We had a small group of missionaries going home with this transfer--just three elders and one sister. We fed them dinner as usual--the regular specialty of the house--roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn and fruit.
We took the traditional photo on the stairs of them after we had testimony meeting. They spent the night in the mission home.
The next morning we took them to the temple.
It was a bonus photo session that day as the nativity was up and I thought it would make for a great photo. I was right!! It did!!
From the temple we went to the airport to bid the group farewell.
This time we didn't have any missionaries coming in from the Mexico MTC, so we had an extra hour more than usual to wait for our incoming missionaries.
We decided to go to the USS Midway again, only this time we bought tickets and went aboard. We ate lunch at the Fantail Cafe. The hamburgers were pretty delicious.
We had a lot of photo ops all throughout the time we were there.
It looks like we are always on the phone, but we were given a little device that we could activate at various spots all throughout the carrier and listen to information about what we were seeing.
The USS Midway Museum consists of the aircraft carrier Midway. The ship houses an extensive collection of aircraft, many of which were built in Southern California (this and any other information is courtesy of Wikipedia).
The wings bent up to preserve space. That fascinated me. It seems like that would have made the wings weaker, but apparently it works out okay.
USS Midway was the United States' longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th century, from 1945 to 1992. Approximately 200,000 sailors served aboard the carrier, known for several naval aviation breakthroughs as well as several humanitarian missions.
The different colored life vests on the men on the flight deck represent the various individual roles of the flight deck facilitators.
This is the view from one end of the runway on the flight deck with the city of San Diego in the background at the other end of the runway.
The USS Midway was the only carrier to serve the entire length of the Cold War and beyond.
These are the parachute pilot seats that would launch them out of their aircraft if it was headed for disaster. We are sitting there watching video footage of bad take-offs and landings where the pilots got ejected.
This is a look at the kissing sailor from aboard the carrier.
We bought season tickets to the USS Midway which got in two other people for free. That took care of two of our assistants. Elder Burris, our finance secretary, had gotten us two other free tickets which we appreciated. We used one this time and will save the other one for another time.
The assistants really enjoyed being able to look all around that huge aircraft carrier. It was a very interesting way to spend the time waiting for our incoming missionaries which consisted of four elders and two sisters.
The numbers of missionaries coming and going are so random and never the same, which makes for lots of adjusting of areas each transfer. Good thing Glen's got a smart brain to figure those kinds of things out. The assistants do a great job in helping him with that as well.
We took the missionaries to the mission office and got them fed. Glen interviewed each one, I talked with each one about medical issues and the senior office couples talked with them about their stuff.
It's like the first day of school for them. Lots of paperwork and boring stuff. They just want to meet their trainers and go about being a missionary, which happens around 8:00 p.m. and then we bid them farewell.
We bring them back two days later for a new missionary training meeting. We had a couple of very rainy days, so we were happy it cleared up enough that day for them to take their midway-though-the-meeting-walk break to wake them up.
It was POURING down rain when we left to make our way to Temecula to attend the Christmas musical play they do every year. I had my doubts as to whether we would make it or get whisked away in a flash flood on the curvy, dippy back roads we were on part of the way there.
We were able to stop at a restaurant we have never tried before for dinner in the rain. We are certainly spoiled here because we rarely have to deal with inclement weather.
The Temecula stake had done their usual beautiful display of lighted Christmas trees as the back drop for the many varieties of nativity scenes that were on display.
They are fun to look at as we are waiting in the chapel to go into the gym which they had a beautiful stage set up against the middle of one wall and chairs lined up on three sides of it.
I'll end this post with some cute photos of Abe and Klarissa's children having a Polar Express experience.
They are candy cane delicious! Sweet little people!! Love them!!
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