We had two talks to give this week. A 7 minute talk at Thursdays District Meeting in Coos Bay. Elder Wels’ subject was Good Works and mine was on Love of Family and Family History Work. I loved this quote by President Spencer W. Kimball;
“I hope to see us dissolve the artificial boundary line we so often place between missionary work and temple and genealogical work, because it is the same great redemptive work!”Those talks written, we then could start on our talks to be given in Sacrament for Invitation Sunday. Lee’s subject there was Eternal Families and mine was The Plan of Salvation. Elder Wels and I both struggle with talks. It is definitely uncomfortable territory for both of us. Though me thinks we are going to get plenty of practice here so perhaps we will eventually become more at ease with the process. Remember, I am just talking about the writing part of a talk……. the actual giving part of the talk is a whole other matter! I will deal with that later.
District Mtg. attendees: Elder Plumb & Elder Carlson, District Leaders:
(Elder Plumb is my Mitchell look-alike!)
Elder Jones & Elder Johnson, Zone Leaders:
Elder Jones & Elder Johnson, Zone Leaders
But first, we started our week by helping out and speaking at Corbit Stuart’s funeral. His wife was in attendance but she was not quite grasping the situation. It was so sad. Her oldest son, Greg, was on the stand to deliver the eulogy. The two other sons were with their Mom to try to comfort and calm her. She was not crying…. She was angry! At one point during the funeral she yelled out; “This is not real and I want to go home!” At the end of the funeral she wanted to see her husband and when they opened the coffin she told him to stop this nonsense and to get out of that box and take her home. This has been a very rough time for her. I know that if she knew the Gospel, she would have felt some peace from that knowledge. We will go check on her soon.
I was so happy to read about Brycie’s (Opps, I mean… Elder Shumway’s) great week. There is such a sweet spirit of happiness when a missionary has success in bringing someone to Christ. We got a little taste of that sweetness this week. I went to visit with the Ida Cluff, the lady I met in the RV Park office last week. I don’t think she has been to Church in a very long time. She and her husband were a long haul truck driving couple. She has certainly seen this great country of ours. But her husband was a non-member and they drove every day of the week. Her records are no doubt in the “dead letter file” somewhere in Salt Lake. She has one daughter and several grandchildren who are all active in the Church. She is very proud that her daughter is a seminary teacher. So after visiting a while I said to her; “Ida, you know the Lord sent me right here to the Bandon RV Park to find you and bring you back to him, don’t you?” She smiled and said “Yes”. She told me she didn’t know why she asked me about which church I belonged to. She said it just popped out of her mouth. By the end of our visit she told me she would come back to Church and she gave me all the needed information so we can send to Salt Lake at get her records sent here to Bandon. I made an appointment with her to take her down to the Bandon Chapel and give her a very private tour of it. I know that when she stands in the Chapel with the quiet surrounding her, her heart will be touched and she will know that she is returning home. I left her house feeling so light and happy. Thank you, Heavenly Father for this sweet moment.
This week we had some really good visits with Branch members. We had a lovely visit with President Stockford and his wife, Marita and their adult daughter, Jill. Talk about a talented family! He makes furniture and pet beds. Marita quilts and carves cypress knees into beautiful figurines. And their Daughter, Jill has a beautiful talent to paint and do ink drawings. This has to be the most talented family ever! It was a lovely visit. Likewise, we enjoyed Ron and Kathy Lecce. He is the Elders Quorum President and she is the Relief Society President. She also plays the piano for Primary and is the Seminary teacher. Talk about triple duty! The joys of a small branch! Friday night we spent the evening with Tammy and Gerry Greer, our new non-member friends who were once the neighbors of our fab friends, Bob & Rita Phair. We played Pictionary and both Elder Wels and I actually enjoyed it. We gave them an invitation to Invitation Sunday also.
We also had opportunities to serve… Tuesday night at the Barn and Thursday evening at the Family History Library. Friday we helped Linda Sessions move all the furniture in her living room so she could vacuum it. Elder Wels actually did the vacuuming! Then he scrubbed all her floors . I dusted and swept off her deck and washed the things up on top of her refrigerator. We also cleaned a bit in the yard and burned her garbage in a burn pile. She has quite a lovely 1 ½ acre property there. She took us to lunch with her non-member friends to thank us and so we could meet them and extend an invitation to them.
