Twelfth Summary for ourselves, working under President Rodriguez

We spent a lot more time in the Mission Office doing the normal paperwork, errands and duties of Housing Coordinators (with Jenny more apartment supplies than you can imagine)

We attended the ECR ward party on 7/4 at Mandalay Beach (Oxnard) and were thrilled to see several of our recent converts getting fully integrated into the ward (Abraham, Rogelio & Otilia; whole Chavez family)

We made backup copies of several apartments' keys at La Gloria in downtown Oxnard

The absolute highlight of this period was taking Everardo Corral to the LA Temple to receive his endowment and make higher covenants with our good Lord (7/8).  we also took Daniela Ramirez with us—soon to depart on her mission to Mexico.

We attended the following farewell dinners for us—Sotos, Bp Terrys, Tenorios, ECR Ward surprise party, Zurchers and the Camarillo grupito, Chavez family, APs (E. Isaacson/Larsen) and Pte/Sis Rodriguez at the Mission Home

We gave 3 farewell talks (in Spanish) in 3 different Sacrament meetings in the same day (ECR, Camarillo, ECR late mtg)--think re Jenny's growth in the Spanish language!  We also think that's a Weatherford family record—6 talks in a single day in a foreign language.

We renewed 2 missionary apartment leases and called a dozen other apt. managers to get new leases sent our way.

I paid August rents for 77 apartments with Elder Haslam

We made one big, last trip up "north" to inspect empty apartments, drop off bikes, bring back furniture from the Miller's old place in Grover beach, visit the troublesome 'leaky stove' apartment, etc. Stops included Ventura, Lompoc, Sta Maria, SLO, Atascadero, Sta Barbara and Grover Beach.

We helped Elder/Sis Miller move out of their Grover Beach duplex as they concluded their 18-month CES mission, bringing a bunch of stuff back in the bed of our F150 mission truck.  we also attended their last Institue class at Cal Poly in SLO.

I translated the High Councilor's talk (like i do most months) in the Camarillo grupo.

We spent 3 days with Sister Peterson turning over Housing Coordinator duties

Lastly, we did new missionary training with Hna. Asdot who was reassigned from Chile.

A very busy, yet meaningful couple of weeks!

Weeks 38 - 41: Camarillo, CA

We are almost ready to head back to Wyoming. We are finishing up our mission. It's been an incredible experience, and we will really miss the beautiful days here. We used to tell people that we didn't mind living in Wyoming because the summers were beautiful. Well, in Camarillo, the summers are beautiful, too. But, the difference is that the winters in Camarillo are beautiful. So why live in Wyoming when you could live in California? Ah, the interesting questions of life. . . . .

We have been so busy and quite exhausted. As housing coordinators, we have opened and signed leases for 5 new apartments, we have closed 3 apartments, with the cleaning and moving of furniture. We have made sure that rents, utility companies, refrigerator rentals, and other aspects of apartment living are taken care of. We have had the opportunity to drive all around the mission, and we have seen flowers, trees, historical buildings, ocean, and hills. It has been really beautiful. We stayed at the historic Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. 

We have a new mission president. He and his wife both grew up in Mexico, and they bring a great understanding of language and culture to the mission. We love them already. There will be another couple working from our apartment when we leave so we are spending these last few days cleaning as thoroughly as we can and finishing up details of our housing work. We've been hoping to see the new crop planted behind our house, and it has sprouted. We now have some variety of squash or pumpkin growing behind the house. There are huge fields of small strawberries everywhere. Because of all the flooding, strawberries were not good in the spring, and so now there aren't enough jobs for our friends. The fields are just now being planted with new strawberries. But the blackberries had a great season. That's what we eat every morning. 

Because we are leaving, our ward held a surprise party for us. They told us that we needed to have a missionary meeting at 5:00 PM to talk about a new mission plan. So we showed up to this meeting and our leader talked for an hour about missionary work. After the meeting, the leader said we should take the "shortcut" to our car through the gym. It was pitch dark, but as we entered, the whole ward yelled "Surprise!" and turned on the lights. They made mole, tacos, enchiladas, soup, tamales, and more for dinner. We ate and hugged everyone there. 

The next day, our other ward had a little party with "Mexican hot dogs" which were hot dogs covered in pico de gallo and a bunch of picante chilis. Ha ha! Several people gave us gifts, like books, Mexican clothes, and pictures. The two families who I taught piano for had us over for dinner and served amazing Mexican food, also. In short, we were treated like royalty, and we really loved it. What an experience! 

