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.
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