Mission Update 2/24/2024

 We started off our week celebrating President's Day by doing what we do every day--interviews. With the 4 full time missionary chaplains and one service missionary chaplain we hit 1000 total interviews this week (since last August). Of course we're going to celebrate that so this next week we'll do a session in the Brigham Temple followed by lunch at Maddox. Yipee! Now we'll get to work on that next 1000. We're all a little concerned about what we'll do when all the continuing students need their yearly endorsement interview. Those will all get dumped on us sometime in the next few weeks we think. That will be way more than 1000 so we may be waving a white flag at that point.

Sometimes it is unclear whether or not the students are members so we have to double check with them because we can only interview those who are not yet members of the Church. One girl said that she isn't a member until she gets baptized on March 9. We will definitely get her done quickly! Another student said that she and her family had been invited over to the Bishop's house for dinner the next day and that the missionaries had given them a Book of Mormon which they were reading as a family every night. We don't proselyte but we sure get to bear testimony and watch the gospel come into people's lives. It's pretty wonderful!

From Gary:  I just wanted to tell you about an experience I had this week with a student.  He met with a Branch President for his first endorsement interview on a Sunday.  He had decided to attend church for the first time that same Sunday.  As he met with the Branch President he was given an English copy of a triple combination!  This was about 10 days before our interview this last week.  When we met, he told me that he had taken that book to work so he could read it on his breaks!  Several of his co-workers had asked him about the book that he was reading, and he would explain the Book of Mormon was a companion book to the bible and taught about Christ appearing to people in America after he left Jerusalem!  Several of his friends now want to know more!  Remember that this young man gets to take an institute class every semester while he is in Pathway.  He explained that he was taking the Book of Mormon class and was loving it!  My best guess is that it will not be long before he starts to see the missionaries and he just might join the Church!  Then he is going to bring his friends to both Pathway and the Church!

We watched a great interview with Elder Clark Gilbert of the Seventy this week.  He is in charge of the Church Educational System.  If you are interested to hear about more things going on with Pathway, and more particularly Pathway in Africa, he shares some really fun things in this Podcast: https://www.thechurchnews.com/podcast/2024/2/20/24078119/episode-176-elder-clark-g-gilbert-church-educational-system-power-of-involving-lord-in-learning/

We went for a walk around downtown and enjoyed the ridiculously warm February. The pansies are loving this weather! We miss the more rural life in Logan but downtown Salt Lake has some fun things too.

Today we got to see the BYU Ballroom Dance company and it was so good! It was definitely our favorite of the three BYU performances we've seen this month. We're not even that much into dance but this was just amazing. 

Next week we are doing our Zone devotional which we've at least started working on. We've got our Maddox celebration and it's Roots Tech here at the Salt Palace. It's going to be busy but so much fun stuff!

Mission Update 2/17/2024

 We started off the week with our monthly One Heart mission gathering where we heard briefly from the 30 new missionaries and then a little more from the 20 plus missionaries who were going home. It is so fun to see all the new ones come in and find out where they will be serving and one couple even got assigned to Pathway. They won't be serving with us but, still, more Pathway missionaries! They will be helping connect students to jobs within Pathway. They are from Australia and met our nephew Daniel Pack when he was there on his mission. 

That evening we made Kung Pao Tofu to celebrate Chinese New Year. It is the one type of tofu that I actually get excited about, probably because it is fried and has lots of peanuts as well. 

Lots of interview this week and the requests for interviews are picking up a bit so there will be no slowing down. We met several students who are preparing for baptism which we love (because that means we can still interview them) and a few more who just recently got baptized which we also love but we can't interview them. There were a few interviews in the dark due to power shedding in Nigeria/Ghana/Zimbabwe etc. Those are fun, when the only time we can tell someone is there is when they smile. Good thing most of them are happy and smiling when they talk with us!

This week's temple was the Saratoga Springs Temple. Gary stayed home because he got a cold and his cough would not have been appreciated. I love our Temple Tuesdays!

In other Temple news, the Salt Lake temple is still progressing...but doesn't look much different yet. I can't wait for all the spires to be uncovered!

We added a couple of new countries to our list this week with interview in Russia and Columbia. Our list of time zones just keeps growing but we're going to have to redo all of it when Daylight Savings Time hits. Ugh.

Today we went to the BYU Young Ambassadors concert at the Conference Center Theater and quite enjoyed it. Lots of energy and fun songs. Next week we'll get to see the BYU Ballroom Dance. Life is exciting!

At our mission devotional on Monday, one Elder, who works in the FamilySearch Library spoke. He quoted Elder Bednar: "God orchestrates intersections with people." About four years ago, he was digitizing yearbooks on a previous mission. In a college yearbook from the 1950s he found a tribute to a professor who had come from Poland. He felt inspired to find the man on FamilySearch and attach it to his record. Recently he was contacted by a relative of the professor in Poland. The relative is an orthodox Catholic who has been working to get his family history organized and found FamilySearch was the best tool to organize family records. Together they worked to get more of the man's family information entered into FamilySearch. This man has also worked hard in Poland to help Ukranian refugees there.  This led to the missionary mentioning the temple in Kiev.  They then talked about the Temple "rites" that we do in our temples and the relative was very interested in getting those rites performed for his ancestors. The Polish man testified that he has "felt constant divine help" as he has sought his ancestors information!  They are planning on coordinating a day when a bunch of missionaries will go to the temple to get the work done, and the man in Poland wants to join them in prayer that day as these ordinances are being performed.  The missionary ended his talk with this testimony: "We are preparing people both in and out of the Church for life in the eternities and the return of the Lord to the earth."

