Week Two

Sisters with the Mission Pres. & His Wife

Here’s a picture of our Mission Pres & his wife with two sisters who gave us a great lesson from Preach My Gospel on July 4th. The foot boot on the left one resulted from being hit by a car while standing on the sidewalk. Sometimes walking can be as dangerous as driving.

We attended a zone meeting and a district meeting this week. The teaching by the Senior Missionaries was outstanding. The three elders below are the Portuguese-speaking elders that are in our district and live close to us. The two at the right are from Brazil and the other one is waiting for his visa to go to Brazil. They are great and we really enjoy them.

Our Portuguese Speaking Elders

This has been a week of much learning for us. We finally figured out how to electronically send MRI image files to the Salt Lake missionary medical office. Sis. Nielson & the First Lady (as she’s called by the mission accountant) had training on mental health issues for missionaries. So far they’ve dealt with flu, colds, stomach problems, accidents, kidney stones, insect bites, allergies, etc. We have both enjoyed getting to know our missionaries. We had different sets of missionaries over for dinner two nights last week, and are planning on two other sets this coming week.  

Our New Spanish-Speaking
Elder with His Parents

Kirk started learning about mission cars & bikes (repairs, billing & records, accident reports, etc.) He also hooked up an office scanner to a couple of computers to scan to pdf's. We’ve had some torrential rains several days in a row, and have taken some of the bike elders to their meetings. One of those meetings was a Saturday night mission farewell. The picture at the right shows the missionary with his parents. He is the first elder we know of who will go directly to his mission without first attending the MTC. He is already fluent in Spanish and has often taught missionary lessons with the Elders here in Orlando.  

We’ve really enjoyed our ward here.  It turns out that nearly all of the ward speaks Spanish, and the meetings are all in Spanish. Kirk bore his testimony last Sunday in Portuguese, though, and most everyone seemed to understand ok. Kirk’s still working to understand Spanish, however, and everyone speaks English to Jan. One sister handed Jan an English Relief Society manual last week.  Today a Sister was showing Jan the lesson and the quotes in Spanish so she could learn. We both miss a lot of what’s being said, but we’re trying to learn.  Our work during the week in the mission office is all in English, so at least we understand that as well as we can.

We were able to go to a Baptism service yesterday for a woman from China who has been in the US for 20 years and found that the gospel of Christ is just what she needed. It was a wonderful meeting.

Yesterday we bought a dedicated GPS for our car because our cell phones lose charge while driving if we use the GPS while we’re talking. As we checked out of Costco, the doorman saw our missionary badges and our GPS box and remarked that he thought that all we needed was the Bible to keep us from getting lost!  Jan said that’s true, but right now we still need both kinds of guidance. We'll try to post again when we can.