Seventh 3-week summary for President Carter

Dear Pres. Carter,

Here's a brief summary of what we've been up to the last 3 weeks--

We have given rides (to/from airports) to the following missionaries: E. Younger (home), Hna Denning (Dominican Republic)

We've been helping Elder/Sis Wilson with the old Nissan Rogues that need to have their hitches transferred over to the new ones;  we've also helped drive 9 new Toyota RAVs that arrived in Thousand Oaks down to the Mission Office.

We attended the English Connect class in Oxnard taught by Hna Marshall/Darrington, but only 1 or 2 students showed up.  

We attended the following baptism:  Abelino Hernandez (Hna Weatherford spoke)

We were privileged to teach 12 lessons—mostly with the junior missionaries, but we are teaching more on our own too.  Always a highlight for us!

El Camino Real had their 3^rd & 4^th late (7p) Sacrament meetings for Spanish-speaking members and we had a total of 17 & 19 souls there—always a wonderful spirit there!

We had a busy week with 4 Zone Conferences as well, but those are always so sweet to meet and be taught by the spirit with 30-40 wonderful servants of our Father in Heaven.

 

We made some huge progress towards helping our Camarillo Spanish group turn into a branch—we met with Bp Terry and the Stk Presidency and developed a plan to move this closer to reality.  Pres. Thunnell should let us know in coming weeks what they're going to submit to the Area Presidency in SLC.

By far, the highlight of this period was taking Jose Rangel to the Temple to be endowed and then he and his wife (Genoveva) to be sealed, along with their twin 15 year-old daughters!  those were 2 super special days (and we truly appreciate you not canceling one of those days in order to help with the sister missionary who need to go home accompanied by a sister).  Truly, that was a dream of mine since the MTC to be able to help at least one family get sealed in the Temple for eternity!

Week 23: Camarillo, CA

We truly enjoy your notes, your calls, your photos and videos, and every little thing that keeps us connected. Dad and I are now officially known as Guppa Guppa Silly (Grandpa and Grandma Silly). We are a performing group and we can sing "If you're happy and you know it" on Marco Polo. We also dance. We have a famous Donald Duck impressionist in the group. Our marco polo videos have received over 100 views in the city of Austin, Tx. And we're pretty sure we have some fans in Cheyenne, Wy, too. 

This morning, we got up at 2:00 AM and drove a sister missionary to the airport so that she could fly to the Dominican Republic to serve her mission there. Her visa came in on Friday afternoon, and she had to get ready to go quickly. When we returned home from the airport at about 5:30, we had a hard time falling back asleep, like we usually have, so we are a little tired tonight. But we enjoy driving with a missionary in our car and getting to know them a little bit. 

We had an amazing week last week. On Thursday, we rode on a bus with about 60 missionaries to the LA Temple. Larry's parents were married there in 1958, and it is a special temple. We helped a senior sister in the office prepare lunches for 150 missionaries the day before. She is quite forgetful, but really cute! She had us put the bread together with the meat and cheese, then place lettuce and tomato in another baggie to be added later. On Wednesday night, she stored all the sandwiches in her trunk, I think she forgot them. Thus on Thursday, another senior missionary said he was afraid to eat his. I told him that deli meat usually has a lot of preservatives, and I wasn't afraid to eat it. So we ate it and no one got sick. But we couldn't get the bread open. All the cheese and meat and bread were glued together. The cute senior sister who organized the sandwiches and forgot them in her trunk kept trying to get her sandwich open so that she could add the lettuce and tomato. Finally, I heard her say really loudly, "Well, I'll be. There's no way to get this darn thing open." And she ate it without the lettuce, as did we all.