During this last month, we took our friend Evarardo to the temple for his endowment. He loved being there with us, and it was a beautiful day. When we got home at around 5:00 PM, Dad and I both sat on the couch and immediately fell asleep. We're not as young as we used to be. Also during the month, our car battery died, but we didn't know that was the problem. So we had it towed out of a slightly-scary neighborhood, and the dealer checked it very carefully. We think it is ready for the trip home. 

When Dad and I were up in San Luis Obispo, we attended institute class with students at Cal Poly. We really enjoyed getting to know these kind and very modern students. The ward mission leader has both his ears pierced and some cool tattoos. When the teacher asked why we attend church, he said, "To find a wife," and two of the females in the class groaned. It was fun! 

At the ward party, our friend Rogelio said his girlfriend made some tortillas for us, and he slipped them into Dad's pocket. When we got home, Dad opened them and found two $100 dollar bills. Rogelio paid us for working to finalize his divorce so that he could marry his girlfriend. But we can't keep the money and we are plotting a way to get it back to him. The great thing is that his divorce seems to be going through. 

We're both sad and happy to be coming home. A quick postscript...upon telling Rogelio he shouldn't have paid us for helping him, that we're happy to serve him, plus he had already paid us with strawberries, smiles and his sweet love...he replied "I'm not paying you for anything.  It was just a little gift from us because we love you so much!"

We just can't get over the generosity and kindness and love of our friends here in southern California. We added pictures (from Facebook) of our bishopric, who we grew to love dearly, Bishop Mario Corona, Jovani Ambriz, and Marlon Gonzales. 

Eleventh summary--this one for our remembrance

In an attempt to loosely summarize what we've been doing on the mission (mostly as Housing Coordinators now), i am sending the following list:

we have moved missionaries into 4 new apartments (1 in Oxnard, 2 in Paso Robles, and 1 in Santa Maria)

we have moved missionaries out of 2 apartments (both in Paso Robles) due to an unsafe neighborhood (armed robbery in the complex, and police cars there on a regular basis)

the other 2 moves were just partially vacating current 4-person apartments and letting them only have 2 missionaries in there (better for managing relationships in companionships)

in all of these moves, Hna Weatherford and i were super impressed with the young missionaries' willingness to serve us and each other!  it made us feel a LOT of hope for the future of the Church and the world with young people like that! 

we flew out to Baltimore (3 days) for Rob's graduation from his MD residency in Ob/Gyn at Johns Hopkins University.  we had a wonderful time and were so PROUD of Rob and his amazing accomplishment and also enjoyed having 4 of our kids together at the same time (Carolyn, Laura, Rob and Josh).

we both bore our testimonies in the "Departing Missionary" Zoom testimony meeting that is mission wide...not only us, but also the Haslams and Carters as senior missionaries/leaders and 10 junior missionaries.  it was a powerful meeting as the cumulative service of dozens of years and the spiritual experiences gained and miracles seen were witnessed by 16 departing missionaries.  many tears of joy and happiness were shed!

We also attended the Los Angeles Temple with the same group of departing missionaries.  i drove the Sienna minivan with 6 of us (incl. Haslams and Hnas Dickinson and Bunnell).  it was a very special day as we took the time to each do an initiatory ordinance, an endowment and witness a sealing of husband to wife and child to parents.  we got to take privately with Pres. Carter on his insights into the washing/annointing ordinances as well as a seasoned sealer.  then he gave us a tour of the very large Assembly room and a sealing room with a wood altar from the SLC Temple.  a great day overall!

we had a wonderful dinner/lesson with our dear friends, Piedad & Carmen Chavez, along with ZLs, Elders Wester and Lafferty and the APs Elder Larsen and Isaacson.  it was a special night, and her chicken/cheese stuffed quesadillas were as good as ever.  they also had manzanita gaseosa which i love.

on the Monday night before the Carters drove off, i had the prompting to organize all the senior missionaries to go over to the mission home and surprise them by singing "God Be with You" on their doorstep.  i think it greatly touched them, there were tears and a lot of good-bye hugs.  very kind words from both Pres. & Sis Carter to us about being 'workhorses of the mission' and doing double duty while also extending.  those words meant a lot to us from the normally quite shy Carters! 

