent for Mother's Day.  Such fun getting mail!! We got a package Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  I love my new slippers, jewelry, "felted" bowl, smoothie tumblers, drink mixes, spice mixes, and cards and letters!  I felt very loved.

We would really like to hear from some grandkids.  Ask them to get on the blog or email us or something, will ya? 

So here goes with trying to put some pictures in.  We have 3 families of geese that roam the apartment complex.  We thought there were only 2, but saw a third today. 

 

Top, the Gandolph family (we're naming them!), bottom, my MD gifts!

So there you go.  One more post ready for comments!

Love you all

A Whole month

Wow!  We've been on our mission a whole month!  We can't believe it.  Time really goes fast.  We have had some fun and interesting experiences this last week.

We attended 2 college institute dinners for young single adults.  The one feeds about 20, the other over 100.  Dad and I helped out in the kitchen in the second one, and they got him to wear a frilly apron.  They said it was his initiation!  We had a good time, but were pretty worn out when we got home.  The senior couple missionaries that run that institute are really great.  He got kidney cancer when he got out on his mission, but is doing quite well now.

We haven't had much time to do anything "fun" this week.  We were going to go to the San Jose Art Museum today, but are worn out from yesterday.  Our meetings started at 7am and ended at 7:30pm.  But we don't think every Sunday will be like that.  We have 4 Stake Presidencies/High Councils to meet with to introduce ourselves and our Single Adult Initiative, plus zone leaders/sister trainer leaders to talk to, so it was an especially busy day.  But good!  They are enthusiastic about it, for the most part.  Now we just have to get the lists of the thousands of mid-singles, and we can get started!  Whew!

We went to a few garage sales on Saturday, looking for a few more kitchen items.  I found a bread pan, because I am too cheap to buy a new one ($8).  Plus a couple of patio tables.  We have a very small patio, and I planted a tomato plant, as there was a planter already there, and bought a flower pot, and needed something to put it on.  So now we can sit out there when it's not too hot and enjoy the view of the swimming pool (!)  People have big parties there, as it has a barbeque grill.  It gets pretty noisy in the evening, but we're not here much then.

A friend gave us some "nopales", which are cactus paddles.  She told me how to cook them, so I tried it.  They taste okay, kind of like green beans, but they are full of slimy stuff!  When you boil them, it's supposed to get rid of the slime, but there's still some left.  I can't even eat mushrooms, so you can imagine how I felt about that!  But at least we tried, right?

It got really hot last week - 98 one day.  We take a walk every morning, and got lost one day!  We had to pull out our google maps app to find our way home.  Funny!  But the mornings are nice and cool, so it's a great time to walk.  There are two families of geese here on the grounds.  The one has 4 babies, the other 5.  They are so cute!  We hope to post some pictures of them.

We are adjusting pretty well to our new life!  I have my moments when I get pretty homesick, but try to keep busy.  We are going to visit some of the single sisters this week, and I am baking cookies for 2 zone leadership meetings.  We have a barbeque tonight at the Mission Home with the president and his wife, and all the other senior missionaries.  That should be fun.  Again, we'll try to send pictures!  I thought I had posted a picture of Dad in his apron, but it's not here, so maybe Dad can help me with that.

 

 

 

I did it!  The middle one is the Cattrons, the Senior Couple we lived with when we first got here.  He had a heart attack in the  MTC!  But he is doing well now.  They are from Montana.

The bottom picture is this goofy mechanical lady Dad was intrigued with who is advertising something!

 

So there you go!  The latest from San Jose!  We love you all and miss you.  Hope to hear all your news here, and remember, mail is good also, as are phone calls.  Or personal visits! hehe

It's a start!

Hey family,

Let's blog!  We'd love to have this way to stay in touch, share pictures, keep up with all the exciting family activities.  I don't know what I'm doing, so any help and advice would be appreciated.  Let me know what you think. 

I guess all anyone needs to post is a g-mail account, and I know you all have one.  Maybe Meg can tell me how to fancy it up, etc.  I really know nothing about it!

So join up and start blogging!