Happy Thanksgiving

We can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving.  November has flown by. We had the great privilege of going up to Oakland to spend
almost 6 hours with Elder David A. Bednar.  The first meeting was with the 2 missions that are here in the Bay area.  There were about 600 people in that meeting.  Elder Bednar talked about what it is an Apostle does when he travels all over the world.  The meetings and conferences and firesides are not the purpose of their trips.  Their purpose is to find "the one" and tell them what the Lord wants them to hear.  In his trip to California, the ones he needed to see were the two teenage boys of our mission president.  They needed to hear what he had to say as he spent an afternoon at their home. 

But Dad and I feel that he came to give us a message.  At the end of the missionary meeting, he looked right at the row of senior couple missionaries and said, "Some of you have sacrificed a lot to serve a mission.  You have been away from your families.  You have missed the birth of grandchildren, and their baptisms.  You worry about your families.  But I promise you as an Apostle of the Lord that you will do more good for your families by serving in the California mission that you could do for them at home."  That meant a lot to us.

We then had another 2 1/2 hour meeting with him and the single adults.  Both meetings were amazing.  He spent  almost the entire meeting taking questions from those gathered.  And every answer he gave was incredible.  It was a great day.  This was on a Saturday.

Then on Sunday, Elder Bednar talked at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Oakland Temple.  He gave a brief history of how the Temple was built, and talked about the miraculous way then President David O. McKay was able to stand and dedicate the Temple.  He had had a stroke a few days before the dedication, and no one thought he would be able to speak.  He was brought into the meeting in a wheelchair.  When the time came to speak, he was wheeled to the pulpit, pulled himself up to the mike and went ahead as if nothing had happened.  He hadn't been able even to say a coherent sentence prior to that moment.  Elder Bednar was there, as he grew up in Oakland, and said it was really amazing.  The temple's anniversary is November 17th, the same day as ours, so it was very meaningful to us.

On Sunday we also had the privilege of taking an investigator to church.  Her name is Mira and she is from Bosnia.  We met her by chance when we went to visit one of our MSA sisters that we see every Friday night.  Their apartment building had been evacuated due to a minor flood, and they were across the street at a fast food restaurant.  We sat and talked to them for about an hour, and talked about the Church.  We asked her if she would like to attend church with us, and she said yes.  So we picked them both up.  We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she is coming again this Sunday.  We are excited!  We were even able to find a Book of Mormon in Croatian for her.

We spent our anniversary at the MSA Family Night watching "National Velvet".  I don't remember ever seeing that before, and really enjoyed it.  One of our members is a real old movie buff, and can tell you what movie won an academy award for any year since they began.  He also knows who starred in them, and lots of other trivia about movies and songs.  So he picked this one, as it is one of his favorites.

We met a sister on Sunday who works as a personal assistant for a local wealthy family.  She does everything for the family that most of us do on our own; shopping, cooking; running errands; house repair and organizing.  How would it be to have someone do all that for you?  She really enjoys it, too.  She started out her career as a personal chef, but likes the variety in being a personal assistant.
She served a mission in the Philippines and had some amazing stories to tell about that.

When she first got to one of her areas, she noticed that their activity rate had fallen dramatically.  She and her companion started visiting the less-actives, and found out that the reason they stopped going to church is because the wife of the local church leader was traveling with her husband to visit people and spreading rumors about everyone!  So she talked to the sister and told her she was causing a lot of hard feelings and got her to quit (I don't know how she managed that!) and by the time this missionary left, the district where she was serving was made into a Stake.  It's amazing the damage one person can do, huh?

We are excited to see Rob and Amy and their family.  They get in late Wednesday night and will be here for 3 days.  We are going to squeeze into our tiny apartment for Thanksgiving dinner, and then head down to - guess where - the beach!  Can't wait!

We hope you all have fun plans for the holiday.  We'd like to hear what you are each doing, and hopefully can talk to you by phone on Thanksgiving day. 

I don't have any pictures to share, so I'll close with this:

"Life is like an old-time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.  The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."  Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley

I'm thankful for the ride, and for each of you for making it a beautiful journey for us.  We love you.

Weeknight Chili

When I made it, I doubled it, but didn't double the beef broth.  It was plenty soupy that way.  You can also add as much heat as you want, with jalapenos or Tabasco sauce.  The regular recipe serves about 6 and doubled, 12, which can be reheated in a crock pot to take to gatherings.  I took it to the trunk-or-treat, and it was gone.

