First Visit to Santa Rosa!!

 

First View of Golden Gate Bridge

In early May we decided to visit the California Santa Rosa Mission (CASRM) office to meet the Mission Leaders, office staff, and be trained by Elder & Sister Lemon who are the current Housing Coordinators.  

Although we lived in Southern California most of our lives, we rarely (if ever) traveled north of San Francisco.  Years ago we vacationed in San Francisco with some dear friends of ours but neither of us can remember much of the city.  You can imagine how thrilled we were to see the Golden Gate Bridge and travel across to the beautiful north and excited to see Santa Rosa and meet everyone.

Mission Office in Santa Rosa

The drive north takes you through beautiful countryside.  Santa Rosa itself is very beautiful with many trees and green rolling hills.  The first thing we did after arriving in Santa Rosa was to visit the mission office.  We were amazed at the gorgeous surroundings which you can see in the video above.

We spent the next two days meeting folks and getting trained.  We will be replacing Elder & Sister Lemon who were wonderful teachers and hosts.  They have done a marvelous job these past 18 months taking care of the missionaries and their housing needs.  We had a nice time being with them, seeing where they (and where we will) live, and attending a ward activity on Monday evening with the Rincon Valley Ward "empty nesters".  To our surprise, when we entered the meetinghouse for the activity we saw old acquaintances from the Valencia stake, the Tuttles!  That was a nice surprise!  The son and nephew of our close friends also attends the Rincon Valley Ward.  Small world!

The Mission Leaders and mission office staff are such great people!  We met Elder and Sister Nate who are responsible for mission finance and secretary duties, respectively, Elder and Sister Ritchie who are called as member and leadership support (MLS) and mission nurse, respectively, Elder and Sister Fordsham who serve as mission vehicle coordinators, Elder and Sister Wilson called to serve as MLS missionaries, and, of course, the CASRM Mission Leaders, President and Sister Quinn.  They all made us feel right at home and treated us like friends.  We are so very grateful to all of them.  We also met the Assistants to the Mission Leaders who came in on their Preparation Day to grab a basketball.  One of the AP's, Elder Hawkins will complete his mission before we arrive in early June.

         

        Elder & Sister Lemon               Elders Hawkins, Lunt & Gardner

President and Sister Quinn have served as the CASRM Mission Leaders for the past two years.  They are wonderful people with unshakable testimonies and a great love for the Lord, His gospel, and for the missionaries.  They come from Naperville, Illinois which is located about 30 miles west of Chicago.  They lived there for the past 38 years where they raised their family.  If you wish to know more about them and the CASR mission you can visit their blog at quinnmission.com.

President & Sister Quinn

We were excited to serve a mission prior to our visit and now even more so!  Time is moving rapidly and we will be in Santa Rosa before you know it.  On top of the excellent training by the Lemon's, we have had a few Zoom training sessions specifically dealing with housing; getting familiar navigating the software and learning all the policies and practices.  We were also instructed to read Preach My Gospel prior to entering the MTC  - love that book!  After reading PMG we are ready to be baptized!! :)   Other pre mission preparation has been mapping out a draft mission tour and housing inspection plan.  The mission is large stretching almost 500 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way up the coast to the Oregon border.  So we will be on the road quite a bit.  We enter the MTC on May 26th and will be there through June 5th then take off for Santa Rosa on June 6th!