We began our week by visiting a man we have
come close to. This is the man we
visited at the hospital halfway house earlier who has had a lot of medical and
family issues. He is an artist. We marveled at his amazing work. Not only did he have some wonderful paintings
and pen and ink drawings of his own, he also had many excellent paintings that
he had collected. He had several
drawings of faces, and he is so good at capturing emotion in the
expressions. It was good to get to know
this man better and see his cozy little home.
We heard more about his life, family struggles, and health issues. He is a good man, but he has had a hard
life. He has a black and white Jack
Russell Terrier and I enjoyed playing with him. He reminded me so much of Joy. We took a dog toy as a gift, and Rocko loved
it. We played tug and fetch just like I
do with Joy. He gave Lezlie some suggestions for a drawing of a baby she was working on for a gift that were very helpful.
Our only formally scheduled activity on Tuesday was our weekly
family home evening for the The Basic School marines. We had a good group of six folks, and were happy
that our gal from Moldova was back from her trip home. She is a very intelligent person and adds
greatly to our discussions. Lezlie
taught a wonderful lesson about faith, and as usual the group had excellent
input and discussion. True faith causes
action and brings power. We have
experienced that over and over here. Even
when the lesson was over the marines hung around for a while just to talk with
us and each other. After downing many
cookies and bowls of tapioca pudding, the group finally headed back to their
barracks. We love working with this outstanding
group of young people. They are an inspiration to us every time we see them.
Because the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society closed
early on our day, we had some unexpected free time. We visited about four marine families. Lezlie felt inspired to visit one particular
family, not knowing exactly why. It
turns out that they are going to get out of the marines after twenty years, and
the wife was feeling very nervous about becoming civilians – will he get a job,
can we afford it, where should we live, can we find a house we can afford,
etc., etc. So we were able to talk about
our experience in getting out of the Navy and how nervous we had been. But we assured her that everything would work
out just as it did for us. We promised her that if she stayed
close to Heavenly Father that all would be well. We visited with her for an hour (a very long
visit for us), and she just seemed to want to pour out her heart about this. She thanked us over and over for stopping by
just when she needed us. We truly felt directed by the spirit. We also had an outstanding dinner. Our young friend from Richland who is at the
FBI Academy here invited us out for dinner.
She bought us a superb meal at an Italian restaurant. Afterwards she invited us over to see her
apartment, give her a spiritual thought, and have some desert. Lezlie gave an excellent mini-lesson on
faith. We had homemade ice cream sandwiches
for desert. Very yummy! We always enjoy Krystal and hearing about her
adventures in the FBI. She is a nice
young woman and it has been fun to get to know her better.
On this Thursday we went to the home of a new marine
family to provide a family home evening, our lesson on Obedience. They have four children, girl 11, boy 8, girl
4, and baby about 5 months. They are a
very interesting family. He is from
Ghana and he came to the U.S. to go to school.
He went to school in Utah, joined the church, married a church girl from
Utah, and joined the marine corps. He
was enlisted for almost ten years and did deployments in Afghanistan and
Iraq. So they have had to be apart
several times. Then he finally finished
his college degree and got into the officer program, which he is finishing up
now. She is a tough lady, having been
home alone several times with all of those kids while he was deployed. Their kids were very respectful and attentive,
and we had a lot of fun giving the lesson and visiting with them. We just love getting to know these young
marine families. They are good people.
On Friday we had two sister missionaries over for
dinner. We have known one for a while
since she has lived in out apartment complex for about 3 months. But we also got to meet her new companion who
is from Utah. She finished one year of
college and wants to be a nurse. The
first girl is majoring in vocal music at BYU.
She has a gorgeous voice, and she sang a song for us after dinner. It was just wonderful. It was about going through trials and calling
upon the Lord, who will always be there. She sounded like an angel. . 
We had a great Saturday with several varied
activities. We go past a small museum
every time we drive to the marine base.
Each time we see the sign we think we need to stop and check out the
museum. Today we had a lunch appointment
to take out a marine. So we left a
little early to make a stop at the museum.
To our surprise they were having a Founders Day celebration because it
was the anniversary of the founding of the town Dumfries. Interestingly, one of Lezlie's ancestors- Wm Fitzhugh, was one of the founders of this town. There were several booths and exhibits. We became aware that the US Army Traditional
Drum and Fife band were going to perform in an hour. We called our lunch marine and asked if he
would like to see them. He said yes, so
we dashed onto the base and picked him up.
The band was excellent. Not only
did they play well, they wore very cool revolutionary era uniforms. The only down side was that it rained while they
were playing. We then took our marine to
lunch and had a good talk. We were sad
to hear that he has a major medical issue that may cause him to receive a
medical discharge from the marines. He
has a serious issue with his intestines, some sort of immune disease. He may have to have surgery to have part of
them removed. His parents will not be
able to afford to fly out to see him. We
told him that if he does have the surgery to let us know and we will help him
in any way we can. He thanked us and
said he would let us know. We are
worried about hims and really want to help.
We next met up with the young
family whose baby boy I blessed. We have
become very close to them. We took them
to a baptism. The husband is getting
close to making a decision to be baptized and we wanted him to see a real
baptism. They both seemed to enjoy it,
and their baby could not have been better.
We then took them out to a scrumptious dinner at Cracker Barrel. It was a great meal and great
conversation. We sure do love this
little family, and we pray for them often.
We just hope we get to see the day when he gets baptized. 
Holidays always seem a little lonely here, but today
things went really well for Mother’s Day.
In the morning Lezlie got to Facetime with both Anne and Carrie,
including several of the grandchildren.
She enjoyed that very much and it started out Sunday quite well. We had a good program at church. It was nothing dramatic, just some nice,
simple talks honoring mothers, a primary chorus song, and some
testimonies. They gave some excellent Ghirardelli
chocolates to all the women. Then just
after church a dear older couple, the Condies, invited us to their home for
dinner. They are returned senior
missionaries ( they served in India), and have been very kind to us.
We were grateful and said yes. At
first we thought it was just them, but then as she talked we quickly realized
we were being invited to a big family gathering of some of their children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We
dashed home for a short time and there was a card slipped under the door. It was a Mother’s Day card for Lezlie from 4
of the Elders that live in our apartment complex. They thanked her for “always taking care of
us” and “making sure we have what we
need.” It was very touching. We then traveled to the Condie’s home, and Lezlie
got to talk to Aaron on the drive there, which was very nice. It was a joy to be in a house full of
multi-generational family. All of them
were very gracious about our presence and made us feel very welcome. All of the kids and grandkids spoke to us and
asked about our mission. It was so much
fun to see them all interacting and visiting with each other, although it did
make us miss our family a little bit. We
had a wonderful meal of prime rib, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, and chocolate brownies
with ice cream It was soooo Good – much better than the frozen dinner I was
going to microwave for us. Finally we
headed home where Lezlie got to talk to Chris and Stacey, which she also
enjoyed immensely. So I think she had a wonderful
Mother’s Day. She also got cards from
most everyone, with a few cards expected to arrive tomorrow too. I got her some tulips. The Billings sent some cool paper flowers
with messages on the back. Aaron sent 4
bags of fancy Hershey’s chocolate drops.
Here is a picture of her things.
She was happy with everything!
We both spent a quiet evening preparing for our busy week ahead.
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