Trip to Roseburg and Medford

Because our mission covers so much territory they never have conferences for the whole mission.  Instead they have south and north conferences.  On Tuesday they had the first whole mission conference.  Elder Nielsen who is head of the Missionary Committee and Brother Heaton who is head of training for the MTC were our teachers.  I'll post about what we learned after I do this post.

The conference was held in Roseburg in a Stake Center that is about two blocks from the Assisted Living Center where Millie Scott lives.  It really wasn't an environment for pictures but I did get this one snapshot from lunch.

It was really fun to see elders and sisters who have served together in the past enjoying visiting with each other at lunch.

After the conference ended we checked into a motel room.  Millie has been telling me that if I am in Oregon I needed to come and see her so we had arranged to take her to the Medford Temple the next morning.  She had plans to gather Lorie and John to visit with us but I don't think there was any attempt  made.  She hadn't even called me back about us coming and I think we surprised her when we showed up at her door.  We had a nice visit with her and she took us to dinner at Red Robin.  John came by and brought her some milk so we visited with him for a minute, too.  She has a very nice place with lots of closets, a balcony and more than double the space that Mom had. 

She wasn't up to going to the Temple with us so we got up early, went to Denny's for breakfast and headed south.  It was an absolutely beautiful drive.  I really only got one picture but the whole drive was beautiful.

There were no signs on the building but this is what we found when we got there.  We had checked the hours for sessions but not the schedule of closures.

Temples are closed twice a year for two weeks each time or a total of four weeks a year.  This is the fourth temple that we have gone to or almost gone to and found it closed.  The first was Albuquerque with Laurel, the next was Sydney with my siblings (we didn't go out to the temple but it was closed when we were there), Vernal was closed when we went camping with the Carters.  We found out ahead of time but just got to see the outside of that one and now Medford.  You would think that people would catch on and check ahead of time.  The temple is really not in Medford but in Central Point and is hidden in a neighborhood next to an older chapel.

All the way down from Roseburg we climbed up and down mountains and were surprised to see this butte coming up from the valley floor in Central Point.

We basically just turned around and came home but it was a beautiful drive.