Mission Updates

   We got bit  of a late start with our blog, so I just wanted to catch everyone up on our mission experience.
    We entered the MTC on December 1st, 2014. Boy that was organized chaos. We went from station to station. 1st we got our Missionary badges, that really did make us feel official, it honestly made me feel different. i was now representing the Church and the Savior. They had more stations, we went to the MTC bookstore to get out supplies, our finances we explained and an overview of our 2 weeks a the MTC. In the overview a sweet Sister told us how much she appreciated our service. She had a son serving right now, and she said that he loved the missionary couples in his Mission, and that she know we would take good care of the missionaries that were in our missions. That made us feel good, and that we truly could make a difference in the lives of the missionaries.
     The MTC was amazing. We wondered how we could spend a week learning about Preach My Gospel. We could have spent a lot longer than that. Since we are wearing name tags every where we go, anyone might ask us at any time about the church and we should know the correct answers. We learned that we don't just teach PMG, we teach people. We need to find out about them, and care about them before we do any teaching. It was a wonderful, spiritual experience, and we learned so much.
      We got here in Independence on Dec. 14th. We stayed in temporary housing until we got into our apartment on the 16th. Moving twice was a lot of fun, and it has taken us a couple of weeks to get settled in. We said that we would know we were finally settled when we didn't have to go to WalMart to get something every day. Then our kids reminded us that  Dad went to Walmart every day anyway.  (Family Joke) That is true, but here it is further away so I don't think it will be a daily trip.
    We started our new Mission responsibilities on Dec. 29th. We drove to the most northern part of the Mission. We went to 3 different areas and saw 2 sets of elders and 1 set of sisters apartments. It was actually fun to get to meet these Elders and Sisters who are so far away from the Mission office. We had never seen them before. It was an all day trip since we had to drive so far in between each area. What impressed us was how much all of there missionaries love their missions and love missionary work. What great attitudes!
     So last week and this week we have kept very busy visiting. It's kind of funny, 1 set of Elders told us that they had gotten to voice mail saying that we were going to be coming and to be prepared, but that we bought brownies with us, which we do. I figured maybe they wouldn't mind us coming so much if we brought goodies.
     It honestly has been so good to go to see these Elders and Sisters. We have taken light bulbs, fixed dresser drawers, taken some much needed kitchen chairs to a whole house full of sisters, found out that some don't have smoke detectors or CO monitors, some have bad mold problems, and need to be moved. It has really made us realize that what we are doing is important and needed.