One Last day of Summer...

15 October 2017

Hello dear family and friends!

We hope this letter finds you well and happy. We’ve had a beautiful week in so many ways. We hope your week has been wonderful also. The sun was shining today and was a lovely 62 degrees outside. Yesterday it was 69 degrees . . .close enough to 70 that I felt like we were blessed with one last day of summer. There has been just enough rain to keep the natives from crying DROUGHT, but the rain has been mostly at night, so . . . once again, HALLELUJAH!

Happiest of Birthdays to our son, Zack! He will be 29 on Friday. He is hard working, fun loving, and a great Dad. His passion is sports, and although he doesn’t think he is very good at math, he can tell you sports statistics like none other. He honors his priesthood and blesses our family with it. It is a true blessing to be his parents.

This past week was a heavy travel week, Monday afternoon to late Saturday night. We did drive back to the flat to sleep Thursday night just to avoid one more hotel, then back on the road Friday morning. We spent two days in the Leeds Mission at two separate zone conferences. It was gift day at Zone Conference, as each companionship took home a brand new slow cooker for their flat. In Sister Turvey’s words, “You put in a little of this, and a little of that, mix it together, turn on the cooker before you leave in the morning, and VOILA! Dinner is ready when you get home.” The missionaries were so excited!

The Leeds Mission

Even more exciting than the first gift was that they all received smart phones! They are the first mission that we know of in the UK to toss the dinosaurs. President Turvey is very understanding of how important social media is as a missionary tool, so much of the conference was talking about how to use Facebook as missionaries, etc. Words like meme, hashtags, and dashboards were spewing from President Turvey. When it was our turn to present, I introduced us, then I started off by telling them what a cool mission president they had that knew what a ‘meme’ and a ‘hashtag’ even was, but then the thought came to me that I needed to speak their language, so I said, “No, he’s not cool . . . he’s SICK! Wicked sick.” They laughed, with Sister Turvey laughing the loudest and hardest, and the ice was broken and we had a great time with our presentation.

To tell you a little about the presentation we do for the missionaries, we present a short new program called “I’m a Missionary.” We created the concept following the pattern of the highly successful “I’m a Mormon” campaign that the church came out with around the time the Book of Mormon musical came out. The idea is that over 60 different countries are represented with missionaries in the UK. We are asking them to make a simple 60 second video introducing themselves and why they are in the UK and post it on Facebook. They will post to their personal Facebook page, the local church social media pages, and their mission Facebook page. It is a fun and simple way to help people understand and know them.

We met lots of new Elders and Sisters, including Elder Rex from Orem, (Festival connection to his great aunt), Elder Schmidt from Bountiful, (you may know his dad the piano player J), Elder Anderson from Farmington, Sister Autumn Jenkins from Kaysville, and Sister Watson who worked at El Matadors to earn money for her mission.

Left: Elder Rex, Top: Elder Anderson, Bottom: Sister Jenkins

Friday we were back up in Chorley. We were able to do a temple session as well as have dinner with our cruise friends in Manchester. They are still talking about their experience at the Pageant and still passing around the program. Hearing this made our hearts dance and our faces smile. Whilst in the temple, the names of those of you who have been on our minds and in our prayers lately were placed on the prayer roll. We hope you feel the blessings of prayers on your behalf from around the world.

While in Chorley we were also able to get permission from the MTC President to visit Elder Bradley Wheeler from our ward in Kaysville, and his companion, Elder Thacker from Highland, UT. It was great to spend a few minutes with him and answer a few questions about the Birmingham mission. We gave him a little care package and snap a few photos for his mom. For all those who know him, he is happy and looked great.

Elder Wheeler

Yesterday we attended the Multi-Stake PA Council meeting for the Manchester area, where Ron and I each gave a presentation. I gave the counsel a follow-up on the Pageant. It was my first time actually presenting by myself using PowerPoint. Ron purchased a “clicker” for me to use to make it easier. Thank you! “Where do I put my notes?” I said. “You don’t use notes. Your notes are the PowerPoint slides,” he said. Yikes. “Where do I stand?” “You don’t stand, you move around.” Double yikes. “I have to remember what I want to say about each slide, remember to click to advance slides, and walk around and engage with the audience?” “Yes, dear. That’s what good presenters do.” You’ll have to ask him how it went. I was glad I was first on the agenda, and done. Ron’s presentation was on ‘Opinion Leader Outreach’ and ‘Working with Priesthood Leaders’ in Public Affairs – piece of cake for him. He has the clicker down pat.

We hurried back to Birmingham last night after the meeting to meet the Parrishes and Malcolm and Sharon in to attend the “Legends” concert, where one segment featured Jay, Merrill and Jimmy Osmond. It was a tough PA assignment, but somebody had to do it J. We had a great time with the Osmonds. The other legends . . . well . . . I think that when you can’t sing well anymore you just turn up the volume on the music and hope no one will notice. It was VERY loud! Or maybe we’re just getting old. Or both. We did have some great Mexican food before the concert, the first we’ve had since being here. Best meal all week!

Tonight we attended a satellite broadcast wherein members of our area presidency and also Elder Whitney Clayton and Elder Ballard spoke. It was a bit different than some meetings in that there wasn’t a general theme to the meeting. Each spoke on a subject of their choice. Great thoughts on how important the Book of Mormon is, keeping the Sabbath day holy, and not being afraid to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. A bonus to attending was that we were able to see Sister Harwath who was serving in our area when we first arrived. We love her and didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye to her when she was transferred. She goes home this week, back to Switzerland, so we felt it a tender mercy to get to hug her!

We love you! Thank you for staying connected to us! Thank you for allowing us to share our mission with you. It is a tremendous blessing to re-cap each week. We send our love and prayers to you.

Cheers!

Ron and Marie