We met our new Mission Leaders, Juan y Martha Rodriguez from north Texas!  they are wonderful, loving people who we are happy to serve with.  we went to their mini zone conference and really enjoyed getting to know them better and hear their testimony of the truth of this Gospel of Jesus Christ.

we also trained the newly arriving missionaries (4) in Housing and bike issues.

all in all, we have never been so exhausted—mostly a cumulative effect of 9 months in the mission field, combined with double duty of both MLS and Housing, and trying to keep up with key events in our kids' lives.  wow!  we have prayed mightily for the Lord to sustain us and He has.  how lucky are we to get to do this wonderful work!

along the MLS lines, we got Everardo Corral prepared to go to the Temple for his own endowment, by helping translate for his TR interview with Bp Terry and being there for support with his Pres. Basua interview.  we are excited to take him down to LA this coming Saturday.

we also attended the baptism of Juan Nunez and did the music like we often do.

in order to protect our mental/emotional health, we have carved out fun dates to Wood Ranch Grill, the Camarillo Greek festival and time at Zuma beach in Malibu. 

life has been very busy, but also very fulfilling and deeply satisfying!

Week 36 and 37: Camarillo, CA

We spent a busy couple of weeks with housing and moving elders. We were thrilled to see that our new missionaries developed a deep love for Abraham and continued to fellowship with him. We attended our typical First-Sunday missionary correlation meeting with the stake presidency in the Camarillo Stake where Elder Lafferty reported on mission goals. We attended a meeting in which our new mission leaders spoke and taught us, followed by lunch. We were very impressed with President and Sister Rodriguez' deep spirituality, and we loved the way they spoke with love to our missionaries. We also took pictures with our new mission leaders, and we included two missionaries who we love, Elder Isaacson (grandson of Jim Tate of Springfield) and Hermana Waite, who served alongside us in our areas longer than anyone else. 

Weeks 34 and 35: Camarillo, CA

We are so busy taking care of housing! Here's how it goes. We were assigned to take care of housing and to give up our mission leader support (MLS is what we loved). But our friends in mission leader support all love us, and they know we still live here, and so giving it up is not possible. And that actually makes us so happy! We are trying to do both jobs.

So we stopped piano lessons, cleaning for our friend who hoards, teaching with missionaries (for the most part), and driving missionaries to the airport. We are still supporting both of our wards/branches as ward clerk and music people. We still speak and bear our testimonies in Spanish. We are still working with our friend to go to the temple in the next few weeks, and we had an amazing dinner with our friends last night (soup, chiles rellenos, salad, stuffed quesadillas, and more). It was so good! We are trying to help these friends we love; the wife wants us to stop her husband from drinking, and the daughter wants us to stop the wife from yelling. We feel the pressure to make it all better because we love them so much. 

Two weeks ago, Rob and Tej paid us a wonderful visit. We were so happy to finally meet Tej in person, and we were delighted with him. We went to beaches in Santa Barbara and Malibu (Zuma), even though it was cloudy. We also found some fun restaurants. Our feet got stained in some weird brown oily tar on the beach and our clothes are permanently stained. But all in all, we had a wonderful time. The day after Rob and Tej left, we received our first eviction notice for a missionary apartment, which was a little traumatic. The housing records are completely disorganized and even mission. So we learned that we have to go through each of our 80 apartments and update rent amounts and contracts for the Elder who pays the bills and the auditors. Can we finish in the 4 weeks we have left? To be honest, probably not.  

We also moved 3 sets of missionaries out of dangerous apartments into safer areas up in Paso Robles, which is about 250 miles from our duplex. Dad drives a huge truck, and we load up mattresses, furniture, and other stuff. We tell the missionaries not to accept giveaways like treadmills and couches because we do not and cannot move those. But the missionaries still have a lot of junk. 

On Sunday we attended our wards. The members are very talkative. During the lesson, the teacher called on a sister who wanted to make a comment. The commenter was on the other side of the room, so I could not hear her very well, but she started telling a long story in Spanish. The teacher was so patient. She turned around and wrote out the lesson on the board during the comment. Then she went to her seat and got a treat out of her bag to give to a baby in the classroom. For about 10 minutes, the teacher didn't even look at the commenter. When the commenter was finished, the teacher just went on with her lesson as if nothing had been said. Then in our next ward, a sister who likes to comment raised her hand in Sunday School and tried to explain some conspiracy theory. Our teacher just said loudly, "No! I asked what ways we follow the Savior, and that's all I want to hear!" in Spanish of course. So I saw two completely different ways of dealing with comments last week. 