Anniversary trip

After a busy week last week (lessons taught, Elders out to dinner, meetings, firesides) we decided to take 2 days this week (next week is too busy) and celebrate our 47th Wedding Anniversary.  We went down to San Simeon and stayed in a motel right on the beach.  It was lovely.  The beach down there is gravely and dark, very different from the beaches up north.  The sea was very rough, and we sat and listened to it crash and roar.  It's amazing.  On Tuesday morning we walked along the shore and saw dolphins playing.  There were some surfers there, and they all stopped to watch.  There were also two fishermen who cast their poles from the beach. They caught 3 perch in just the few minutes we were watching.

Then we went up to the Hearst Castle for the rest of the day.  It is an amazing place.  Very over-done; the guy had way too much money.  But it was fun to see.  So many antiques, and some things that are very, very old; vases, statues, ceilings from the 17th century, some older.  Tapestries, Persian carpets - it was all beautiful and intriguing.  They have 3 separate tours, where they show just part of the castle and other buildings, but never all of it at once.  It's quite the scam (hehe).  You pay $25 to see a small part of the house.  We went on two tours and saw everything we wanted to see but the kitchen.  Here are some of the pictures I took.

We had a good time.  It was a long ride home (3hrs) but we made it, and got up at 6 this morning to help get some out-going missionaries to the airport.  We said goodbye to one of the sisters we worked with closely, Sister Ikegami.  She was born in Japan, but lived recently in Spokane, Washington, and that's where she was returning to.  Such a sweetheart!

She promised to keep in touch.  Sure hope she does.

We have written letters to most of the grandkids, just have the youngest three left.  We have been enclosing self-addressed, stamped envelopes, hoping they will write to us.  So far, no luck.  It's sure hard not hearing from our family at home.  Sigh.....

We are doing okay; keeping busy; loving the work.  We miss you all bunches and bunches.  We pray for you and think of you often. 

Another week

Well, another week has gone by, and it finally feels like fall here.  Not many trees change color, but we had a cold snap last weekend, and some rain, and that made some of the trees turn red and gold.  I actually found some pretty leaves and have pressed them.  But it's nothing like Utah, with the beautiful display we see in the canyons in October. 

We went to the beach (again!) yesterday.  Another senior couple took us to their favorite place to hunt for shells and sand dollars.  We found tons!  It was very fun.  It was low tide, and that is the best time to find them.  The only trouble with low tide is that there are sand bars hidden along the beach.  You can be walking along in the surf and all of a sudden, you can't get back to the beach because you are on a sand bar and it drops off a few feet right in front of you.  I was running away from a larger than usual wave, and stepped in water up to my waist!  I was almost swept out to sea (ok, I'm exaggerating), but it was a little scary.  I was more careful after that!  We had a nice couple of hours there, and then headed to our MSA FHE later. 

The sister who is in charge of our home evenings, Kimberly, was teaching a lesson on how to set smart goals.  She had a certain process she explained to us, and had us all make our own goals and write down if they were realistic, obtainable, measurable, relevant, etc.  At the end she asked if anyone would like to share their goal.  So a very funny fellow, Justin, (the guy who had us playing Mafia), got up and said his goal was to get Kimberly to marry him.  He then proceeded to tell us how he was going to go about it, listing how many times he'd have to send her chocolates, ask her out, do things for her, and so on, in a very funny, satirical way.  He was kind of making fun of the whole lesson, but it was so funny, no one took offense.  They are really just friends, and are good sports. Here they are:

So it was a fun evening.  They always do a pot luck dinner.  The first few months we were here, they hardly had any food to share, but the last couple of dinners there has been enough for a small army!  The guys always stop and buy a bakery dessert, and the ladies make really good soups and casseroles and salads.  So that part is great, too.  I took a lemon cake (still trying to use up those free lemons!) that is very good.  I'll share the recipe if anyone is interested.  Email me!

We sure do think of you all often, and pray for you.  Our hearts go out to Rob and his office at the loss of one of their co-workers yesterday in that terrible car accident.  That is such a difficult way to lose a loved one.  We are thinking of you. 

We know you all have your own struggles and we hope you are able to get through them successfully.  This a hard time of year for all of us for various reasons, but know that the Lord loves you and will help you when you ask.  He helps us every day.  We love the work here and are happy to have this chance to serve.

We hope your November goes well.  Let us know what you are all up to for Thanksgiving, etc.  We love hearing from you.