We love being involved with the work here at Church HQ!

 

Mission Update 2/10/2024

 Happy Chinese New Year! 

We started the week with our monthly Break the Fast dinner for our apartment building and it was fun as always. The assortment of food varies from month to month but this one was definitely dessert heavy.

Monday night for our mission devotional we had Elder and Sister Ringwood. Sister Ringwood is President Nelson's eighth of nine daughters and she spoke about growing up in the Nelson home. It was wonderful! Then Elder Ringwood spoke about music and how it influenced different times in his life. As he talked about each hymn, he had the pianist play one verse of the hymn. It was beautiful. 

Gary has been missing turkey (we usually do several turkey dinners through the winter) so on Thursday we had turkey for lunch. It was lovely and made our apartment smell good enough to probably make all the neighbors hungry. It was also a day to catch up a bit and breathe after a few non stop days. Every once in a while it's good to figure out if we're going in the right direction!

We've had a couple of interviews this week with people who are not the normal Pathway students. One guy is in his fifties and an attorney and a woman who has a Master's in biology. But both are loving Pathway for the help they get with things like time management, goal setting and the spiritual tie in that makes it so different from the other education they have. 

This weekend has been very busy but oh so good. We went up to Logan on Friday night and did a musical fireside for anyone who wanted to come from our ward and family. We included Gary's brother David on cello, Gary's sister Vurvian and our niece Teresa on flutes, and our niece Christine's daughter Eden on viola. We had three amazing accompanists: our sister in law Susan, and Krysta McClure and Sally Karen from our North Logan Ward. We ended up with about 30 people there and it was such a beautiful evening. Gary had the performers share their testimony of music and how it ties to the gospel between the numbers. Such a fun evening!

Gary and his brother David

Vurvian and her daughter Teresa

Two year old grandson really wanted to play!

So, he did--after the program

Today we had the baptism of our grandson, Corbin in Logan. It was a wonderful day and we're so proud of him! It was great to see lots of family and friends there to support him. 

Thirty new missionaries came into the mission last week and although we lose a few each month, there are definitely more coming in than leaving. I don't know how the presidency manages to keep up with all of them! It's an exciting place to be and we love being able to be around all these great people.  One of the couples coming in this week is a couple we know from Cache Valley: Brent and LaConna Hoggan's daughter Robinette and her husband Bill Jensen.  It was really great to see them get called to join us in the Utah SLC Headquarters Mission!

The work of God continues to move forward with the BYU Pathway Worldwide program!  It is growing bigger all the time and is blessing the lives of so many people!  We are so glad to be a little tiny piece of this wonderful work!

 

Mission Update 2/3/2024

 It has been a wonderful week and now we're into February already. We got through Groundhog Day with no shadow sightings so we may have escaped icy sidewalks. Rule number one in our mission is "no falling" so we are happy for no ice!

What a strange winter!

Our MTC district gathering last Saturday was wonderful. It was so good to catch up with everyone and find out what they are doing in the mission. Our mission covers so many areas that we can't keep track of them. From our MTC group we have people in Family Search, Church History, Prison Ministries, and Ordinances Ready and more. They are all doing such great things and have had wonderful experiences so far. Our gathering was at the home of the Swiss couple from our group who own have a home in Draper that they have had for several years. It has really come in handy on their mission! We loved seeing their decor from Switzerland, from New Zealand where they served an earlier mission and Sister Kopp's barbie collection which we were all impressed with. What a fun night!

Our MTC group

The Barbies 

This week we went to the new Orem Temple and loved experiencing that. It is so fun how different each temple is and so fun to be able to go to so many. 

Stained glass at the Orem Temple

Wednesday was an exciting day of interviews for Gary. When told they had passed their endorsement interview, one girl squealed and another jumped out of her chair in excitement. It was so fun. Then, today for one of my interviews, a woman prayed for me and all of Pathway at the end of our interview. It was so beautiful. 

Last night we were given free Symphony tickets so of course we went. It was so good! Today we get to go hear BYU Vocal Point and Noteworthy here in the Little Theater (of the conference center). What a great weekend of music!

A row apart but with free tickets we didn't complain

Lots more students are showing up on our interview list and we just have so much fun meeting all of them. Then there are the random meetings around town just because we have a missionary badge on. We met a couple at Walmart today from Argentina and they both served missions there and lived there until their children started coming to the states for school. Then they packed up the younger children and eight suitcases and ended up in Utah. They were so fun to talk to!

We're looking forward to another week of fun interviews, great people to meet and whatever the weather brings.