Never a Dull Moment
The back lot of the church meetinghouse where the mission office is a grassy area forested with redwood trees - quite beautiful. On occasion, we receive some foul visitors - but we like and welcome them. They are quite loud and don't seem to mind us missionaries. On this particular day there were about six of them.
The week started with our taking the mission housing pickup truck in for its schedule service. Our truck is a Ford 250 Super Duty and it is a workhorse. We use it almost everyday and in a short period of time we have put almost 9,000 miles on it. It is super bouncy (and California roads are the worst) but we are grateful to have it.
We traveled on Tuesday to do inspections in the Woodland Zone. Every six weeks the inspections provides us an opportunity to see how well the apartments are taken care of and assess the needs of the missionaries. The main thing we look for (or rather feel for) is the Spirit. After this round of inspections, we met with the mission leaders and reported that we see room for improvement. We are reminded all the time that they are young and, quite honestly, many of them simply do not know how to properly take care of a home. Always be careful what you say as now the mission leaders have asked us to travel with them to all the upcoming zone conferences to teach the missionaries the importance of keeping clean place.
This past week we traveled north to Willits to drop off some things and saw how neat some missionaries can be. This is Elder Becker's dresser. He said he likes things neat and organized.
On Saturday we moved a companionship of Elders (Elders Cherry and Pyne) into a new, pre-fab home that sits on a member's lot. They are thrilled to have missionaries stay with them. We had the entire Vacaville Zone missionaries show up and we completed the move in short order. For lunch we got them all Costco pizza, grapes and cookies. One of the missionaries helping that day was Sister Mushshino from Yokohama, Japan. She completes her mission this Tuesday and we will miss her dearly. She is one of the sweetest missionaries we know.
Helping us out with the move were Sisters Butterworth and Musashino, along with Elders Cherry, Pyne, Soderquist, Durfey, the Ritchies and the Bonner's (members who own the home). Not pictured is Elders Grover and Brost who had to leave for a baptism.
Spring is just around the corner but already we see green hills and beautiful fields of wildflowers everywhere we travel. The California Santa Rosa Mission is truly beautiful.
On Saturday night before transfers there is a mission-wide zoom call announcing where everyone is going. This is a highly anticipated event by the missionaries - and us! We have to pay strict attention so we know if we need to supply certain apartments with needed things. If an apartment now hosts a trio whereas before it was just two missionaries, we have to make sure there is another bed, dresser, study desk, office chair and desk lamp ready in time. That may involve taking from one apartment to give to another. We typically have only one to two days to find those things and get them to the apartment. In a mission of this geographic size, the logistics gets very exciting to say the least. Immediately after the zoom call we start making phone calls and texts then hatch out a plan. Somehow it all work out but it is always a scramble. Transfers this week followed by zone conferences the week after then we can sleep - hopefully.And last, our son-in-law, Joey, discovered an AI app and created a song for us. We love the music and the lyrics. AI is amazing. If you are able, click on or copy the link below.
https://suno.com/s/Yy6XIa4HIFSti9Kz
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