Last Week of the Mission

On Saturday the missionaries that work in the office and the two couples that serve at Camp Alpine had a goodbye party for us at Camp Alpine.  It was a fun, relaxing evening.

Then on Monday the Chinese Elders came to our apartment with a fairly new convert that is going on a mission as soon as he has been in a year and a girl that they are teaching who is supposed to be baptized in May.  The food was great and we were able to share a spiritual time with them for a few minutes.  One of my goals in serving again was to be a part of the Chinese people finding the gospel.  It was fun to be a tiny part of it.

 

When I wrote to Elder Wong to thank him for the meal he wrote back, "You two are awesome. I love you two a lot!.  Thank you very much for all of your help in our Chinese area!  I will see you in Utah.

On Tuesday evening we had another fun evening cooking and eating with the Ordonez and Panapa families.  We each prepared some dishes and everything was delicious.  Barney Ordonez joined the Church years ago but has been inactive.  They walked into the Veneta chapel on General Conference Sunday a year ago and were invited to have lunch with the group there and have been coming ever since.  His wife, Brie was baptized in December and we were able to attend her baptism.
As a teenager Siosi Panapa was living on the streets in LA and an LDS family took him in.  He was baptized at the time and he remembers how good it made him feel.  He went back to Samoa soon after that and lost contact with the Church.  A few month ago a Hawaiian and Tongan set of elders visited their home and encouraged them to come to church.  Their little girl LOVED primary and when they were ready to leave after the first two hours she made them stay.  The Panapa live across the street from the Ordonez family.  A few weeks after they attended Church the Ordonez family invited us and the Panapas for dinner.  We had a great time and arranged to do it a few weeks later at the Panapa home.  That time was even more fun.  In the mean time we were able to teach some lessons to Madi Panapa who has family who are members of the Church but she really knew little about it.  The Panapas have a little girl that they adopted and the Ordonez have a little boy the same age so it was fun for all.

The woman on the left is Barney's mother and she is here from Peru.  These were truly multi-cultural nights.

 Tifa

                                                                                         Daniel


On Thursday night the Ward had a goodbye party for us at the home of the Ward Mission Leader and his wife.  I didn't get a picture of one family, the Nelson's, who came but I'll put a collection of the ones that I did get.

Sister Cardon

        Sister Baldree who is originally from Mt Pleasant and knows our friends the McAllisters.

 Stacy and Jason Thompson - Have been members less that a year and she has never been able to get pregnant.  She is 39 and expecting.  They are SO excited.   We fell in love with them.

 
Brother and Sister Farris.  They had us to dinner each month with the Elders.She was very good at helping me know who people were.

Bishop Rich and Donna Jones - A positive and great example. They are both so warm and loving of all people.  

Tom and Carla Ogden were very friendly and appreciative of our efforts.  I'm sure that if we had stayed we would have developed a friendship with them.  We seemed to "click" from the beginning.








 
Troy Yost, a new member of the Bishopric who was Executive Sec that I worked with a lot on the spreadsheet, Madi Panapa and Sister Oiler.                                                        

Darrell and Linda Cardon.  They were the first couple to invite us to their home to present our message and wrote a kind goodbye note.

Oilers and us.  He is the Ward Mission Leader and they were a great support.

 Elders Kimber and Fakauha.  We worked so well together and enjoyed some good times.  Elder Fakahua wrote us a farewell note that said, "Dear ma and pa, Thank you so much for all that you have done for me and for this ward.  You are truly the best and I'm going to miss you both dearly.  Thank you for being such great examples to me.  Love Elder Fakahua!

We left early in the morning on Friday and were surprised after not seeing a drop of snow all winter to see beautiful white trees on Willamette Pass.

We arrived in Washoe Valley at Laurel and Russell's place just before 4PM.  We went out for ribs and then enjoyed the evening with them.  We got to see the kids and Laurel (the photographer) at breakfast before we hit the road again.

We had snow, rain or hail most of the whole day on Saturday.  I told the Relief Society that we had brought the rain from Oregon to them (it has been extremely dry here).  We saw where cars had slipped on the road but we were blessed.  No one had slipped off but had lost control.

We arrived home about 6 PM.  We went past the grocery store to get food for Sunday, milk, bread, eggs, etc.  The car was so totally loaded that Mike had to put the groceries on my lap for the drive home.

It was wonderful to see home and there is no question that we need to weed and work in the yard.

We met wonderful people, saw beautiful things and pray that we served in the way that the Lord intended us to do.