The very next day, Larry and I picked up Brother and Sister Rangel and took them to the LA Temple for his endowment. It was a really special day and we loved being there with them. The four of us went to a middle eastern food place afterwards close to the temple on Santa Monica Blvd. Larry drove us along the Hwy 1 so that we could see Malibu and the beautiful Pacific Ocean. The next morning, Larry and I drove to the LA Temple again to meet the Rangels for their family sealing. They drove with their twin daughters in their truck and we met outside the temple. We were so delighted to see almost every member of our tiny Spanish branch there at the temple to celebrate with the Rangels. It was a very special day, probably the best day of our mission, and a fulfillment of Larry's wish to go with a family to be sealed. After the sealing, a young man who grew up in American schools, but part of the branch, suggested that we meet for tacos at the Tacos Tu Madre shop. Every time he suggested it, our members from Mexico would giggle and roll their eyes. Finally, they told us that Tu Madre is a very offensive curse word in Mexico. What kind of taco place uses a pejorative in its title? We were curious. It turns out that the "taco" place was in Persian Square and featured tacos with teriyaki sauce and tofu. They were delicious! I don't think the middle eastern owners had any idea that the name in Mexican was an offensive term.

Finally, on Sunday, we had our typical day of three sets of meetings, in which Larry led the music, I played, we both bore our testimonies, we provided food for a pot luck dinner, and we picked up our sister for her flight from Simi Valley (the place where Reagan is buried.) Our friends here love President Reagan; he found a way to offer them citizenship. We are exhausted, but very happy. Amazingly, on Monday night, Larry's fever lifted and he was able to get through our busy schedule without feeling sick. He has put 1000s of miles on our car here in Southern California. No easy task. I'm grateful for him.

From Larry -- Mom was also nice and didn’t throw me under the bus like she could’ve, because I was the guy who kept repeating the store name while walking on the Temple grounds and the branch members kept laughing louder and louder each time I repeated it, till I finally asked "does this term have some slang meaning other than your mama??" 

Week 22: Camarillo, CA

We survived our 11th atmospheric river rain and flooding and tonight we are beginning #12. Wow! It has been pretty cold here, and it is unusual. I tell our missionaries that they will always be able to say that they were in California during the year of all the rain and atmospheric rivers.

This week was different from other weeks because we had zone conferences. We usually have four days in a row of zone conferences with one-fourth of the missionaries invited to each one in four different places. We arrive an hour early to set up tables, take photos of the missionaries to post on Facebook for their parents to see, and help with cars if needed. I attached a photo of the car inspections that take place every 6 weeks at zone conferences. Then, we start a meeting with talks by our mission leaders. This time their talks were about the Book of Mormon and about how the sons of Mosiah met Alma the younger on the road. The leaders called that the first zone conference. Then, the assistants to the president (this is what Larry did on his mission) taught about how to listen as we talk to people and to hear the things that they are concerned about. They role-played this. Then, the sister leaders (this is what Amy did on her mission) taught everyone to turn off and on a bunch of tabs in Facebook that help them keep some privacy. Sometimes, uninvited people like to post dating sites and other inappropriate content on their profiles. So they taught about online safety. Then, we always eat a nice lunch. Larry and I always eat last, and on some days, there is no meat left. But we always survive. Then, Larry and I clean up tables, floors, and garbage while the zone leaders (like Joshua on his mission and Chase Bethers) lead sessions on how to study or get along with companions, etc. And finally, the mission leaders give a last talk. 

In the evenings, Larry and I help our friends with passport papers or divorce papers or an uplifting message. We are beginning to feel a little like lawyers. (except for the uplifting message, thank goodness.)  We also had a meeting with our stake presidency about creating a Spanish branch here in Camarillo, and we are so excited! 

The week was cold every day except for Saturday, and so on Saturday, our missionaries asked us to come help them teach two brothers about the bible. The brothers, Jesse and Ben, were sitting outside in their yard when we arrived. They are both learning disabled and they have been members of the church for years. We all sat on rickety chairs in the yard, but Larry had to bring the chairs over to the table, and he accidentally stepped on the tiny dog's tail. After that, this tiny dog named Shorty always barked when Larry moved his hands. Shorty only barked at Larry. I could not stop laughing. He watched Larry like a hawk. We sat under some gorgeous orange trees with blossoms that smelled so good. I thought it was amazing that these trees also had oranges on them, but I realized that the oranges were overripe. They kept falling off, and the hermanas would gasp when the oranges fell. They were so afraid that an orange would fall on their heads. Also, we all kept swatting bugs off our legs for the hour that we visited. So California in the sun might not be quite as promising as I hoped. 