Happy Halloween

Hey, family.  How is everyone? What fun things are you all doing for Halloween?  Will we get to see any pictures of your celebrations?  We sure hope so!  It has always been one of my favorite holidays to celebrate with grandkids.  We are staying in our apartment Halloween night, to avoid any scariness (hehe), but did go to the Ward's Trunk-or-treat.  Here are some of the goblins that showed up for that:

I took pictures of adults because none of the kids knew me and wouldn't hold still long enough!  But they were all excited and had a good time.  The YSA ward provided games for them, and we had a chili supper.  But I'll still be thinking of you all Friday night. 

We have been keeping busy.  We've met some great people the last few weeks.  One fellow, Paul, is a 30 something dad who lost his wife to cancer a few months ago.  He has a very positive outlook on life, and is very grateful for his 2 kids.  We met the little girl, and she is so sweet.  She's 4, and has a 6 year old brother.  They live up the canyon on the way to Santa Cruz, in a little fixer-upper.  It's like living full time in a cabin.  I would love it!  And its only 15 minutes from the ocean.  He is able to stay strong for his kids, and talked a lot about his wife.  He is a great guy.

Then we met Sara, who just moved here from New Mexico.  She works for Google, in a very high stress job, and is homesick.  She said she loves to bake, and sugar cookies are her specialty.  I challenged her to a sugar cookie bake-off!  She can't bake in her little apartment, because the oven doesn't maintain a consistent temperature, so she is going to come over here and use our oven sometime.  She said I could borrow some of her cookie cutters to make Christmas cookies.  She's very homesick, and we feel like we can be her Mom and Dad for a while.  Which works for us 'cause we miss our daughters!

We met another lady, Tovi, who is a single mom of a 13 year old boy.  She has been trying to get back to church for a while, but it's hard.  She has had lots of challenges, and her son told her if they would just go to church and pray, everything would be okay.  Amazing, huh?  So we encouraged her and assured her that he's right, and Heavenly Father knows her and will help her, and she made it!  They were at church Sunday.  It's a start.

We had an MSA Fireside on Sunday, where a family relationship counselor came and talked to the singles about how to be a "Marital Magnet".  He told some very funny stories and had some good advice, but when he opened it up to questions it got a little weird.  We ended up leaving early (it was 9:00, our bedtime!) and didn't get to stay for the TONS of goodies they had ready for everyone.  I baked some lemon bars to take to it, and they turned out pretty bad.  They got over-cooked, and the crust was too thick and hard.  If anyone has a good lemon bar recipe, I'd love a copy.  People are always giving us fresh lemons from their trees, and I'd like to be able to use them up before they go bad. 

We went to Santa Cruz to Sunset Beach Monday, and it was nice.  We didn't see any whales this time, but the seagulls were entertaining.  Dad threw one his apple core, and they had quiet a tussle over it.  It doesn't take much to entertain us!

Well, that's about it for us.  Time is flying, and the holidays will be here before we know it.  The Staley's are coming for Thanksgiving, which is very exciting.  If anyone else is planning on coming out in the next few months, please let us know.  We welcome you, and know it will help us not be too homesick.  It's a great way for you to get out of the cold! 

Hope to hear from you all (hint, hint).  We love you lots!

Pop Quiz

Here's a little test to give you a few hints about how our last week and a half have gone.
Ready?  The answers are below, so don't peek!

1.  Who are the only people who attend General Conference in a Stake Center outside of Utah?

2.  What should you take with you when you visit a park on a hot day?

3.  What is the one part of a Toyota Rav4 that they have to remove the entire engine to replace?

4.  What is the best thing about serving a Senior Couple mission?

5.  What happens when you go shoe shopping as a missionary?


Okay, here's the answers:

1.  The only people who attend General Conference in a Stake Center are missionaries and people who speak a different language.  In our mission, it is Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.  So we sat in the large chapel of our Stake Center with about 20 missionaries, and the people from other cultures sat in other rooms so they could hear the speakers in their own languages.  On Sunday, they have a 20+ year tradition of having a pot luck dinner between sessions, that started when they had a large contingent of Japanese members in the area.  It is now mostly Chinese, but they continue to have their luncheon.  We didn't know about it, but when they came to the stake center on Saturday and saw all the missionaries, they started calling around telling everyone to bring LOTS of food on Sunday so they could feed us.  So we didn't have anything with us to eat, and it's too far to return to our apartment between sessions, and we were just going to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves (hehe) when we got invited to their pot luck.  It was so great!  We got to know some new people, try new foods, (fried tofu, for one) and have a great meal.  People are wonderful here.