Saturday we helped the Cyr family clean the condo they had just moved out of and then helped the Brother Salt move a great big headboard bed thing out so he could put his new sleep number bed into the bedroom.
Last Sunday after Church I felt impressed to go back and visit with non-active Connie Jones and give her our little thought about the Atonement. She needed to know that she had done all she could to forgive someone who had offended her at Church. It was time now to hand that offense over to the Savior and let His healing spirit heal her. Later in the week she called us and asked Elder Wels to go give her friend Neana Bergeret a blessing. She had back surgery and she was really hurting. Connie came with us and afterwards told me that she was going to come to Church on Sunday. Yea Connie!
Neana Bergeret, on the other hand, is a completely different story. That story is impossible to tell at the moment. Our prayers are with her and we will check in with her soon. We also went around to all the less active members that we had met and gave them a special invitation to attend our “Invitation Sunday” Sacrament Meeting.
Wednesday we went to the Bandon Baking Company in Old Town and let the Powell’s serve us lunch. I had mentioned to a Branch member that I did not want to take advantage of the sweet invitation from the Powell’s to come and have lunch every day. When asked if we had gone yet, I told her no. She said we had better get down there or Sister Powell would have her feelings hurt. That is her way of serving missionary work. Guess we had better go once in a while. Elder Wels had a lovely meat wrap and soup and I had her delicious baked potato soup and one of her most fabulous cheesecake things in a muffin paper. Oh, my goodness. That dessert could make me go every day! She is so sweet to do this for us.
Scott’s company, Cropper Medical/Bio Skin has a yearly planning meeting for the heads of all their departments. They usually go somewhere for the week. They plan out their next year’s goal, working Monday through Thursday. Their wives come on Thursday night and they play on Friday and Saturday. This year…… months ago before our mission was even a thought… they rented a house in Bandon! How cool is that? So Saturday late afternoon Scott and Wendy came to visit and spend the night with us. We went to Old Town and Scott bought dinner for us at the Minute Café. We spent a fun evening with them back at the trailer. Scott gave us a most excellent teaching moment on bringing the Spirit into our lessons with less-active members and non-members. Wendy took great notes for us! Thanks Scott and Wendy! They spent the night with us, sleeping on our fold down but not too level couch.
Invitation Sunday was a success! There were ten less active or non-member people there! Way to go Bandon Branch! You really worked on giving out those invitations! And, Connie was there! The entire Sacrament meeting was turned over to Elder Wels and me. We chose the speakers, knowing that 2 of them HAD to be us! We chose Liz Olive to be our 3rd speaker. Such a good choice! Liz and Elder Wels spoke on the importance of family. And I was in the middle with a talk on the Plan of Salvation. Liz gave such a superb talk. She is an elementary school principal so how could her talk not be great? The actual giving of a talk up at the podium and microphone is very intimidating to us. Both of us were so nervous. We both worked very hard on writing our talks, wanting to say just the right things. We so wanted our talks to reach out and touch hearts. When I finished my talk and sat down, I looked at Wendy and she gave me a big smile. Then I looked at our Stake Mission Leader, Brother Olive, and he gave me a big smile and an “okay sign”. Thanks, you both made me feel so much better! Elder Wels gave a great talk too! We also chose the music. “I believe in Christ” for the opening song. Does that not just sing that Mormons are actually Christians? Our Sacrament hymn was “As now we take the Sacrament”. We had a rest hymn in between my talk and Elder Wels talk on family…”Families can be together Forever” and the closing song was “Teach me to Walk.” Thankfully we got a “job well done” from our Branch President and from some of the members of the Branch. We are happy it was successful. Elder Wels and Elder Shumway went after Church to take the Sacrament to Brother and Sister Roufs and to give them both a blessing. Bro. Roufs called President Stockford and asked specifically that it be Elder Wels who would come and serve him. How cool is that? Wendy and I stayed behind to have a lovely visit with Kim Yates, Cynthia Wright’s sister. Wendy was enthralled with her family story. Then home to warm up dinner for our boys. A short visit and they were on the road back to Ashland and we were off to a Stake Mission Leadership Training meeting in Coos Bay.
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