Last week, a gringo friend who has lived in Camarillo and raised her children here invited Dad and I to a party. It was amazing! Her husband built a brick oven in their backyard. They have a gazebo and all sorts of beautiful flowers. We made our own pizzas and her husband cooked them in his brick oven, then we ate them outside in this beautiful backyard that they have spent 40 years building. Their children were married in their backyard. 

Two days later, we flew to Baltimore for a wonderful residency graduation, and we loved congratulating Rob on successfully enduring a hard four years. The fellow residents voted on Rob as the "most likely to know the name of the patient's second cousin best friend's dog" because he loves to listen to his patients. It was a meaningful compliment. Also, on the program, Rob was listed for almost every award and the host just introduced him as, "well you can see that Robert won all the awards." The host was a little dry. :) It was so fun to see Carolyn, Laura, Andrew, Tej, Josh, and Emma there, too. 

Tenth summary for President Carter: 3 weeks

This past 3 weeks we've seen a big change in our mission assignment--from MLS Spanish to Housing Coordinators.  we're still getting used to the new assignment, but we really miss the old one and the great opportunity to teach with the young missionaries.

We attended 2 baptisms (Hector Arciniega and Francisco)...we taught several Gospel lessons to Hector and Larry baptized him.

We taught 7 lessons with junior missionaries, much lower than normal as we wound down that area.

We did 1 airport run to Burbank to pick up Sis Stanger as she returned from a family funeral.

We did a lot of housing work and prepping for supplies prior to MLC to distribute to the Zone leaders.

We attended 2 late Sacrament meetings of the ECR ward and had 21 and 27 souls in attendance (the latter being a record, I believe).  it is such a sweet way to minister to the needs of our faithful Saints and friends who must work on Sundays to keep their jobs and provide the needs of their families.

We had a "killer" busy week of Zone Conferences, including both car inspections and housing training/awards.  We always love interacting with all the young missionaries!

I did a lot of translating in our Sacrament meetings.  We helped Rogelio Rivera complete his divorce papers and take them to the Ventura County Courthouse.

We organized and paid for a 50^th Anniversary celebration dinner for Elder/Sister Haslam at Stonefire Grill and it was a lot of fun!

We finished 2 different Temple Preparation seminars—one in Spanish for Everardo Corral (6 lessons) and another in English to 5 YSAs (2 lessons to Daniela Ramirez, Eric Terry, Sarah Surges, Kalixta Basua, and Lev Zurcher).  We really enjoyed teaching all of those classes.

I taught Everardo C. and Jose Rangel how to consecrate oil and give a priesthood blessing of health, along with other MP ordinances that don't need priesthood keys.

I did quite a bit of Ward Clerking for ECR ward.

We had to end several of our old activities in order to focus on Housing Coordinator duties—including piano lessons for 2 sisters, serving Coral Shapiro, end our English Connect supervision duties, etc.

All in all, it was a very busy 3 weeks!

Weeks 32 and 33: Camarillo, CA

Our big news is that we are now officially serving as housing coordinators. We have an office job from 9 to 5 weekdays. On the weekends, we still attend two or three church meetings with our Spanish speaking friends. We still have been teaching temple preparation lessons, with Spanish at 6:00 PM and English at 7:00 PM. We still drive to the airport with missionaries who need to go home for surgery, etc. and Dad is still a ward clerk in the Spanish ward with 542 people on the list, about 150 who attend. That's almost 400 people we do not know. Many have moved back to Mexico. 

We spent a lot of time training to be housing coordinators and we were very tired. So when I woke up in the morning, and I saw a text in Spanish, I thought it was our missionaries and I thanked them for confirming our appointment. It turns out, the message was from Dad asking if they had confirmed our appointment. Spanish is still a weakness of mine. However, today, I bore my testimony in church. I accidentally said that I have "force" instead of "strength" but that's okay. May the force be with you! 

The ward had a girls camp fundraiser, and the food was called tinga chicken. Dad and I paid for a plate of chicken, rice, and beans. We enjoyed the chicken that night. The next morning, we had diarrhea. We felt sorta sick. And we knew it was the tinga chicken because it was in a huge pot and it had been sitting out, sorta warm but not really hot, for a long time. Thank goodness we dodged anything worse than diarrhea. We also said hello to our friend, Nathan, and told him that we love him and support him. He attends every activity with the young women because he was born female. He never complains, but he is quiet. His father needs (because of finances) to live with his sister's family, and they do not really understand the support that Nathan needs. They insist that he attend young women at church, not young men. So we just love everyone in this crazy situation. Nathan will head off to college this fall, and he told us that he is doing well. He has some great dreams for his future. 