2.  When you visit a park on a very hot day, be sure to wear comfortable shoes, a hat, and cool clothing.  Ties and long skirts are not advised.  Also, take water!  We decided to visit a local park on Monday last, and failed in all those respects!  Most of the things we went to see were closed on Monday (California's Monday is Utah's Sunday), but were able to walk around a Japanese Friendship Garden.  We didn't last very long, but here are some of the pretty things we saw.

Dad under some incredibly large redwoods.  The picture doesn't do them justice!

The park had lots of wildlife; geese, fish, cranes, etc.  And Japanese sculpture.

 

It was nice to see, but too hot (around 90).  Don't know what we were thinking!

 

 

3. At the beginning of last week, Dad started to hear a funny noise in the engine of our car.  He asked another senior missionary who knows cars what he thought.  He said it didn't sound good, and to take it to a Toyota dealership.  We did.  It was the water pump.  They had to take the engine out to replace it, which was pretty pricey, but told us that most people don't realize its going out until it burns up the entire engine, which we would have had to sell our firstborn to pay for (sorry, Tracy!).  So we were blessed.  And the car is working great.  And the dealership was nice.  And Dad got to share a Gospel message with a lady he met at the shop.  So all is well.

 

 

4.  Young Elders and Sister missionaries are the greatest thing about our mission!  They are so sweet and funny and dedicated and full of life!  We got to spend time with them at Conference, take a pair of Elders to the Oakland Temple last Friday, and see the Meet the Mormons film with them last Thursday.  It was all very fun.  The film is amazing.  We hope you all get a chance to see it.  It was #10 in the country on opening night last Friday, and #1 in lots of big cities besides SLC, like New York, Detroit, Miami, Las Vegas, Dallas and Phoenix.  Isn't that great?  If you have any friends that you would like to give a good impression of the church to, take them to see it. 

 

 

5.  I needed a new pair of walking shoes, so we went to a "comfort shoe store" in the local mall.  The guy who helped me was super nice, and very helpful in getting me a pair of shoes that are comfortable for my persnickety feet.  He asked us about our name tags, and we told him what we do as missionaries.  He started to tell us about his faith as a Pentecostal from Texas, his father being a minister, and some of his beliefs.  They were remarkable similar to ours.  He said as a youth, he asked his dad why there were so many religions.  Shouldn't there be one God and one faith?  Of course, this opened the way to talk about the Joseph Smith story, and I was able to tell him about the Gospel and bear my testimony.  It was very cool!  He listened with intent, said he would go see "Meet the Mormons" with his family, and gave us his business card and asked for ours.  It was a pretty special experience. 

 

So that's our week.  We got to Skype with Bruce and Cailee on Sunday, and he seemed very excited about his baptism.  Lots of people have promised to send us pictures, so we hope that happens.  It was very hard not to be there, but we know we are where we are supposed to be.  We are learning so much, and it is a wonderful experience.  We appreciate all of your support.  We pray for you and your families, and know you are all going through hard times, but we know the Lord is aware of you and will help you through it.

 

Give all our grandkids/dogs a hug from us.  Love you lots. 

A couple of cool stories

We've had some fun experiences this last week and a half.  On Sept. 25th we had dinner with the Calls.  They have some friends from Vietnam, Alex and Jeanette Tam, who had lost a daughter to suicide a few years back, and the Calls thought they would like to meet us.  Bro. Call felt like they had never really recovered from the loss, and they see us as a couple who have gone on with their lives successfully and managed to find happiness, so wanted us to talk to them. 

It was a great dinner, and the Tams were the ones who helped us!  They have an amazing story to tell, and I'd like to share part of it with all of you. 

Bro. Tam was born in Vietnam in the early 50s, just before the Geneva Treaty divided Vietnam in two countries, the North and the South.  Most of the people he knew worshipped their ancestors, and none had heard of Jesus Christ, but Bro. Tam said he always believed in a Supreme Being, "A God of all things I have yet to know".  He escaped death many times, the first when he was a boy, and the Communist soldiers were raiding the South, looking for boys to kidnap and force into the North Vietnamese Army.  He was riding his bike to school when he met two men.  He greeted the men and then heard a voice behind him say, "Freeze!  Hands above your heads and don't move".  He looked back and saw a group of men in uniforms with guns pointed towards him and the men.  He panicked, jumped on his bike and fled.  The guerrillas tried to gun him down, but he was too fast.

