Tuesday is usually District Training Meeting day,
and we had a pretty good one today. Our
current district leader is an exceptional young man and he organizes good
training meetings. We had some good
lessons and discussions. Lezlie’s big
contribution was that she played piano!
She picked out two hymns about a week ago and practiced them several times,
playing with just the upper hand. They
came out well, and everyone enjoyed the hymns.
Much better than struggling through them with no piano! Following the meeting we stopped off at Taco
Bell where we picked up a bunch of tacos and then headed to the home of a
marine family that is just moving in.
Their shipment arrived today so we took them lunch and helped out with
the move in. Lezlie checked off
inventory numbers while I assembled beds and a table. We think we helped out a lot and were happy
to be of service. And I loved the chance
to work with some tools for a couple of hours.
Thursday was a flower day. We bought some inexpensive vases at Goodwill
and filled them with fresh yellow daisies.
We delivered them to several marine families and they were well received.
We always love seeing one of the moms.
She has 7 children, having just had a new baby about 6 weeks ago. The oldest child is about 10. Every time we visit the kids are clean and
well dressed, are polite and respectful to us, and responsive to their mom’s
requests. Not everyone we visit is like
this. She and her family are fully
committed to and active in the gospel.
It seems to make all the difference.
We admire her and her husband so much.
Next we visited our marine family that has the new baby girl. This is the mom that had the difficult
pregnancy. We had a great visit there and entertained the kids while she got
some work done. This is me feeding the
baby. Below is Lezlie playing with the
little boy and a picture of Lezlie with the mom and the kids. This will be the last time we see them, and
it was sad to say goodbye. We visited
her through the last 3 months of her pregnancy, got to experience her miracle
little girl baby, and got to participate in blessing the baby. We have really come to love this family and
are so in awe of how they have handled much adversity. They are another active church family that
has been abundantly blessed by the Lord.
Our final activity was a family home evening with a new company of
Officer Candidate School students. We
had 11 attend our service, 3 church members and 8 visitors, and it was
fantastic. It was great to meet and get
to know these young marine trainees. We
had an excellent discussion about overcoming adversity and learning from your
trials. They are only in their second
week, so are still a little shell shocked.
But they had no trouble inhaling a large serving of strawberry &
blueberry shortcake. I watched them
putting mountains of Redi-Whip on top, which was fun to watch. We do so love being around these outstanding
and dedicated young marines in training.
They would be an inspiration to anyone.
Friday was a special birthday for one of the single members of our ward, so we took him out for a birthday lunch. The young missionary sisters in our ward have befriended him so they came to lunch too. We had a wonderful time visiting and eating good food. We had a good experience at the restaurant that began in a bad way. The hostess that seated us seemed a little cross. We had asked for a large booth for 5 and she took us into the bar. We asked not to sit in the bar, and she took us to another booth but seemed upset that we had changed her plans, kind of slamming the menus down on the table. But then later she stopped by our table and asked what church we represented – she had seen our nametags. We answered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She asked if we just met to talk about Jesus. We told her that today we were just celebrating our friend’s birthday, but that we did teach about Jesus. She said she had a good friend that was LDS and she would like to learn more about the church. So the sisters got her name and phone number and made a tentative appointment to go visit her and teach her. It was pretty interesting and rewarding. We guessed that maybe she wasn’t cross but was just nervous around a bunch of people with nametags. It is amazing to wear the missionary nametag that has the name Jesus Christ in large, bold letters. It causes many people to stare at us and occasionally to stop and ask questions. We were happy that this young girl that had seemed in a bad mood at first stopped ant talked to us. After a great lunch we stopped at our friend’s apartment and picked up his dog Rocko, a Jack Russell Terrier. We then took him to the nursing home where his mom lives so that he could have a visit. He currently does not drive. It turns out that Rocko is a star at this nursing home, and they all love it when he comes to visit. We left him there for a bit while we dashed home to prepare for dinner with two other sisters. I finally picked him up and drove him home, but was taken aback by the traffic mess on the only road to his home south of here. It took us an hour to make a twenty minute drive. But we finally made it, and all was well. I got back home in time to help with the finishing touches for dinner and we had a good meal with the young sister missionaries. They are great young ladies and it was fun to visit with them and get to know them better. They provided an excellent spiritual thought. The basic lesson was that living the gospel brings us not only spiritual blessings, but also temporal blessings. We related to them that since we joined the church some 36 years ago we have always tried to live the gospel to the best of our ability. And we know that we have received many temporal blessings from this. We have always had comfortable homes to live in, food to eat, clothes to wear, and interesting jobs. We (and our family) have always had good health and enjoyed interesting activities. We know that our blessings are not just chance, but reflect the way we live, which is by the tenants of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After a nice dinner and visit with the sisters we had time to rest and recover after a busy day.