For weeks now, our friend Juan Zurcher has been begging the members of our tiny branch to come loquat picking with him. He puts his requests in a group chat, and then the leader makes jokes about it Saturday after Saturday. Finally, I told Dad that I would like to go get some. So we went loquat picking and our friend Juan was so happy. No one else in the group would come, just us and Juan and his wife. We came home with 3 huge bags of loquats. Juan gave some to the chicken tinga young women dinner (no one bought those). Then we brought a bag to church with a sign saying "free." No one took a loquat. Then we realized why. They really are delicious. BUT, they have huge seeds in the middle and it is almost impossible to get the skin off, and they are the size of large cherries. It takes 5 minutes to eat each one. So much work for a tiny bite of fruit. We couldn't eat our two bags, and we gave up. Now we know why our other Mexican friends made jokes about the loquats. Juan, though, earned a college degree in plant science in Mexico City in the 1970s and he is fascinated by all growing things. Of course, his job in the United States is cleaning hospitals, not in plant science where he would like to work. He sacrificed so much so that his children could have a better life! 

This week, I have been very worried. Our mission office is run by people in their 70s who have never done office work. The secretary asked me to show her how to start a new line in Word. I showed her that she could push "enter." She gave me a message with an 800 phone number, saying that some utility company called to say we were late on our bill. We have 80 apartments with water, gas, and/or electric with 3 companies each under 3 names (church, mission, and office). That's about 21,000 possibilities. There is no way that we will ever know who that phone call was intended for. When we call back, the company cannot help us unless we know our account number, and we cannot guess which account it is. We figure that when the lights go out, the missionaries will let us know. The records in the office are horrific. So Dad and I are working so hard to create a record for every apartment. We have a hard time falling asleep at night because we get so stressed. So I practice giving a talk in Spanish and that lulls me to sleep. That's my secret sleeping pill. I have to focus so hard on the Spanish that I block out all the stressful thoughts, and then I fall asleep. 

For our housing duties, Dad drives a big truck, and we fill it with beds and furniture. We try to see something fun on the way, such as the mission San Miguel. Our mission includes some beautiful sites! We buy furnishings and kitchen utensils for our missionaries, and we take trips to Walmart often. This is the crazy Walmart, always packed with people speaking Spanish, you almost never hear English. We pack lunches for the office every day. One day, when Dad was eating his orange, he held the knife that he used to slice his orange and asked if I wanted him to cut my head off. I already felt like my head was off! We had dinner with the office staff, too. 

We held zone conferences in which we said goodbye to our wonderful mission leaders. We were able to see some sleeping sea otters on the way home. We finally understand what they look like in the water, after searching for a few months. At first, I thought they were logs. We brought the binoculars so that we could see them close up. 

All in all, it was a beautiful week. Dad baptized a man who had a hard time giving up smoking. Dad gave him a blessing and he was able to stop smoking. He loves Dad. He was crying and trying to remember every detail of his special baptism day. We felt so blessed to be there! His name is Hector. We told him about your baptism, Paul. And how much we value your decision. 

From Elder Weatherford --

i wanted to tell you a little more about our recent convert Hector Arciniega.

Mom and i first taught him in early March with Hermanas Marshall and Darrington.  He was a recent "find" and was on his 2^nd lesson i believe.  We helped teach him the "Gospel of Jesus Christ"  He seemed very sincere to learn more truth, but also had a few significant barriers...one was his addiction to smoking and drinking coffee (i bet Amy and Josh never saw that one, eh?), the other was that he felt that his parents in Mexico (who of course are Catholic) would 'die if they knew he was talking to us, much less thinking about getting baptized.'

So eventually Hna Marshall suggested to him that he could ask for a priesthood blessing to receive God's help to overcome his addictions and i so i gave him a blessing as part of lesson.  Then another lesson, as he struggled with his parents' concerns, i shared via text after the lesson some scriptures from my "Words of Jesus" project that i've been working on for 1-2 years, as i always find great power in Jesus' actual words and His wisdom....for He truly is "full of grace & truth!"

