September 23 – October 9
Somehow, and I don’t know how, I have missed a week writing! My bad!!!!! I will try to remember what’s been happening. Actually, other than General Conference, maybe not much because I don’t have anything written on the calendar! I’ll try to write as things happened so it can stay somewhat in sequential order.
All is well in the British Zone. We are working hard on Ireland, as well as trying to train the new missionaries who have come in. We have 1 new couple and 1 single sister. The single sister, Sister Woerner, has been here before but was working on a special project and never really completed her training. She had to leave the mission early to go home and take care of some family matters, and now she is back to complete. Elder and Sister Bailey are determined that this time she will go through the training BEFORE she will start on the special projects. They’re not trying to be mean, but we really need the help on the floor and she won’t be able to help anyone if she hasn’t done the training. She’s a little reticent, but is coming around. It’s hard to be single and working on the training. When you can work as a couple, it helps to bounce ideas and answers off each other. When Sisters Harwood and Hazlegren came, they were working separately for the first couple of weeks. It didn’t take them long to team up and enjoy it more. So – in that respect, I feel sorry for Sister Woerner. She’ll be Ok. The other couple we got are Sister Linda and Elder Vernon Marks. They are from Orem, but have rented an apartment in SLC so they don’t have to commute every day. They’ll do very well. They’re both very bright and personable. We needed them so they will be a great asset to the British Floor. We’re trying really hard to be much more “hands-on” trainers than the White’s were. Again, I know it’s not their fault that they weren’t, because of her knee surgery. We don’t have any excuses, so we’ll try to make it a more pleasurable experience than we had. Hopefully no tears! One thing that we both did was to completely go through the Apprentice Manual again and find where all the “bugs” were. Anything that didn’t make sense I made a note of and then compiled a list to give to Sister Bailey so they could be fixed in the new manuals for missionaries coming up. Because Sister Woerner and the Marks’s didn’t have new manuals, we sat with them and gave them all the corrections BEFORE they began. Hopefully it will really help!. It was amazing that it took a couple of weeks (OK – maybe closer to 3) to go through the Apprentice Manual when we got here. As I was reviewing and trying to figure out the mistakes, I think I did it in a total of 3 days. I guess I have really learned a LOT! I just hope I can remember all the things I’ve learned.
I wish I had pictures, and I’ll ask Renee to send some, but this is the weekend (over General Conference) we were hoping to go to Lake Powell with Parry’s, Parry’s, and Harris’s. It’s OK that we can’t, but it still would have been really enjoyable, AND, I know that everyone would listen to conference while there! Anyway – Wednesday, on their way down, they stopped at lunchtime and we all went to the COB (Church Office Building) for lunch together. As we were all sad and saying good-bye to them, Terry said something about putting the weather curse of the green tortuga
on them because we couldn’t go! THEN – we remembered hearing that a BIG storm was coming in and the temperatures were going to drop from the 80’s down to highs in the 50’s. As soon as he remembered that he said, “Never mind! I remove the curse”, and did a re-wind (literally) of what he’d said.
Now I’m going forward into next week, but the curse didn’t leave them. They were supposed to be at Lake Powell until the Friday/Saturday after Conference, but ended up leaving on Wednesday because it was so windy, rainy and COLD!!!!!
As they were driving home, pulling a boat and 2 jet skis, the car was covered with snow! So much for their balmy and sunny weekend. We told them next year we’d sacrifice and go with them, to insure the weather will be good for them! As Renee said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Moving along to this past week.
It’s had great moments, and moments where we said REALLY?!?!?!?!
First the great moments! On Wednesday, we had our T & R (Temple and Research) day. We wanted to go to the Logan Temple before the weather got bad, so we decided to go last Wednesday. Who knows what the weather will be like the first Wednesday in November! We left Salt Lake at about 9:30 a.m. and on our way to Logan, stopped at several of the fruit stands in Willard to get some peaches, tomatoes and squash. We were OK with peaches and barely OK with the tomatoes. We did get some squash, but not the kind we wanted. I really wanted to get some Sweet Meat Squash, but they hadn’t been harvested yet. Because the weather had turned bad, the pickers were frantically trying to get the frost sensitive things harvested first. Squash is more hardy and a little frost won’t hurt them. Dang!!!! We’ll have to make another trip north to get some squash for the winter. For some reason, that’s a squash we never see in the grocery store. The fruit stands are the only places they are available!
