Mission Leadership Seminar in Portland; Jeff Completes His Postal Service Training

After about 3 1/2 hours of sleep, due to the missionary in the hospital the night before, we were up and on our way to the airport. There were not a lot of food options available for Glen to choose from for breakfast. I had brought my own food.

We were off on our adventure!! Glen does not like it when I call these semi-annual seminars a vacation. But, when it involves packing and it involves leaving the boundaries of our mission and it involves staying in a hotel, I call it a vacation. It's the only semblance of a vacation we are getting for 3 years, so why not call it such?!?!?

His viewpoint is he had to cram all he would normally be doing in those days into other days and he still has to be dealing with missionary issues even while out of town, so he doesn't consider it a vacation.

Enough of that stuff. Just humor me a bit and let's get back to what happened on our vacation!

We arrived in Portland, Oregon, to the magnificent display of the leaves changing colors.

Our room was lovely despite the small beds. We were so exhausted that we managed to sleep very soundly in a bed half the size of the bed we are now used to.

There was a bucket filled with all these food items that helped us get through the day until dinner.

Just look at the glorious view of the Willamette River from our hotel window.

We were soon on a bus headed to the Portland Temple to attend an endowment session with the 31 mission presidents and wives and the leaders and their wives.

We didn't have time to take photos before the session and it was dark after the session; but, I managed to snap two photos on my way into the temple.

We usually meet in a windowless room in the basement of a hotel at these seminars. 

This time we met in an upper level room that had windows behind where the speakers were sitting. What a FABULOUS view we had with the blue sky and colored leaves as the backdrop!!

The leaders in attendance were our Area Presidency: Elder Kevin W. Pearson, President; Elder Scott D. Whiting, First Counselor; Elder Jorg Klebingat, Second Counselor and Elder Steven R. Bangerter as the General Authority in training.

Elder Patrick Kearon, of the Presidency of the Seventy, and Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, an Apostle, arrived later. All their wives, except Elder Klebingat's wife, were in attendance with us as well.

In the evenings we walked across the street to enjoy the beautiful fall leaves and to walk along the waterfront.

At mealtimes we had to hunt for our name to see where we would be sitting. They mixed it up so we would have a chance to talk to different people throughout the course of the three days we were there. 

One of the lunches we found ourselves sitting at the same table as Elder and Sister Uchtdorf. 

We got a break during that day to go outside and walk around for a few minutes in the daylight.

We were assembling on the stairs for our group photo when Elder Uchtdorf stepped out in front of the group and started taking a video of all of us. His security guard was not too far away from him at all times.

I love being taught by the leaders, but I also enjoy being taught by their wives. We always get to have an afternoon session where we separate. The men talk about business matters while the women have a spiritual meeting. It is always so good and they always give us gifts to go along with what they taught.

We also get a very nice gift at every seminar. This time they gave each couple a beautiful Christus statue.

They always make sure to tell us these beautiful gifts are meant for us to keep and take home with us at the end of our mission. They are not to be left in the mission home. It is so nice of them to give us these lasting momentos.

On the last day of the seminar all the Area Seventy joined us in our morning meeting. After lunch we headed out to the airport and they stayed to receive instruction the rest of the day. Elder Marc C. Davis (talking with Glen) is our Area Seventy.

It is interesting how things work out for our good. All the wives of the mission presidents had been asked to prepare a 30-minute training that could be used for a future zone conference based on one of the recent general conference talks.

I had been so busy at the time they requested us do it and it weighed heavily on my mind. I eventually got it done and submitted.  

We had gone ahead and planned our upcoming zone conference with the assistants right before we left. We would have liked to incorporate what we would be taught at our seminar into our zone conference, but zone conference was the very next week after the seminar.

As we progressed through our seminar, Glen and I were feeling very good about what we had already planned for zone conference. A lot of what we planned was what was talked about at the seminar. 

I was so thankful I had been pushed to prepare a zone conference training before the seminar because I decided to go ahead and use it for this zone conference since it was already prepared. I got busy putting together a PowerPoint presentation to go with it as soon as I got home and it was a relief to have it ready to go when we had our first zone conference a couple of days later.

We went from a busy zone conference week to a busy Vista stake conference weekend. Elder Kevin K. Miskin was our visiting Area Seventy. His wife and I were twinning with our jacket color.

After 3 months of training back east, Jeff graduated and is now an officially-qualified and well-trained United States Postal Inspector.

 We were so happy Sarah was able to fly back there for one day to be with him for his graduation.

It was a happy day when he had finished up his 3-month out-of-town training and he could be back home with his family once again. Well, he was only back at this home for a week (our home where they had been living since we left on our mission).

They went to church together one last time before the movers came to pack them up so they could move to Las Vegas for Jeff's new job.