Eighth 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: Elder Bromley (Tokyo Japan), 5 departing missionaries (Hna Hunt, Hna Martinez, Elder Foutz, Sis Sagers, Sis Rasmussen)

We attended the English Connect class in Moorpark taught by Hnas Silva/Van Brocklin and they did very well; also in Oxnard taught by Hnas Dickinson/Darrington, and their class has grown to 6 students.  

We attended the following baptism:  Erika Tolentino

We were privileged to teach 21 lessons—mostly with the junior missionaries, but we are teaching more on our own (all focused on retention).  Always a highlight!

A couple of upcoming highlights—we have arranged to have Bro Jose Rangel receive his patriarchal blessing in Spanish (must travel to Newbury Park stake); and even more exciting—we're taking Abraham Torres to the LA Temple this Saturday to do 7 baptisms for the dead (his dad, all 4 grandparents and 2 great-grandparents)!! 

El Camino Real cancelled their late (7p) Sacrament meeting because it fell on Easter Sunday, but we should be back up and running this coming Sunday.

Hna Weatherford does her regularly weekly service (1^st time i've reported it though) of 3 piano lessons to Belia Soto (Stk RS pscy), Emma Giron (ward RS Prez effectively) and Deysi Tenorio's daughter.  We've also started helping an elderly lady in Leisure Village get settled into her new place.

Week 26: Camarillo, CA

Dad and I have been sneezing our heads off and we have red eyes, and yes, we are loving spring! In fact, if you follow national headlines, you will see that in California, we are having a superbloom of flowers, poppies in particular. It is visible from space. So yes, this week Dad and I went in search of the huge fields of poppies and we took lots of pictures. We loved all the flowers that were blooming in the fields. 

We started the week by watching the field of brussel sprouts behind our duplex. At about 5:00 in the evening, about 20 workers came with a big tractor and some kind of processing machine, and they worked into the night using machetes to cut off the leaves, and with bright lights, machetes to chop down the plants (about 18 inches high). Then about 10 people sat on  a machine to process the brussel sprouts and load huge trucks with loads of brussel sprouts on a conveyor belt. We were absolutely amazed at the process. The workers finished the entire field in two nights, and now they are preparing to plow it under. So Dad and I ran over and filled four walmart bags with brussel sprouts that escaped the trucks. Some of the brussel sprouts were huge! I actually heard dad say, "We have so many delicious brussel sprouts." Can you believe it?  We now have enough healthy vegetables to last the rest of our mission. 

This week, we helped at a couple of English Connect classes. The classes are fun because they help me realize how ridiculous the English language can be. We taught our friends how to talk about their morning, with phrases like wake up, eat, shower, etc. Then we taught them that when they talk about she or he they should add an s to the end of the verb. Well, most of our friends had to drop out of school in the third grade to help their parents on the farm, so they did not understand the meaning of a verb. But they try so hard to learn English. So they say, "He showers. He get ups in the morning." And we smile.  We love them and we are reminded every day how incredible it is that we could go to school for 16 or more years and that we were born in the US to great parents. We also taught a few piano lessons, and again I felt so blessed to have had the opportunity to learn music. 

This week, our bishop made an emergency call to Dad because the Bishop didn't have a speaker for church. So Dad gave a beautiful and hopeful talk. It was very sweet! And the Bishop's wife gave me a stuffed animal that she crocheted to say thank you. We will always feel so much love from our time here.We're very glad that we came. 

Week 25: Camarillo, CA

All of a sudden, California is not so cold, and all the flowers are in bloom, and the whole area is stunning. We feel so blessed to be here! And we're sneezing a lot. 

We had a fun week! We started by waking up at 2:00 AM to take a missionary to the airport. After we were finished, we high-fived each other and said our work was finished. Little did we know . . . . the missionaries who were supposed to come from Utah for transfers experienced a ton of snow in Utah and their Monday flight was cancelled. Then, the Tuesday flight was majorly delayed. That means that the missionaries arrived late on Tuesday night and needed to be trained on Wednesday morning. So we took the returning missionaries to the airport on Wednesday morning, and of course, all their flights were delayed, and the airline could only find flights two days later. What a mess! But after two or three hours of working, we got all five of our missionaries on flights home. What a relief! We celebrated by eating some clam chowder on the water in the Santa Barbara pier. The ocean was stunning. As usual, we were dead tired by the evening. 

On Thursday, we taught piano lessons and bought some bacon avocados from a fruit stand on the way home. They are SO SO good! We had the opportunity to meet with a few of our friends this week, and we chuckled at their names in English. For example, Pedro de la Rosa is Peter of the Rose, and Jose Fuentes is Joseph Fountains, and Pedro via Lobo is Peter Way of the Wolf. Very cool names! By the time Friday came, we felt that we needed some time to relax in nature, so we drove the 20 minutes from our house to Point Mugu (pronounced Magoo). We hiked in the mountains with a view of the ocean and the first wildflowers of the season. Then we sat by the ocean and enjoyed the sunshine, the sound of waves, and the whales we saw from the beach. That night we went to the church building to meet with some friends. A woman was circling around the parking lot in her Suburban. When she saw Larry, she asked him if he could give a blessing to her son. So we asked if we could talk to him. We asked if he really wanted a blessing and how he was feeling. He said he was depressed. We asked if anything had happened that depressed him. He told us that being in jail was depressing. (He is 15 years old.) Then we asked why he was in jail. He said he was a member of a gang, and he was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder. That's when Jenny started feeling more than a little nervous. There are definitely scary gangs here in California. But Larry gave him a beautiful blessing, and we hope that he can start over without the gang. My guess is that his life is in danger. 

So again, we felt stressed. On Saturday night, we went on a date to a Thai restaurant, and we supported an English Connect lesson. On Sunday Larry translated two talks from English into Spanish, and I tried to make sure the headphones worked. We did our usual piano playing and leading, and then we had dinner with a family from Mexico. It was really good, as always. They served fish tacos and this Mexican bread pudding with raisins and nuts for dessert. Yummy! Their Easter traditions include lentil soup and this bread pudding, and we were so glad to share in these. So yes, it was a very busy week. But -- very rewarding! 

Week 24: Camarillo, CA

Happy Holy Week! Our week was pretty typical. California is in bloom and we have taken as many walks as we can among all the gorgeous flowers. I have been sneezing my head off. This week, we taught lessons and helped people with government paperwork. We gave piano lessons; we cooked a lot of food for various gatherings. We visited our friends in La Colonia, where people from Mexico live with two or three families in a small house, and where a chicken walked ahead of us on the sidewalk (in photo). We cleaned the church building, we watched general conference with our friends in Spanish, and we took a missionary to the airport at 3 AM this morning. He finally got his visa for the Tokyo Japan South mission and he was SO excited! We told him all about grandma and grandpa and how much they loved serving in Japan. We learned the word for brussel sprouts in Mexico is bolitos (little balls). And Abraham returned from Yuma, then we said goodbye to Elder Bethers, who is being transferred to Ventura. All in all, it was a wonderful week.