Good-bye to the Corlesses, Training Meetings, Welcoming Back a Knee-Injured Missionary

It is always amazing when we randomly choose a ward (or two or three) to attend on Sundays and then see why we chose that particular one.

This Sunday I am sure it was so I could enjoy seeing this little group of nursery children holding very tightly to their loop rope as they took a walk around the outside of the church. So cute!!

Little did we know that once inside we would see Elder and Sister Corless. We had told them good-bye at the mission office a couple of days before and then we got to see them one more time before they finished serving their mission. Such a wonderful military relations couple.

This young man was chatting with them and we learned he just got engaged. We heard his engagement story and then he shared with us his conversion story.

In walked a woman hefting these gold plates. Someone in the stake had made this replica and she had borrowed it to show to her Primary class. Great visual aid!

Apparently this has been a very rainy winter for southern California. There were some days where it rained all day long.

But, then the sun always comes out again and the blue sky always appears. This was our view of the ocean from the Cardiff-by-the Sea church building when we went there to do interviews with the missionaries.

Glen always has the missionaries write down their new goal for the transfer period each time they interview with him. I like the one missionary's improvised desk.

We had a second follow-up training meeting with these missionaries and their trainers. 

We went to dinner at Hunter Steakhouse to welcome our newest senior couple, the Radfords (on the left). They are taking over the office and finance stuff for the Christensens (on the right).

Sister Miller (front) works two days a week at the office working on baptismal records and referrals. The Kopenhefers (middle back) are in charge of cars and housing.

We definitely have a great time together. These people are wonderful!!

I laughed so hard when these zone leaders were handing out these pictures of what they learned from our last zone conference where we talked about Elder Bednar's talk on the parable of the pickle.

Immerse yourself in the gospel!!

These hermanas both wore floral the day before and promised they would find something matching to wear the following day. They did not disappoint with their stripes!

We have had several elders injure their knee since we have been here and they have had to go home to have them repaired. We got this elder back and went to lunch with him, the assistants and his new companions to welcome him back to the mission.

If there are two MLCs (Mission Leadership Council) in a transfer cycle (happens 4 times a year), we use the second one for leadership training. The usual ones are for the zone leaders and sister training leaders to get teachings and trainings for them to teach and train the missionaries in their zones. 

This particular one was our first one where we just did leadership training. We had a fun activity where they were each given a page of a picture book and they had to figure out where their page fit in the story by just describing what was on their page and getting themselves in order without showing anyone their individual pages. 

It took them a while, but they eventually got it right.

My favorite part was when they were given scriptures and had to divide themselves into small groups depending on the theme of their scripture. Then they had a few minutes to make a presentation to the group on their subject. They are wonderful teachers and did an excellent job.

We love our mission leaders!!

We don't often FaceTime with the children and grandchildren, so this was a real treat to see these cute faces pop up on our screen. It's almost like being there with them.

On our preparation day morning once a week, we like to venture out of the neighborhood for our morning walk. We went to check on the Flower Fields to see how they are coming along. They are now open for viewing and I must say we were very disappointed with how few plants were in bloom.

This was the only field that had any substantial color going on.

This field is the American flag field. Ummmmm, not very impressive. I'll keep you posted on the development of more blossoms and colors.

In the meantime, we'll keep going there to check things out.

We love our morning walks. Gets us going for the day.