We kept teaching Hector for a while and he began progressing more, giving up his coffee, whittling down his cigarettes each day.  we noticed early on that his left forearm had the worst scar we've ever seen, from a work accident, maybe a soldering burn?  long story, short...we eventually ended up being busy at the same times that Hna Marshall would schedule a lesson, that we kinda lost track of him...the Hermanas got transferred out, so that eventually Hna Dickinson and Peterson were now teaching him...we may have joined them fo a lesson or two here and there, but we were not really as close as we had been earlier.

Finally, Hna Dickinson called us about a week ago and told us the great news that Hector had decided to get baptized and he wanted me to baptize him.  It turns out, that as they were prepping him for baptism, the Hnas asked him who he wanted and he said "that missionary Elder", so she named off the 4 young Elders in our district (Schlensker-no, Aposhian-no, Wester-no, Lafferty-no), so she scratched her head and said "well, that's all there are"  Then he said, "no there's an older guy" and she said "do you mean Elder Weatherford?" and he said "yes, that's the guy!"

So i had the incredible privilege of entering into the baptismal font with him Saturday night and helping him make his first sacred covenant with God and i can tell you that he is a new man, he is happier, his face shines brighter, and he is closer to God and His love than ever before in his life.  This truly is one of the great miracles of being a missionary-- to be able to see the change the Gospel makes in people's lives is absolutely beautiful and miraculous!  

Hector had tears in his eyes much of the night at his baptismal service (and i had a few too).  After i baptized him, and they closed the curtain to the font, he just stood there...he splashed more of the water on himself and said "i don't want to leave nor ever forget this moment."  In the locker room, as we were changing out of our white clothes, he reminded me about the blessing i had given him (i honestly had forgotten).  He said it changed his life—he had received the power to give up smoking which he had wanted to do but hadn't been able to do without God's help.  He also said that the scriptures i sent to him really sunk deep into his heart and Jesus' words gave him the courage to follow Jesus Christ in the way he was now feeling.  He just cried and thanked me and hugged me and it was all so very tender, that i will never forget this experience.  And then he added, "by the way, my severely damaged forearm (that he used to always wear a protective sleeve over & that wouldn't function) that i couldn't use, it now works" and then he showed me how he could move it back & forth, in ways that he couldn't previously.

It truly was a beautiful and miraculous night and i thank my loving Father for the privilege of helping Him bring one of His precious children back to the fold and closer to Him.

i just wanted to share this 'rest of the story' with each of you.  i hope you enjoy it and can feel the Spirit as you read it.

Ninth summary for President Carter: 5 weeks

In the past 5 weeks, we have taken 3 family trips, so our missionary work has slowed down a bit.  

We have done the following:

taught 9 lessons with the junior missionaries,

visited no English Connect classes,

made 2 "airport" runs—Sis Stanger (Burbank, returning from nephew's funeral); Hna Mayne to Santa Barbara pharmacy, from Camarillo and back to Simi Valley

We also did our usual community service (piano lessons, helping the elderly).

We attended the baptismal services of the Hernandez family (3) in Newbury Park and for Deyana Tenorio C. (child of record).

the ECR ward held another "late" Sacrament meeting with 8 members, 3 friends and a total of 23 in attendance.

We helped with car inspections at 4 Zone Conferences.

Other highlights include:

4 Temple prep classes to Everardo Corral

2 priesthood prep classes to Abelino Hernandez, Jesus Pasos

Taking Abraham Torres to the LA Temple for the 1^st time (baptisms for his ancestors—father, 4 grandparents, 2 g-grandparents), visiting the Visitor's center, then eating at Pollo Campero afterwards

A meeting with Pres. Thunnell (working on a Spanish branch in Camarillo area)

Overall, the Lord's work is doing great in this area and we see evidence of His hand all around us.  what a blessing it is to serve our great God in His most important work of gathering Israel!!

...

Weeks 30 and 31: Camarillo, CA

We returned back from a beautiful week in Hawaii on Saturday evening. It was so relaxing . . . . And then on Sunday, we drove a missionary up to Santa Barbara to get her medicine. Sunday was the strawberry festival, so the traffic was crawling, and the trip took 4 hours. On Monday, we picked up a missionary from the airport. She returned to Portland for a funeral of her 6-month-old nephew who was accidentally suffocated by a piece of plastic. She was really sad, so we quietly drove and didn't know how to help. That's how our service goes sometimes; the circumstances are bigger than the love we can bring. And then today, we were busy with helping at the courthouse in Ventura and visiting with the owners of Shorty, the feisty dog who bites and barks at Dad. 

