A Visit From An Apostle - Elder Dallin H. Oaks

When we saw pictures of snow on the ground in Utah, I just had to take a picture of one of the beautiful flowering trees near the entrance to the mission office--complete with the beautiful blue sky background.

Our missionaries have a great sent of humor. I found this package for Elder Kindmark sitting in the missionary mail area.

We had this sister missionary on our list for several months before she has actually been able to get her visa and arrive here from Bolivia. We drove to the Los Angeles Airport to pick her up. That was a loooong drive because the traffic was so bad. Then we got home waaaay late. She slept at our house.

The next day we took her and her new companions out to lunch when they came to pick her up. The assistants were invited along as we had just finished up a morning meeting with them.

I enjoyed getting this sweet card from Luke.

Our mission had been all excited about the special visitor who was coming to speak at a special meeting where all the missionaries were invited to attend in the Felicita building in Escondido. We had our special reserved parking spot again.

The missionaries were told to arrive early and study to prepare for the meeting.

We had been told a few weeks earlier that an Apostle would be coming, but the missionaries didn't find out until one week ahead of time that it would be Elder Dallin H. Oaks. He brought with him Elder Carl B. Cook, a General Authority Seventy. Marc C. Davis is our Area Seventy and we got to enjoy listening to all three of these men speak...after we had spoken to our missionaries to start off the meeting.

We ate lunch in the high council room with these three men plus Elder Oaks's security person, Elder Davis's wife, Elder Davis's assistant and the stake president and his wife.

Following lunch we attended the meeting with Elder Oaks, Elder Cook and Elder Davis where all the youth leaders in the six stakes making up our mission were invited to attend.

That evening we went to the Vista adult session of stake conference where we both spoke. Elder Acosta, an Area Authority was presiding at that meeting.

The following morning we had been invited to attend a third meeting with the same three brethren as they were addressing all the youth in the six stakes.

We hurried from Escondido to Vista for a pre-conference meeting with the Spanish people of the Vista stake. Elder Acosta is a native Spanish speaker, so he really enjoyed that meeting. Then we went right into the regular session of the Vista Stake Conference. Elder Acosta called on several people to be on a panel during that meeting and wouldn't you know that he chose the MP and the MPW to participate. Sheesh!! I thought I was home free on being able to just enjoy the meeting since we had spoken the night before.

Some woman practically hog tied all of the missionaries after conference to get a picture of us. Since we were a captive group, I handed her my camera to snap one as well.

Note: the woman in front in the black dress is NOT one of our missionaries. I still don't know why she was in the picture with all of us missionaries...??

I guess if I thought I was sweating it being called on out of the blue to be on a panel in front of stake conference, it probably doesn't even compare to how Mark must have been feeling being called upon to be the new bishop of his ward in Yakima, Washington.

To put a little humor on the subject, I sent him a cartoon. I love Honest Jon. It is just great Mormon humor. Told mostly through a bishop's eyes.

We loved this rainbow view on the way into the mission office one morning.

We found ourselves at the San Diego Airport on an off day--meaning not on a day when new missionaries are arriving or when old missionaries are departing. This particular day we were sending two missionaries home early. One we hope will return after he takes care of his knee injury.

The bright spot in the day was seeing how this palm tree and the rest of the airport was decorated for Christmas.

I think winter weather has hit California. It has been in the 60s and I have been freezing. It got so cold in the house we had to turn on the heater. Glen decided to check out the fireplace to see if it works.

Good news is it does!