Sunday, August 28, 2016

August 15 - 28

I don't know what happened but I just lost the whole blog post that I spent the last hour writing! Hope this one makes sense because I am tired and ready for bed!!!
Do I say this every post? It has been a busy couple of weeks! I spend a lot of my time with Sister Worthington who is our mission nurse. She's very experienced and very good at what she does. Last week we visited with missionaries  to work out some mission issues. She is wise, kind and a whole lot of fun to work with. She makes me laugh! We call her Nurse Ratchett!
Friday night the  Meyers who are over all the mission housing invited all of the mission office seniors to come to their home for dinner. They live in Mulvane Kansas which is about 35 to 45 minutes from the office. They live in a very old farmhouse with a porch around the front, lots of big trees, green grass,  just a charming, cozy atmosphere! I absolutely love their home. We enjoyed dinner with our office friends and while we were there it was stormy. We had lightning and thunder and rain and the electricity  went off for a few minutes. We ended up having to leave just a little bit early because Mitch had to do a baptismal interview across town and it was going to take us about 25 minutes to get there. On the way there we came into the hardest rain storm I think I've ever been in. There were cars pulled off to the side waiting for it to let up because visibility was very limited. I don't know if I've ever seen that much rainfall at one time. Thankfully we got to where we needed to be safely but we did find out the next day that Mulvane received 7 inches of rain in 90 minutes. They had some pretty severe flooding but thankfully it didn't affect the Meyers home. I guess that storm was one for the record books!
Sunday we spoke in the YSA ward. We haven't been to our ward in about a month And I don't know when we will get to our Ward again!  After lunch we drove out to Garden City with Elder Labrum and Elder Gilliam. We had a mission president's devotional there and on the way we stopped at Dodge City.( Yes, this is the “get out of Dodge” Dodge city!)  in Garden City the mission president gives a message and then we had new converts get up and bear their testimonies. A 10 year old girl and her little brother that's 8 shared their testimonies about how happy they were to be baptized and how much they want to be able to go to the temple someday. Their 6 year old little sister bore her testimony about how excited she is to get baptized in 2 years. I am so amazed at these young children and their testimonies and desire to follow Jesus Christ! We also heard a lot of other testimonies. Testimonies that were very uplifting and testimony building to the rest of us.  We stayed around for a few minutes visiting and then we left because we had to stop back in Dodge City to visit with a couple of sisters there. We didn't get home till about 12:30 a.m. It was a good night.
Monday was a big preparation day because Tuesday we had 29 new missionaries come into the mission. We had to prepare a meal for them for lunch and I did a dinner for them at our home Tuesday night. Mitch interviews every one of them and with that big of a group it took quite a long time. He was totally exhausted at the end of the night. They are such great young men and young women and we are so pleased to have them here in the Kansas Wichita mission. The Assistants  took the elders to stay with them and we kept the 9 sisters here at our home. I went downstairs and visited with them for a while. They're all pretty exhausted at the end of the day because the missionaries coming from Provo MTC have to get up at 2:30 a.m. and the missionaries that come from the Mexico MTC had to be up at 3:30 a.m. It was a long day for them and they were ready for a good night's rest. I had to prepare more food before I could get to bed and a few of the sisters helped me!

Wednesday morning they are picked up and taken to the office by 8:30 for breakfast. The trainers are trained and the new missionaries are trained and then they are placed with their new companions. It's quite special to watch them meet each other for the first time and see how happy and excited they are to serve with one another. We did another big lunch for about 70 people of taco salad. The Meyers are doing most of it I'm just helping them out with my own assignments. After lunch they go into the chapel and see a video of all of the baptisms from the year. It's quite inspirational to watch. Mitch got up and shared a message on the Atonement and then we had one sister and 5 Elders who were going home the next day get up and share their testimonies so these new missionaries could hear the missionaries going home’s testimonies.  After that meeting I came home to finish preparing a meal for the 6 missionaries that are going home tomorrow. We always do a special meal with just them and us and it's fun to hear them reminisce about their missions. After dinner we go downstairs and have a little testimony meeting for them to share their testimonies one last time with us. It's a very special event. The assistance and Sister Training Leaders came and took them for the night and they were back at 7:30am Thursday  morning for breakfast at our home before we headed off to The Keeper of the Plains for their last and final mission picture. Then we went to the airport and sent them off. We only knew them for about seven weeks but really enjoyed getting to know them and we will miss them. I was pretty much done for the rest of the day! Friday I had to clean house and get groceries just so we could live! Saturday evening we had our first stake conference adult session. It felt like being at stake conference at home! Sunday Mitch and I both spoke at Stake Conference. I better get used to it because I think I'm going to be doing a lot of speaking these next three years! As soon as conference was over we took off to Hutchinson Kansas where we had a baptism. It took us about an hour and 15 minutes to get there but we made it in time. When that baptism was over we headed over to Newton which is about another 45 minutes to see another baptism. After that we left for the Kellogg area of Wichita, the Spanish Branch for the baptism of 2 more people. What a great way to end our Sabbath day by attending these baptisms. We love going to baptisms!

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