Somewhere during the week, Larry caught a flu-type bug, so after our meetings on Sunday, he began to run a fever. We have been staying home and taking care of him. Our goal is to be better for Friday and Saturday when we are going to the temple with our friends from Jalisco and Michoacan, the Rangels. We brought a thermometer with us to California, but it reports that one of Dad's ears is a degree hotter than the other one.

Week 21: Camarillo, CA

We see that in Wyoming, the temps are moving up just a little, while the east is getting hit by storms. Ironically, among much of our family, Cheyenne is tied with the highest temperatures for today (that is if you don't count Texas which seems to be gorgeous right now). We finally figured out that the little field outside our duplex is growing brussel sprouts.

We had one of our busiest weeks ever last week. We keep adding more great activities to our days. Last week, we helped drive cars from the dealership in Thousand Oaks to the mission office, where the "car czar" Elder Wilson gets them prepared with a driving monitor and bike rack. Thousand Oaks is actually about 20 miles from us and then the mission office is another 20 miles in the same direction, so the trips take us about an hour-and-a-half for each car. The church is replacing cars that are only about 18 months old, and the worker at the dealership said that the church bought these 70 or so cars for about $29,000 in 2021, and now the church is selling them back to the dealerships for $31,000. That is part of the reason why we spend so much time driving new cars, the deal is too good to pass up.  

We have had a lot of rain, and the cars are now parked in the mission office parking lot, which is a shallow lake, thanks to the rain. Today, Tuesday, the 11th atmospheric river of 2023 in Cali made landfall in California, and our mission had scheduled a zone conference for the San Luis Obispo area. I wrote to the mission secretary and asked her when the leaders would decide whether to postpone or cancel the conference. Our missionaries travel 100 miles by car to attend, and the weather forecasts in every surrounding location had huge weather watches and warnings, the red exclamation marks. The secretary asked, "Oh, dear, what's wrong? Why would we cancel?" That's when I realized that with my Wyoming experience, we always allow for bad weather with the promise to cancel and reschedule, but in California, that is a foreign concept. Thus, our friends are out there somewhere in their cars, hopefully, staying afloat. Dad and I were assigned to take a young missionary to the airport, and as a result, we didn't have to drive in much of the bad weather. Dad did drive in rain, but before the flooding started. We were grateful for that. 

I would love to tell you a little about our friends to give you a sense of our typical week. Rogelio (age 60) is a friend who has been living with a very cute little woman, but who could never get a divorce from his wife in Mexico. He and his wife have been separated for 20+ years. So we are helping him with the paperwork and visited him Tuesday. The state of California is willing to grant a divorce to someone who lives here, even when he is not an American citizen. We also went to visit a young mom, Alicia, on Wednesday, who really loves me because I had 7 children. She has four. Her baby is named Jenny and her 3rd is named Amy. Her other two have the names of Larry's uncle and aunt, Jerry and Ruby. We just love her. She came to church and her baby, Jenny, was fussy. An older woman walked up, grabbed the baby, and kept her happy during the meeting, and we loved how natural it was for this woman to help and to love. We took cinnamon rolls to our friends, the Rangels, and their two daughters kept giving me hugs and more hugs because they loved the rolls. :) It made me feel good. We have a friend, Gilberto, who we love deeply, who comes to church all the time, along with his AA meetings, as a help to overcome his alcoholism. All of a sudden, he disappeared, and we are very worried about him. He drives a huge truck with his name on it because he is a heater repairman and installer, so we have been looking for his truck. We just want to tell him we love him. We fear that he took a drink somewhere and he is really discouraged. Our friends, the Chavez family, who we are helping to get passports, handed us a sack of warm tamales on Thursday, as we left their house and Larry is holding them on a plate in the picture. They were amazingly delicious!! The food here is SO good. Finally, we had a night on Friday with the two Hectors. The first Hector (a landscape company owner whose employees live with him) read one of Larry's booklets about Christ. He loves Christ, but he doesn't want to come to church. We asked him about that. He said that he has been meeting with missionaries for a year because he is a little too nice to tell them he needs some time away. He typically would tell a missionary that he wanted to stop the lessons, and then a new missionary would come back and start to teach again, and Hector would be too polite to tell them that he wasn't ready. Anyway, he was pretty cute, trying not to hurt anyone's feelings. So we told him we would listen to his polite request and give him a rest. Our second Hector (a solderer who helps create unique tractor equipment for the variously sized farms in Oxnard) that night asked about our church. He kept asking if we had commandments. We told him about the ten commandments, and he said, "Not those." Then we told him about the word of wisdom and alcohol, which is quite common, and he said, "No not that." Then we mentioned smoking and he said, "That's it!" He was so funny, he wanted us to guess. So we told him that we would start praying with him. get him some support, maybe nicotine patches, and find ways to help him quit smoking. He was so happy! It was a really cute, sweet night. Now I only hope that we can help him to quit. He will be so happy. And that's some of our typical week. 

