March 20^th, 2022

Newport Beach Temple

A change is in the air!  We can both feel it.  We are having mixed feelings about the pending changes.

Elder and Sister Smith, from Gilbert, arrived 2 weeks ago.  Sister Smith will be taking Liz’s responsibilities.  Elder Smith will be the medical advisor for the mission.  He’s a retired pediatrician.  Elder and Sister Tullis also arrived 2 weeks ago.  Elder Tullis will be trained on finances, and Sister Tullis will help our current mission secretary, Sister Costlow.  Elder and Sister Swannack arrived last Monday.  He will take my place as the vehicle coordinator.  Sister Swannack will be getting a diverse list of tasks that Liz and I were doing.  So with 3 additional couples in the office, it is a little crowded.  It will be better for them when Elder and Sister Brown, and Elder and Sister McAllister leave on April 6^th.

It is strange training my replacement.  Elder Swannack will do a great job, but he’s having the same feelings I had when I first arrived.  How in the heck am I going to remember all the steps necessary to take care of all these cars?  It was overwhelming.  I’m grateful to my “trainer” for being patient and encouraging.  I still call him from time to time…actually, I’ll call him with any excuse I can think of. He now works in the Global Fleet department in SLC, in the TIWI department.  TIWIs are devices in each mission vehicle that track how fast the missionary is driving, if they are driving aggressively, if the seatbelts are not fastened, etc.  We have occasional problems, so I call the former Elder Aird, my trainer.  He’s a good guy.

Two weeks ago was our Stake Conference here in Riverside.  The mission president was invited to speak for a few minutes.  Liz and I got there early enough to get cushioned seats in the chapel.  While speaking, President Watson invited all the missionaries to stand.  We stood up and turned around to see all the other missionaries assigned to the Riverside Stake.  Liz looked and realized that soon we would not be part of this army of missionaries and got a little “verklempt.”

Elder Call with Elder & Sister McAllister at our last Zone Conference

A week ago last Wednesday and Thursday were zone conferences.  We were asked to share our testimonies on Thursday.  Getting ready to leave these young missionaries and their association is harder than I thought it would be!  We’ve grown to love and appreciate them.  We’ve grown closer to a few and hope we’ll be able to keep in contact with them.  However, we know that the tie that binds us together now will be different going into the future.  We are on their team, helping to support them as they find and teach their “friends.”

Feeding the missionaries at our last Zone Conference

Vehicle Gymnastics:  Salt Lake tells us how many vehicles we are supposed to have in our inventory, based on the number of missionaries we have.  Since we’ve been here, we’ve dropped from about 250 down to about 170, so we were asked to reduce our inventory by 9.  In addition, some of the vehicles that have been in service for the allotted time will be retired when the replacement vehicles arrive.  To this point we have had mostly Toyota Tacomas and RAV4 vehicles.  We also have several Chevrolet Equinoxs.  The Tacomas are being replaced with Nissan Frontiers, and RAVs with Nissan Rogues.  We have 3 new Frontiers in our parking lot at the mission office, and about 12 Rogues, with more to come! We also have 8 of the 9 cars that we will be retiring, stripped of license plates. Elder Swannack and I have started to remove the TIWIs from the retiring vehicles and are installing them into the new cars.  We’ll work on that project some more this coming week as the weather will be perfect!  Never a dull moment as the “Car Czar.”

Things are picking back up a little for Liz in her travel responsibilities.  Covid restrictions are changing and now she is helping missionaries who were originally assigned to Japan, Singapore and Australia to get their documentation together.  Each country has different requirements, so it keeps her busy figuring out what is needed, and helping the missionary gather his/her records.  Some countries even require seminary graduation certificates!  Go figure!  What if they didn’t go to seminary?  Would they be rejected at the borders?

We had our last Sr. Missionary FHE this week.  On Tuesday we had our last office staff meeting where we plan the logistics of where the departing missionaries will spend their last night, and how we get all of them and their suitcases to the airport.  We figure out transportation for the missionaries who will be arriving.  This is the smallest group we’ve ever had to work with.  In the past we’ve had between 25 and 38 arriving missionaries.  This transfer we have only 3 going home, and 10 arriving!  It will still be fun. It's great to watch the new missionaries as they walk out of the airport to see Riverside for the first time.  We drive them to the office where they meet their trainers.  We then have a “Welcome to the CRM” meeting.  The mission president will invite all the missionaries to stand and sing, “Called to Serve” and he and his wife will speak to them for a few minutes.  After that, they gather their suitcases and leave for their first area.  They are excited, happy, scared, terrified, and relieved. So that’s what we’ll be doing on the 22^nd, for the last time.

Because of the crowded office, the president suggested that after the new couples have been trained, we should take some time out of the office.  So Liz and I took off Thursday afternoon to drive to the San Diego area to visit with my Telenect business partner, Jason and his wife Melissa, and their family.  We have not seen them for a few years.  It was great to visit with them and their kids.  A great family!

Miracle Meetings

I have mentioned that the Mission President has a weekly Miracle Meeting via Zoom every Sunday night.  We will miss attending these meetings.  It is an opportunity for the missionaries to share the miracles they have seen in the prior week.

For example, from a Miracle Meeting the night I posted our last blog, Sisters Lemon and Stokes were having companionship study when suddenly Sister Lemon said they needed to pray.  So they knelt down and she began to pray, asking Heavenly Father to tell them the name of the person they were supposed to find, or where they needed to be and at what time so they could meet the person He wanted them to meet.  After pleading for help to find this person, Sister Stokes said that “Maria’s” name popped into her head.  Maria is someone they had worked with before.  With that, they decided to go to Maria’s house right then.  They drove to the house, knocked, and learned that Maria was too busy to visit with them.  The sisters asked the other people in the house if they had a few minutes for a very brief spiritual thought. None of them did.  So they left the house and were walking to their car to leave when Sister Stokes said, “Let’s go and knock on the house next door”, which they did.  The man who opened the door was excited to see them.  He had been feeling he needed to return to church but wasn’t sure which one.  He had attended our church many years ago and then stopped going.  He was very familiar with our beliefs, and had attended for an extended period, but was never baptized.  So, the sisters agreed to return and begin teaching him.

There are no coincidences. The sisters followed a prompting, which led them to a place which was in close enough proximity to where Heavenly Father needed them to be, and therein is the miracle.

These types of experiences happen all the time, and we get to hear about them at the weekly Miracle Meetings.  Because much of the of the time missionaries face rejection (they call it, “99% grind, 1% find”) they need to hear that the Lord is in charge and can bless them with a miracle at any moment.

These missionaries are such a joy to be around.  They are happy, optimistic, energetic, and working faithfully.  They have obstacles and down days, but they carry on, and soon they learn how much God loves them and is leading them along.  Sometimes they have horrible things said to them or happen to them and yet they keep moving forward with faith.  As Elder Holland shared on of those ugly encounters told to him by a faithful sister missionary, he said, “To this devoted missionary I say, dear child, you have in your own humble way stepped into a circle of very distinguished women and men who have, as the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob said, “View(ed) Christ’s death, and suffer(ed) his cross, and borne the shame of the world.”

And we get to rub shoulders with them!  We will miss this!

Lunch with President & Sister Watson