We attended the Logan Temple, and took names of a Deatley family who Terry found needed work done. We were able to have all the children baptized and confirmed and we did the endowment for the parents. After the session we took the children’s names in and did their Initiatory work. Now we’ll make it a point to get the children’s endowments taken care of and then do all the sealings. It was a wonderful experience. Best of all, we were asked to be the Witness Couple. In all the years we’ve attended the Temple, that’s only the 2nd time we’ve been asked to do that so it was a special time – especially because we were doing our own family names.
On the way home from the Temple, we stopped in North Ogden to see how Rex is doing. I was amazed to see how well he looked and acted. He’s a good actor though, and even when he’s feeling lousy, if you ask him, he’ll say he’s doing great! They were leaving on Friday to go to Jackson for some board meetings that he’s in charge of so I hope he does well at those. The original diagnosis of the tumor hasn’t really come back because they sent from the University of Utah to either Stanford or the Mayo Clinic. Now it’s a waiting game to see what they say. The course of action for his recovery won’t be discussed until they have those final lab results. Good news was that they were able to take it out without any major complications. Bad news is that they couldn’t get it all without really disrupting the speech part of his brain so we’ll just have to wait and see when the results come back.
The other major thing that happened this week was really strange! This is the part that made us say, REALLY?!?!?!?!? We had an appointment with President Stalvey this coming Thursday at 10:30 for our 4 month interview. That’s when they ask how things are going, if your finances are OK and if you’re considering extending. Last Friday morning, we were working with the Marks’s on their Apprentice when we were told that President Stalvey wanted to see us ASAP in his office upstairs in the library. I just assumed that something had come up next Thursday so he wanted to move our appointment. Terry was a little more in tune with the Spirit. He knew something was up more than the basic, “how are things going?” When President Stalvey sat down, he said, “So Elder and Sister Hale, how are you doing? We want to extend to you a new assignment to be the Zone Leaders in the Patron and Product Services Zone”. No kidding! He had barely sat down when he issued the assignment. Terry and I just looked at him with deer in the headlights eyes and said, “WHAT????” a. It came so fast in the conversation we really didn’t think we understood what he had said, and b. We are just catching on to what we’re doing in the British Isles and starting to train!
Terry asked him if it was a desperation call or if it was truly inspiration. (I thought that was pretty brave!) President Stalvey assured him that it was definitely an inspired calling and didn’t really get into any details, but said that the inspiration had come several weeks ago and they didn’t act upon it. Now they couldn’t ignore it any longer, and that is definitely where the Lord wants us to be serving. So - - - we’ve just gotten a little comfortable in the British Isles, and now we’ll be moving away from there and into a totally new zone. We don’t really know what we’ll be doing yet, but next week I can fill you in a little more. We start training Monday morning at 8:30, right after our weekly devotional. One thing we’ve learned, is that the Lord doesn’t let you get too comfortable in any calling or assignment. Apparently there are several changes the Presidency would like us to make in the Zone so we may be the bad guys for a while. Hopefully people will work with us and learn to like us!
So now my badge has gone from looking like this - - -
To looking like this again.
I know it sounds silly, because I complained so much about all the reading, studying and testing we did, but I’m really going to miss my British Flag on my badge. It’s kind of a symbol of honor! More than that, however, I'm going to miss all the wonderful friends we've made on the British Floor! As Terry says, Disneyland is the 2nd happiest place on Earth. B-2 is the happiest place on Earth. I think I agree. I love everyone there! The good news is that our new assignment will take us all around the library and our personal research is in Scotland, so we'll be back on B-2 a lot!
President Savoldi, from our previous Mission Presidency told the new missionaries prior to us receiving our individual assignments, “The Lord’s work is done more by the willing than by the talented.” I really like that, and hope that our willingness to do this new assignment will make up for the talent we won’t have!
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