On Saturday, Larry and I went to Glendale to meet our friends and his favorite mission companion, Paul Schofield. We had a wonderful two hours talking as fast as we could while trying to catch up on five years. Another of their mission companions is going to be the Bogota Temple president for the next three years. Then, we drove to Thousand Oaks, where some very wealthy patrons of the arts sponsor a performance of The Lamb of God with a huge orchestra and professional soloists. I was in heaven. All the benches in the typical sacrament meeting chapel were removed and the room was filled with the orchestra. Then we, the guests, sat on chairs in the gym. And the music surrounded us. It was amazing. I love taking advantage of the opportunities of living in a big city. When it was over, we drove to a baptism in Oxnard where I gave a talk in Spanish without notes. It went really well, until I started getting tired, and accidentally skipped a lot of the story I was telling. But it was a great experience. When I told the story about how the Holy Ghost helped me stay calm, I told the audience that I'm a very nervous person. Ha ha! Larry told me that Chase Bethers was on the front row, and he smiled and nodded his head. Yup! That fact wasn't news to him. And I might be just a little like his mom. Then, on Sunday, we went to our typical three sets of meetings. We have a long day, but we love the meetings, the messages of love given in Spanish, the chance to hug so many people who we have grown to love, the music which we love. 

Sixth 3-week Update for President Carter

Here's a brief summary of what we've been up to, trying to do as Jesus who "went about doing good' (Acts 10:38):

Hnas Waite and Lambert are doing pretty well.  we have seen some gradual opening of Hna Lambert's thick shell and mask.  we've continued to ask the Group Leader to have her lead the music and she has done that (with her mask off).  She has also taught part of 3 different lessons that we've taught with them (she did none of that with Hna Lambert that i recall).  just fyi on that companionship, per your request.

In the past 3 weeks, we have given rides (to/from airports) to the following missionaries:

E. Walsman (Zimbabwe)

E. Davis (home for surgery, then Uganda)

We've been helping Elder/Sis Wilson with 9 new Toyota RAV cars that have arrived in Thousand Oaks and even drove 3 of them up to Sta Maria.

We attended the English Connect classes in Newbury Park taught by Elders Larsen/Hinkle, but no students showed up. We also attended the class in Sta Barbara taught by Hnas Wooley, Mayne.   They did great—with 5 people attending. 

No baptisms this 3 week period...El Camino Real is in a mini-drought.

We were privileged to teach 20 lessons (maybe a record)—mostly with the junior missionaries, but we are teaching more on our own (Temple prep, priesthood prep, Family History).  Always a highlight for us!

El Camino Real had their second late (7p) Sacrament meeting for Spanish-speaking members and we had a total of 22 souls.  There was a wonderful spirit there and I believe it will continue to grow!

