Interviews for Every Missionary, Cute Kid Notes, Bear Misses Us

There is a week during each transfer cycle dedicated to Glen interviewing every single missionary. That means while he's interviewing, I'm talking to every single one of their companions.

One of these is not like the other... He's one of about 35 short-term youth missionaries from the Murrieta Stake who was assigned to various missionary companionships during the school break the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Generally the interviewing works out okay, but... more often than not, some of the missionaries take way more time than their allotted 10 minutes and then the missionaries start stacking up. That makes it the perfect photo op for the ones sitting around waiting.

Glen has them choose a goal every transfer cycle that they write down so they can discuss it with him in the interview and review how they did on their previous goal.

Elder Friend is one of the California Carlsbad recently returned missionaries who returned to his mission and spent the night with us so he could attend the baptism of a person he had taught. 

Little tidbit of information is his previous mission president and wife, Hal and Julie Kendrick, now live in his ward in Texas. They had sold their home before the mission and after their mission they chose to buy a home in the part of Texas where Elder Friend lives. 

Let's face it. Sometimes this calling just really takes it out of you. We generally go to bed totally exhausted and wonder how we can ever have enough energy to face a new day. Then in the morning we jump out of bed, bounce out of bed, get out of bed ready to get at it once again.

With the rough couple of weeks we had just had, one day I found Glen on the computer looking longingly at the screen.

He was thinking how much we would enjoy going on a 60-day cruise. No phone calls, nobody needing us, people waiting on us hand and foot, leading the life of leisure. It sure looked appealing...

But he refrained from pushing the "buy" button and everyone can rest assured there will be no MP and MPW jumping ship to get on a ship any time soon.

It just takes something like a wonderful zone training meeting to help remind us of why we are here and what our responsibilities are to help lead, guide and direct our missionaries. I always go away from their meetings feeling uplifted and spiritually edified.

These are two of our zone leaders who wrote some lyrics to the song "Nephi's Courage" which they sang to their zone. It is all about the standards of excellence Glen has set for the mission monthly goal for each companionship to have four new investigators a week, four investigators at church a week, and have one baptism a month.

It was such a cute song that I recorded them singing it to show at the upcoming zone conferences. It was a hit! I loved it!

Another zone training meeting with the selfie stick selfie taken at the end of the meeting.

Since we have now been here over 6 months, it seems weird that we hadn't already spoken at all 6 of the stake conferences. We just had our first one with the Carlsbad Stake. Bishop Gérald Caussé was the visiting general authority. He is a delightful man and we really enjoyed the time we were able to spend in his presence.

This is probably one of my favorite perks we have in this calling. We are always included in the meetings with any visiting authorities. I love it! All except the part where we aren't given an assignment beforehand and we get called on to speak extemporaneously. ONE OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS TO HAVE HAPPEN TO ME!!!!

Sure enough, in the Saturday evening session, he called on the Jergensens (San Diego Temple president and wife) and then us to come to the pulpit as a couple and share the answer to this question "What evidences do we see that this is Christ's restored Church?" The subject had already been talked about for an hour previous to our comments.

Thankfully there was not enough time for us to speak get called upon to say something in the Sunday session. He asked the Jergensens to say something again, though. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind very much speaking if I have been thinking, praying and pondering about what to say and then come prepared to speak...

But the spur-of-the-moment stuff is so nerve-wracking for me.

To get to the Carlsbad Stake Center we drive up our street, turn right and as we drive down the hill a short few blocks to the church, this is the view we see. The ocean! So cool!

The assistants and these three missionaries spent the night here one night mid transfer so we could get one of the missionaries to the airport the next morning.

That evening we met up with another of these missionaries so we could drive him up to Murrieta where he met up with some family members who were driving him to Utah for his father's funeral. It was the second time we had to tell one of our missionaries about the death of a parent. Not a fun thing to have to do.

Glen is such a nice guy and fixes a French toast breakfast if it's not a huge group here. The missionaries love to get breakfast because they never fix themselves a substantial breakfast. 

This is the room where I spent an entire day while Glen interviewed missionaries from the Escondido zone. There was a viewing and funeral going on for two children from a Spanish branch who died in a house fire. So sad!

Glen found out there is a man in the Escondido Stake who is one of the newly-called mission presidents who will be serving in Glen's exact mission--the México Torreón Mission. We got together with the McBeths after the interviews were other and went to dinner with them. They had lots of questions about what to expect.

Sister McBeth has a lot of concerns about their 12-year-old son they will be taking to Mexico with them. Yet again Glen and I gave thanks we did not have to bring any children with us on our mission. The 160 missionaries we deal with are plenty enough "children" for us!!

Here's some cuteness that I love so much. It is kid writing. Sarah had Eli sit down and write a thank you note to us for the Christmas money we sent him.

He wrote "Blah Blah love Eli" and thought that would suffice. Well, suffice it to say, Sarah did not feel it was sufficient and made him write more. 

Carson is quite the sounder-outer.

Caroline's note made me laugh when she referred to the bugs. They made quite an impression on the Golden family since they were the ones who discovered all those pesky flying termites.

Glen has been complaining of his shoulder never being pain-free since his shoulder surgery a couple of years ago. He had an MRI last year to see if he needed more surgery and things looked fine in there. Well he had another MRI last week to see what is going on in there.

Doctor saw him today and told him the MRI showed the same rotator cuff tear not all the way through like it was when he had his surgery before and the doctor just cleaned out some stuff in there and hoped for the best.

The doctor suggested a cortisone shot and physical therapy for a few weeks to see if that gives him relief. This is very discouraging that he is still struggling with this same problem.

Brooke sent me some pictures of Bear wearing a tie, sitting on some copies of the Book of Mormon, holding his scriptures, wondering when we are going to be home from our mission. 

I guess a 3-year mission seems like a very long time!