Purple, Punching Tree, Zone Training Meetings, Temple, Mariachi Band

One day I noticed the assistants, Glen and I were all wearing some purple. I had to document the moment. Comp unity times two!!

We had a really rough few days of staying up late from sisters in the E.R. after having accidents. Added on top of that were some of our disobedient elders causing grief. Late nights and early ups took their toll on this MP. He sat down for just a minute and fell asleep.

A positive of MP needing to go see a disobedient elder was this tree. It's a punching tree and it's located at the apartment complex of this elder. Early on in the mission, I learned about punching trees. The missionaries told me they are all over Carlsbad and you can go up to them and punch them and they are soft and have a give to them and your hand doesn't hurt after punching it.

I have always been fascinated by these kinds of trees that look like the bark is falling off. Before, I have wanted to peel off the bark when I see these trees. Now I have the strong urge to punch every single one of them.

I was surprised to see these toys at one of the church buildings. I was thinking this would be a great ward to visit when the grandchildren come to see us. The little ones would love visiting this nursery.

I took a lot of pictures at the Temecula zone training meeting. It is a huge zone. We arrived there way early so MP could interview 8 of them before the meeting began. After we ate a quick lunch, he interviewed the rest of them. 

Sister Mitchell was one of our E.R. accident sisters. She did the bike safety tip in the meeting. She explained how she used the left-hand front tire brake, which was a mistake, because she flew over the front of her bike.

Ecclesiastes 10:2 "A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left." She told the missionaries to be wise and use the right-hand brake going down a hill. Her companion is now carrying a first aid kit wherever they go.

After all the missionary interviews, MP interviewed the Burgons and extended a call to him to be Glen's first counselor just as he had been for President Kendrick. We went out to eat a late dinner at Outback to celebrate.

These are some of our Spanish missionaries. Glen had invited them over for "a Mexican dinner" of Frito bandito which made me laugh so hard because what we fix is such an Americanized meal compared to what these missionaries are used to eating at members' homes. 

They brought pandulce (Mexican sweet bread) for dessert.

Glen insists we have fresh flowers in the house whenever we have company. At Costco he picked out this flower arrangement for our Mexican dinner. I thought the flowers looked so fake, but he said Elder Wockenfus loves bright colors and he would love them.

Sure enough--Elder Wockenfus commented on the flowers. They made him so happy. MP was inspired with his flower picking.

This day we attended the Fallbrook zone training meeting. After lunch MP interviewed all these missionaries.

The next day we attended the Del Mar zone training meeting. I neglected to get a group photo, but grabbed these willing missionaries after the rest of them had left to go to lunch. There were no interviews this day because we were off to the temple right after the meeting.

We have seven missionaries going home in two weeks and since the San Diego Temple is now closed for the next three weeks, we had to get their temple session in before it closed.

Del Mar is the southern-most part of our mission, so we were not too far from the temple. Our busload of missionaries got a late start leaving the mission office because some of their meetings went long that day. We were really cutting it close hoping they would get there in time for our scheduled session.

I got the inspiration to call them in transit and get their temple clothes sizes and shoe sizes so Glen and I could have the temple worker get the clothes all pulled for them so they could just walk in and pick up their pile of rental clothes and hurry in to the dressing room.

They made it and the inspired plan worked like a charm giving us no minutes to spare in making it into the session. Whew!!

For this group of departing missionaries, we decided to take them to a restaurant and treat them to a nice dinner. This place was located close to the church where Glen had a meeting that evening. I had driven my car to the church and left it there while we went to the temple.  

The restaurant turned out to be awesome. The missionaries loved the mariachi band and the food so much. They had a really good time.

Glen's idea was brilliant to eat close to the church and have me park there. We got to that church with about 10 minutes to spare before the meeting began. I was able to drive myself home. MP went out visiting inactive members with two of our missionaries as part of the meeting. One of the missionaries was one of our newer ones and he felt like it was a good thing to spend time with him.

We did our best to make sure we got our date night in as we stopped at Black Angus after a morning of meeting with the assistants, driving north to Temecula, and attending a baptism. 

An early dinner sounded delicious to us before driving back home to Carlsbad.