By far, the highlight of this period was finishing the Temple prep lessons for the Jose y Genoveva Rangel family (Camarillo group), who have now completed their interviews with Bishop Terry and will meet with Pres. Thunnel this week and then we will go with them to LA Temple to be endowed (him) and then sealed all of them together for time and all eternity! 

Have a great week and thanks for all you both do each & every day!  You are great mission leaders and we admire you both very much! 

Elder y Hermana Weatherford

Week 20: Camarillo, CA

We had such a busy week! First, we decided to try to live on a higher plain by loving our enemies. For us, our enemies are people who cut us off on the freeway. It was harder to do than we thought. We got some rain early in the week, and for a fun break from our work, Dad took me to the See's Candy store. It was such a fun girlhood memory. We made a lot of lemonade with the lemons our friends gave us. On Saturday we attended an English class in Santa Barbara and we spent some extra time there enjoying the beautiful ocean. 

Two of the families we teach invited us over for dinner this week. On Friday, we ate the most amazing fajitas. Genoveva Rangel and her husband, Jose, who is a truck driver and often drives through Laramie, made an amazing dinner for us. We love the Rangels so much that Dad says this love has affected how he feels about trucks on I-80 for the better. Then, on Sunday, the Chavez family made some Mexican "quesadillas" for us for dinner. These pockets of meat reminded me so much of Colombian empanadas, meat tucked into delicious dough and deep fried. . . . but then the Mexicans sliced the empanada open and added all sorts of avocados and tomatoes and sour cream and cheese, the meal was so good! I told Dad that I think Mexican food is famous all over the world (rather than Colombian) because of additions like this. In the photo, Chase and his companion were trying to get Josie Chavez to let them protect her cake and she said, "I see your faces look like that!" and she means that she sees that they want to eat her cake. The way they tease is so cute! As you can see in the photo, the Chavez family set a beautiful table for us to eat and they stood up behind to eat. They treated us so well with so much love!  

My Spanish is getting better. I was so proud of praying at the end of English Connect class and bearing my testimony in church on Sunday without notes. But then, yikes, at the Chavez home, the brother of Piedad Chavez began to talk and he looked me straight in the eye the whole time, for probably 15 minutes. He talked so fast, he never took a break to breathe, and I could tell by the way people around him were sitting quietly that his talk was not easy to respond to. I was so afraid that he was going to stop and ask me a question. I heard so many of his words, like criticism and things and sad and good man, but I couldn't put them all together in order to make a complete story. Thank goodness, later, Dad told me that he drinks alcohol and he feels like he is a good man but his brother (our host) criticizes him and makes him feel bad. Aha, no wonder no one knew what to say. Towards the end of his talking, I felt that little feeling like I couldn't breathe and I almost had a panic attack. So yes, I'm learning Spanish, but not fast enough to keep the panic attacks away.

I have included a picture of the coyote running right behind our apartment, we like looking for him and he comes regularly. This morning, we packed hundreds of boxes with California produce for those in need at the FoodShare warehouse. As you can see in our photo, Dad wasn't as tempted by the food as I was. Ha ha! On Sunday we had our usual very busy day, and Dad translated for the family who made the fajitas for us, the Rangel (Rahn-hel) family. He spent about an hour with the bishop who speaks only English. We are in a "Group" which is attached to this bishop's ward, and our group is 100% Spanish speaking. By the end of that hour, the bishop kept saying, "I LOVE the "Wrangle" family. They are so sweet!" And we saw in action how Mexican names become Anglicized. It was too cute! Maybe Wrangler jeans were invented by the Rangel family. Our bishop is one of the most loving men we have met, and we feel lucky to work with him. I'm sure it scares him to work with the Spanish speaking members of his ward.

We are very busy and very happy here. We are actually a little cold and we are preparing for more cold weather. There is still snow in our mountains. The picture I attached was taken from our church building, which is about 3 miles from the ocean. There is a high school in the foreground and our mountains behind. Wow! We didn't expect southern California to be like this, but we love it!