We had an unusual assignment today, Saturday. The Mission is planning on sending two new
Spanish speaking sisters to our area and they will need an apartment. So we got to go apartment hunting. We found 3 sets of apartments in the general
area where sisters are to live, and we visited all of them this morning. One was kind of dumpy, with a lot of
overgrown weeds and trash in the parking lot.
We decided that one was a no go. The
second one said they did not do corporate leases. Since the church leases these apartments as a
corporation the second place was also a no go.
The 3rd place was acceptable, so we forwarded the information
to the Mission office. Hopefully the new
sisters will be there in a couple of weeks.
We took our young bachelor marine that had the major surgery in May out
to lunch. Through the recommendation of
another church member we went to Tim’s Rivershore Crabhouse, and it was
excellent. It is located on the Potomac
River in a very remote area and was hard to find. If you were randomly driving around the area
you would never imagine there was a restaurant nearby. But it is a superb location, right on a sandy
beach on the river. There are several
docks nearby where several beautiful boats were moored. Although the décor was pretty eclectic, it
was fun. We saw tacky plastic palm trees
and parrots, but also interesting photos of the sea and glass balls, anchors,
and fishing nets. The tables were close
and a bit sticky, but the place was crowded with enthusiastic customers and
sold delicious food. We had an excellent
view of the river and got to watch people and boats come and go. Lezlie and I had tasty crabcake
sandwiches. We also saw lots of folks
eating hard shell crabs, which we may try on our next visit. We had a great chat with our marine, and when
we invited him to come to church tomorrow he said yes. We were very happy. There are so many good people at the ward
that will welcome him and help him, especially since he has two more major
surgeries before he is done with his medical issues. We thought that we were ready to leave the
base after we dropped our marine off.
But we have developed the habit of double checking our phones for messages
before leaving the base. And sure
enough, we had received a message from a marine wife that needed help. She wanted to attend an event where they were
giving away groceries and diapers for needy marine families at a church next to
the base. And they are a needy
family. He is a very junior marine and
does not make much. And they do not have
a car. So we took them to the event and
they were thrilled to get not only some groceries and diapers, but some kids clothes
as well. On the spur of the moment we
took them out to dinner at Chik-fil-a.
They were happy and so were we.
Their two little girls did well and enjoyed the dinner and the playground.
We eventually made it home about 4
hours later than we had planned. But we
were very happy to be of use to somebody, and content that we did our best to
help others this day. 
Our Sunday service with our Officer Candidate School
students was great this morning. We had
13 show up, a mixture of two different classes.
They enjoyed sharing stories with each other about the trials of OCS. The other couple gave a lesson on Gordon B.
Hinkley’s book Standing for Something,
which covered integrity, character and leadership. It went very well. They loved the treats of muffins and yogurt. We received the nicest tender mercy this
morning by one of our students telling us about what he and his visiting wife
did last weekend. As background, there
is one young marine family we have been visiting since we arrived. They had a significantly premature baby who
has multiple health problems, which has really isolated this young couple for
some time. They have just started
getting out a little bit. We have gotten
close to them and just took them out to dinner last week. The husband is a marine lawyer. Two weeks ago one of our OCS guys, who is a
law student, asked me if I had any ideas where he and his wife could spend some
time on base. His wife was visiting for
the weekend, but he was restricted to the base because he had done poorly on
some test. They just wanted someplace to
hang out and talk on base. I immediately
thought of the family with the premature son that lives on base. So I asked the family on base if they would
mind if the OCS guy and his wife stopped by just to have someplace to hang out
for a bit and to ask them questions about being a marine lawyer. They said yes, so I gave our OCS guy their
name and phone number. The marine lawyer
couple hosted them last weekend, and went above and beyond the call of
hospitality. They fed them dinner, let
them stay overnight, gave them breakfast, and answered all of their questions
about being a marine lawyer. The thing
that made me know that this event was arranged by Heavenly Father and not me
was the fact that the OCS marine’s wife is a nurse that specializes in
premature babies. She was able to give
them all kinds of information and advice about their son and give them some
hope about his development. We were so
happy that both of these young couples could help each other out and feel
extremely fortunate that we were in the right place at the right time to help
it happen. After our excellent OCS
sacrament meeting we had a transportation assignment from our Zone
Leaders. We picked up 6 young people to
take them to sacrament meeting. It was
kind of crazy, 6 kids between 8 and 16 crammed into the van. But the elders had invited them to church and
they said they wanted to come. We had a
nice sacrament meeting at which our friend that we took out for his birthday spoke. It was his first time speaking at church, and
he gave an excellent talk. He compared
following the straight and narrow path while holding onto the iron rod with
maneuvering through the congested traffic in this area. Everyone related to that, so it was a great
talk. And our marine that we took out to
lunch yesterday did show up. We were so
happy to see him there, and several ward members greeted him warmly. Now on
Sunday evening we are relaxing a little while winding down from the week. We feel so blessed to be able to serve this
mission. 
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