Zone Conference

We typically attend only the Santa Rosa zone conference every six weeks and do not travel with the mission leaders to the other zones.  However, this past week we were asked to teach the missionaries at each zone conference the principles of keeping a spiritual environment.    

On Monday we attended the Eureka zone conference.  President and Sister Quinn taught beautiful lessons in the morning on faith and the atonement.  In the afternoon, after a musical number and bearing of testimonies by the outgoing missionaries, we had 15 minutes to do our presentation.  We started off showing a video the tech Sisters made for us (we will include a link below and hope that it works).  We then had a few slides to teach the principles of keeping a clean and orderly home to invite the spirit, and a reminder of why they need that spirit.  

That afternoon we traveled to Ukiah for zone conference on Tuesday.  We had a wonderful time having dinner with two other senior couples; Elder & Sister Ritchie and Elder & Sisters Frodsham.  Tuesday was Ukiah zone, on Wednesday it was Napa and Fairfield combined, Thursday was Vacaville and Woodland zones combined, and on Friday Santa Rosa and San Rafael zones combined.  By Friday we felt our presentation went pretty well.  

At the end of our presentation each conference, President & Sister Quinn stood up to announce that this P-day they were asking everyone to Spring Clean for 2 hours (a few groans could be heard), and from now on after every Miracle Monday (the mission-wide zoom call every Monday night), they are going to call on two companionships at random to give the entire mission a video tour of their apartment (louder nervous groans).  They were told that closets, under the bed, refrigerators, back patios, cupboards - all fair game.  This Monday night should be very interesting.

Yesterday, Saturday, Sister Cawley went antique shopping with Sisters Quinn, Wilson and Miller and had a marvelous time.  We are staring to collect quite a number of items to take back to Alpine.  Having a relaxing Saturday felt good.  

As an Easter gift, the Quinn's handed out this picture to each missionary...

...and Elder Sellers was the artist.  We asked him to autograph our copy

So true! (we told him what to write)

Elder & Sister Cawley teaching at zone conference

These are the slides we presented

Dinner in Ukiah with Elder & Sister Ritchie and Elder & Sister Frodsham.  They inspect vehicles at zone conferences.  Sister Ritchie also meets with any missionaries for health reasons

Interesting stained glass design in the Fairfield, Ca meetinghouse behind the pulpit

Each week we place in the mission newsletter a section for housing.  This week's entry is above.  During lunch at each zone conference we announce the winners of what we call the "mystery item", which is something in their apartment that, if found clean, they become eligible to win $15 added to their MSF (Missionary Support Fund).  We place all the eligible candidates in a hat and draw a winning apartment.  Each missionary in that apartment wins $15.  That's close to a 6% bonus so they love it.

We were recently informed that Elder Gong will be coming to our mission on April 18.  He said he wants a picture with each missionary.  That will be a special day!

One last thing we want to mention.  A special shout out to our amazing grandson Elder Morley who is serving in the Bogota North Columbia Mission.  That is quite the hamburger.  We love reading his emails each week.  He tells us that he is sick of rice and beans so this burger was manna from heaven (and then some).

That's it for this week - love to all!!!