The second escape was a few years later when he was celebrating the Vietnamese New year with his family.  Just past midnight, guerrillas knocked on their door and asked them to leave their house to join other families in the village.  It was totally dark and the soldiers guarded them with guns as they walked.  There was suddenly a streak of light, followed by the sound of machine guns.  He and his family were being used as human shields!  They dove into the mud, where they laid while they heard bullets streaking overhead.  They stayed there for hours, waiting for the day to break.  His baby sister had stopped crying, and he thought she was asleep, but as day broke, they found she had been shot in the arm and had passed out from loss of blood.  Her injury was not life threatening, and they went on, hiding for 27 days as the fighting raged.  Thousands of people were killed and millions were left homeless during that battle.  Never a day went by that he didn't say a silent prayer to a God he had yet to know.

At 18, he joined the Vietnamese Air Force.  In February 1975, the communist forces were getting stronger, and invaded his village.  His base was attacked, and they were forced to evacuate.  As they were preparing a last meal, and gathering ammunition, a fellow soldier pointed a gun at him and fired.  He didn't know the gun was loaded, and barely missed hitting Bro. Tam.  Meanwhile, their base was being bombed, and as he looked up, he saw North Vietnamese planes.  They thought they were being rescued, but it was these planes that were bombing them!  They were trying to defect to the other side, and were doing it to prove they were on the communists side.  He narrowly escaped, and eventually made it onto a plane that was headed to Thailand.

After many months, he ended up on an Air Force Base in Florida, where he met an Air Force Captain who was a Latter Day Saint.  He helped him find a sponsor in the USA.
 These people lived in Provo, so that's where he ended up.  When he heard about the church, and learned of Jesus Christ, he recognized the truth, and felt he finally found the God he had been searching for.  He later met Jeanette, who had been one of the many boat people who escaped Vietnam.  The boat she was on saw much hardship, with many people dying as they drifted on the ocean, looking for safe harbor.

So these people shared their story with us, and we realized how blessed we have been.  They didn't talk much about their daughter, but did say that they had taken a young Vietnamese girl under their wing the last couple of years, and she had become like a daughter to them.  They sponsored her, and helped her finish her schooling, bringing her into their home and into their hearts.  We could see that this had been a very healing experience for them.  The told us that they had been interrupters for the Church when they would invite officials from Vietnam to General Conference to help them get to know what the church is about.  They had many great experiences with this, and informed us that the Church has just been recognized in Vietnam, opening the way for missionaries to be sent there to preach.

So a second cool story is about this missionary on the right, Elder Babcock:

He and Elder Harrison, from North Carolina, work in the ward we attend, the Saratoga Ward, and he is from Lehi.
We have been meaning to ask him if he knows Lavonne and her family, but hadn't done it yet.  So Tuesday night we took them out to dinner, and asked him if he knew the Secretan family from Lehi.  He about fell off his chair!  He said he and Kjeisten (their middle son), are best friends!  He practically lived at their home before he came on his mission.  When we told him how we know Lavonne, he was stunned!  He just couldn't believe it.  We couldn't either!  What are the chances?  He gave us some sad news, however.  Kjeisten went to Florida on his mission a few months ago, but his diabetes got out of control and he had to come home.  So we are going to write to Lavonne and tell her we met Elder Babcock, and ask how their boy is doing.

In between all this, I was bored one day, so decided to bake some rolls.  I haven't done that for a long time, and haven't baked any kind of bread for the last 38 years without a bread mixer to help me out.  I wasn't sure I remembered how to do it!  But I tried.  Voila!  I guess I haven't lost my touch:

Then this morning we got to help transport the outgoing missionaries (well, their luggage) to the airport.  We have 26 leaving today.  That is a huge group!  Here are half of them:

They're pretty excited to be going home.  The mission is picking up over 20 today to replace them.  How fun!  Always new people to meet!

So that is our week.  Hope your week has been good.  We hope the flu has flown, and that everyone is doing well.  We really love to hear from all of you on the blog.  The bear story was hilarious!  All your comments were vastly appreciated.  We hope you have a great weekend, and enjoy being together.  Those of us who can't be there miss you!  Right, T? 

Hope to hear from you all again.  Love you much.