 . . . Until our friends with Shorty called to cancel our visit because it is way too cold outside. They live in a small house, and so they were hoping to meet in the yard with the falling oranges and biting dog. Plus a lot of bugs this time of year. But the temperature is only 62 degrees and it is cloudy, so they cancelled the visit. We had to laugh. That temperature would only feel cold in California. In Wyoming we would be wearing shorts! 

We had such a great time with the Balaich family. And, yes, Juliet LOVED Hawaii! Amy's video shows in a cute way what a wonderful time we had. When we returned, a missionary we work with came up to Dad and said, "Elder Weatherford, you seem to have gotten a tan while you were visiting with your daughter. It makes me wonder about that visit . . . "  Yes, we kept our trip to Hawaii a secret as much as we could. Most missionaries don't go to Hawaii during their mission. 

Upon returning home, we realized that all the missionary couples except for the one who arrived last month are going home in June and July. Two couples are going home early because of family emergencies (one couple owns a pharmacy which their son runs but they need to come back to run it because the son struggles with opiod addiction and the other is a sister whose husband died of a massive heart attack and her health is not great). So Dad and I are going to step in and manage the housing arrangements for our 140 missionaries and 6 couples. We will be working in the office and driving the truck (poor dad), delivering utensils and furniture, unclogging drains, cleaning carpets, paying rents, etc. It will be a totally different experience for our last 2 months on the mission. We will wear pants and t-shirts. But the leadership needs some help with the office, especially because our mission president is going home at the end of June, and the new mission president will need some help getting settled with the housing and finances. 

In the meantime, we try to spend as much time as we can with our wards and our friends. We will teach a couple more piano lessons, attend baptisms, go to the temple with our friends, play and lead the music, and support them anyway we can. We still have a few sights to see on our preparation day, like the Hindu temple in the picture that is close to Malibu. What an amazing place! 

We are always fascinated by living here. We have foggy mornings almost every day now. We are not as hot as I thought we would be. We feel like Oxnard and Camarillo really have become home. That is the wonderful thing about serving a mission here for 9+ months. We have made a new home and new friends. And I always tell dad, home is where he is. So we are very happy and healthy. 

The highs and the lows of mission life continue. Our friend Carmen is a bright young mother of two who we married and baptized in February. We are going to go to her daughter's honor's presentation at middle school this week. Carmen has sacrificed and hoped for a better life for her daughters. Carmen is a hero! Her daughters were born in the US and they will be able to go to college and choose careers. It is really exciting for the whole family. But Carmen's husband struggles with alcohol and drugs, and we are praying for a way to help him overcome those without revealing that Carmen asked us for help. We love them all and we want all good things for them. The drugs and alcohol can be super hard to get past as we see with so many of our friends. 

Weeks 28 and 29: Camarillo, CA

We have had a lot of joy these past two weeks. If you remember, we were scheduled to return from our mission on April 21. This would allow us to attend Emma's college graduation, Hannah's baptism, Amy's turn to go to Hawaii, and Rob's residency graduation. But our mission does not have any new couples to take our place or the place of the housing couple. Our mission president, who is very kind, was grateful for our willingness to stay longer, and he said that we could take these trips during our mission extension. Not all mission presidents allow trips, so we feel very blessed. And we are grateful to work here a little longer. We will probably shift from teaching with younger missionaries to taking over the housing responsibilities next month, and we will be happy to help however we are needed. 

So, yes, last week we watched Emma graduate from BYU with honors, and we were so proud! Emma gave a presentation on the effects of financial programs which help mothers with childcare in the workplace with huge statistical regressions that compared variables across states in the US. Of course, I LOVED it! It was very technical. And thanks to Dad and the Websters, we ate a couple of delicious meals and spent a little time catching up. Stacey went home to Arizona with the Websters, and Joshua and Emma put their furniture in storage, and they headed off to Wash DC for the summer. We're very proud of them.

This past weekend, we went to Morgantown for Hannah's baptism. We had so much fun. The baptism was beautiful, and we enjoyed celebrating two birthdays (Hannah and Evelyn), plus an early celebration of Nora. Dad was feeling very California-ish, and so he rented a Tesla for us on the trip. We needed to charge the car three times. Fortunately, the charging station shared a parking lot with a Dunkin Donuts. So yes, we celebrated the baptism with donuts. We also had some wonderful meals, and we LOVED seeing the Holdernesses. We're also very proud of them. 

