Missionary Department Visitors, Tented House For My Birthday

Brother Hemingway, the director of proselyting in the Church missionary department, went out teaching with our assistants.

From what each of us learned from being out with our respective sets of missionaries, we were able to figure out what things ought to be trained about at our next mission leadership council.

We had a terrific experience at MLC with Brother Hemingway and Brother Tanner doing most of the training and teaching of this fine group of zone leaders, sister training leaders and district leaders. Everyone loved the experience of learning and feeling the Spirit in the meeting that day.

At the end of the day, the visitors took us to dinner so we could debrief on all that had happened the three full days we spent with them. We loved that they modeled such good teaching and training. It helps us see how we can improve. Hopefully they were able to help show the missionaries what they need to work on as well so we can be the best mission/missionaries ever!

In the midst of the visitor week, we moved out of the house and set up residency at a hotel nearby. We just had to stop by the house one morning on our way into the mission office to see what our tented home looked like. 

I must say I was VERY DISAPPOINTED that our house tent was not brightly colored in red, yellow and orange like a circus tent. If you're going to be the laughing stock of the neighborhood, I figured you'd better do it up right!

There were warning signs all around the house. 

This was the day we were taking another batch of missionaries to the Mormon Battalion Historic Site--the group who had just finished their first twelve weeks of training and some of the missionaries who would be going home soon.

After the tour, our group met in a meeting room to be instructed by Elder and Sister Woods, the director of the site. Someone knew it was my birthday so the group sang to me.

This is what happens when the missionaries get a hold of my camera.

Since it was my birthday, we decided to linger a little longer in the area and walk through Old Town San Diego.

It was interesting walking through Fiesta de Reyes and seeing all the skeletons. The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) had just been celebrated a couple of days before my birthday and the decorations were rampantly on display. The holiday coincides nicely with our Halloween holiday.

On Google I learned that traditionally November 1st is the day for honoring dead children and infants.

November 2nd is the day for honoring deceased adults.

In homes, people create altars to honor deceased loved ones.

In graveyards, families clean the graves of their loved ones, which they then decorate with flowers, photos, candles, food and drinks.

People stay up all night in the graveyards, socializing and telling funny stories about their dead ancestors.

Musicians are hired to stroll through the graveyard, playing the favorite songs of the dead.

During this time it is believed that the dead return to their earthly homes to visit and rejoice with their loved ones.

Look, Sarah!! We found somewhere we can have Thanksgiving dinner!! (Just in case you don't feel in the mood to cook the traditional turkey dinner.) You do know you are the one cooking for me that day, right?!?

The day after my birthday we were told we would be able to get into our house around noon. That was going to work out perfectly as we had a morning meeting and then Glen was going to stay at the church to make the final transfer decisions while I came home to work on putting all the stuff back into the drawers and cupboards and unbag the stuff in the refrigerators and freezers.

This is what I saw upon arriving at our home. UGH! The big unveiling was just barely beginning and I knew it would be several hours before we got the all clear to enter.

I was able to watch the unveiling of the front tarp dropping after all the clips had been removed.

I left and went to the mall for a few hours. When I went back to check on the house, I saw this notice on the front door saying it was safe for re-entry. I was still scared!

Somehow I had no confidence that after our house was fumigated with LEGAL GASES that it would all of a sudden be safe for habitation.

I got a kick out of the comments made when I posted this on Instagram.

Believe me when I say I was never so happy to finally be back in the house with all our stuff unbagged and put away. It had been a stressful week for us with visitors in town and being kicked out of our house and then having to move stuff in and out on top of it all. We just wanted to put that experience BEHIND US!!

We had a new challenge in the near future which we weren't looking forward to at all--my foot surgery. Knowing it was coming and I wouldn't be able to enjoy going out for our morning walks, we decided to go to the beach one last time for a while.

It was a very foggy experience for us as we walked along the beach with the fog enshrouding us. As we walked back toward the parking lot, we walked right out of the bank of fog that was slowly moving out of Carlsbad.

Now there is the blue sky we are used to seeing above us!!