Our First Week In The Mission

We attended church Sunday morning and enjoyed the ward, but we are not sure we will be assigned there. The President assigns different senior missionaries to the various wards in the area.  I am not sure how many wards there are in this area, but there are five stakes in the mission, which covers the entire top third of the state of Ohio. In Relief Society, I bore my testimony at the end of the lesson—they were short on time, so I only said about three sentences. In the early afternoon we went for a long walk in the sunshine along the beautiful tree-lined streets in our neighborhood, and at 4:30 we went to the Brumfield’s apartment for dinner with them. We like them very much and they are good trainers.

Monday we began our service as family history records preservation missionaries. We drove our car, following the Brumfields, into downtown Cleveland to the beautiful courthouse where we would be serving.
Monday evening we went again to the Brumfield’s apartment for the monthly Family Home Evening of the senior missionaries in the zone area. Each one told a bit about themselves, we had a lesson of a video clip of President Monson, played some games, and had yummy refreshments. Different ones host it each month and our turn will come.

Tuesday was my 48th year as a member of the Church, my baptism being on 5 November 1965.

Wednesday was Zone Conference for our zone, so we were off work all day. It was held in our chapel which is the stake center. President Vellinga spoke twice, and taught us all about helping the investigator to set a comfortable date for their baptism, instead of the missionaries setting the date. He also admonished each one to get a flu shot to stay well and not infect the companion. We also met his wife and she is wonderful also. We stayed for the entire conference, even though the afternoon was all teaching practice sessions that did not necessarily apply to us. But the president wanted us to stay so we could introduce ourselves to the other missionaries by speaking in the meeting.

Also on Wednesday, we got our Internet set up!!! So I wrote to the families right away. On Thursday we took our laundry with us to work so we could go to the laundromat afterwards. The washer in our apartment building does not work currently. We went over to the Justice Center in Cleveland to get our security badges, and we had to go through their security check, like for an airplane flight. Larry had to take off his belt, and in so doing, our camera fell off and was apparently lost. We did not discover this until later that night at home, so we went early the next day to check at the security desk, but no camera had been found. We still are praying that it will turn up.

Friday marks one week of mission service. To celebrate, we went out to dinner at Bearden’s drive-in close to our home. It was very good food and wonderful friendly service. Saturday we shopped for groceries, looked around secondhand stores, and went into Cleveland to the Health Fair at the Auditorium by the Convention Center. We got lost trying to find the way to downtown from a different angle than we take to work. But we prayed and eventually found our way and went in to the Fair. Lots of free stuff, like pens and pencils, food, information, flu shots, etc. When we got back home, Davy called us and we talked for quite a while. They will be flying to Turkey on Monday, Nov. 11, at 12:42 CST.

Saturday evening we went to the baptism of Pauline Bradley, and I had been asked by the missionaries to play the piano for the meeting, which I was thrilled to do since I had not played since we left home in Utah. Pauline is a middle-aged black woman, very fun and interesting, taught by the missionaries.