Here in California, we have been eating the biggest strawberries we have ever seen! They just keep getting bigger! We had fun celebrating my birthday, and I posted a picture of the watch that Dad got for me, with "L Luvs J" engraved on the back. All in all, it has been a great couple of weeks.

Week 27: Camarillo, CA

This week was so busy that Dad and I had to be very careful to eat and rest so that we could do everything that we planned. We are getting old. 

We began on Monday with our typical office meeting where we go through the schedule and assignments for the week. Then, we met with our friend, Abelino. He was exhausted from picking strawberries all day. We thanked him and told him that we were so impressed! When we feel tired, we try to think of how hard our friends work. On Tuesday through Friday, we attended four zone conferences in different parts of the mission. The couple who took care of cars in our mission went home so we helped with taking care of the cars. We arrived at each conference at 8:00 AM and we taught each missionary how to measure tread depth on tires, refill engine fuels, clean their car, and stay safe. We loved all the one-on-one time with our missionaries. I think we worked on half of the 62 cars. 

Our first conference was in Santa Maria, a 2 1/2 hour drive north from Camarillo, so we decided to spend the night there and have less driving for the next day, which was 1 hour north of Camarillo. We helped some missionaries move furniture into a new apartment, and then we drove out to the ocean at Morro Bay. We saw sea otters up close, and we were amazed at their antics. We felt so lucky to see them! We had a fun dinner in town, visited the Madonna Inn, and we were fast asleep by 9:00 PM. The next day our conference was in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara, and after our conference, we ate tacos outdoors in our favorite restaurant. Our last two conferences were closer to home, so we were able to drive home at night and rest here. In the evening, we taught our friend Everardo about the temple, and he asked us about a female spirit that hangs around his home. His children have seen her, but Everardo has not. She seems to be pretty nice and harmless, so we eventually recommended just living with her and not worrying. (?!?!) This was a new one for me. 

On Saturday, we took our friend Abraham to the Los Angeles temple to do baptisms for his father (who was murdered when Abraham was 4 years old in Honduras) and his grandparents and two great-grandparents. He baptized me for the women and Dad baptized Abraham for the men. The sun was shining and there were beautiful roses everywhere and we had a beautiful day. Both Larry and Abraham wore a temple pin on their suit jacket to commemorate this special day. Afterwards, we asked Abraham for his favorite place to eat, and he suggested Pollo Campero. It is actually a chain of restaurants, and the food was delicious. Chicken with platanos and beans and fresh corn tortillas. That night we attended a baptism. It was supposed to start at 6:00. The room was packed with people. The leader announced at about 6:10 that we would wait for the parents to arrive before we started and that they were only 3 minutes away. Finally, they arrived at 6:40 and we started. There were about 15 children there, and they were all so tired of waiting in that tiny, crowded room and they were very noisy during the baptism. But that is the culture. And we may never get used to it, but we try to be patient.

By Sunday, we were starting to be a little tired. We forgot things like turning our heater off and bringing our water bottles. But we arrived at church in one piece. We saw that a gang had tagged our church with gang language. Do you think this was a result of the blessing Larry gave to a gang member inside that church? We do not know. We are so safe and protected in Laramie. As Dad and I sat in the front and led the music, we looked over at our favorite little family. They have seven children, and they sit in the front row every week. I wish I had a picture, but all seven children were active, coloring, fidgeting, etc. And BOTH of the parents had their eyes closed, their heads tilted, and were fast asleep. That's how we felt, too!  After this first meeting, we drove to our second branch, and there, Dad and his friends Everardo and Jose joined the men's choir to sing a hymn. The conductor was another man from our branch, and I was so proud of all of them. Music is not something that our friends can learn growing up in Mexico. Finally, when we visited our friends with two cute little girls, during our lesson, the girls snuck out, went into a storage room, and they came back with two bottles of water. They wrapped these in paper towels, like a present, and they brought them to us. We loved it so much! The simple ways people show love have taught me so much about showing love to others.

And that's our week. One in which I learned a lot about loving and being patient. One in which I gave a very short surprise talk in a church meeting - in Spanish, of course, and one in which we learned to pace ourselves so that we could do everything we wanted to do in order to help our friends and fellow missionaries. We feel so blessed.