Crazy Couple of Weeks!!!

The week of preparing for transfers, conducting exit interviews, and finalizing the mission interviews is pretty full.  Follow that with the week of actual departures, new missionaries, orienting new missionaries and trying to get caught up and you end up with little time for blogs and extra notes.

That said, what a great few weeks.  First we finished the normal interviews and activities that happen every six weeks. In reviewing these pictures it almost appears President Turner is pushing the elders away from Sister Turner.... Not intentional!

We had a nice lunch and district council with this group and in closing they had one missionaries "dying" as he goes home the next week so they had a mock wake for him.

 everyone should have the opportunity to grab a drink from Burger King before attending a wake!

 And the camera had a mind of its own a few times....

We then visited with the office elders, the Assistants and the office couple.  We had a great lunch with them as well, but we forgot to take pictures. :( Sister Burr takes excellent care of us!)

We said goodbye to 13 wonderful elders, young men with great leadership, teaching, and ministering skills.  How we will miss them.  We had no sisters leave this time, quite unusual.

 Home to Idaho

 Home to Utah

 Home to the Philippines

 Home to Utah

 Home to Utah

 Home to the Philippines

 Home to Utah

 Home to Utah

 Home to Gwangju, South Korea

 Home to the Philippines

 Home to Georgia ( just in time for a hurricane)

 Home to Utah

 Family moved to Island of Mauritius just a few days prior.  He'll have a nice break!

So many amazing personalities, skills, talents, gifts, etc.  We say goodbye with tears and sadness and then drive to the airport in joy and excitement to meet the next group!  We had two Assistants and two sisters accompany us to the airport to pick up two elders and two sisters.  They are amazing!  Each group seems to come with a little better language skill.  They are all so eager to help in the work.  All of the new missionaries came from different locations in Utah.

Here they are with their trainers and the Assistants (on the far left):

We had enough changes that we have six of our districts with new leaders.  We were able to do some training with them.  Wow, what a fun group this will be.  We have a great mix of nationalities, length of service, prior experience, and personalities.

Our purpose is to bring others to Christ by helping them make sacred covenants such as baptism.  We continue to see rich blessings in the work.

As for other fun things happening in the mission, we continue to see interesting things:
If your kids wonder where  Pikachu ran off to...

 This is a true bull dog!  No doubt where this animal  hospital is!

 Looks like Stitch crossed the wrong motorcycle delivery guy!

Another interesting event to finish the weekend.  We were counseled to make sure we took a true preparation day, not preparation hours which is more like what we do given our schedule.  Trying to enjoy that this week and do some Christmas shopping we had an interesting event.  A young naval cadet in a hurry racing along swerved to miss a truck and found us instead!

 If you wonder what the true reason for back ups on the free are from, it is usually from something like this.  We were not injured in any way, but they sent two fire emergency vehicles and an ambulance along with two police vehicles.  The six lanes of traffic went to just two for a good hour.

 Here's what it looks like just after we got out of the car...

If you wonder how our weeks end, Terri captured a good picture during personal study....

That wraps up the past two weeks.  We thank you for your prayers on our behalf and for our wonderful missionaries.  We know we are not in heaven, but we have to be pretty close given the good people we are with every day!  Until we get another break!

Wow is it hot! Yet they just keep working! So many miracles.

The temperatures this week were hot accompanied by some strong humidity.  The temperatures were in the mid to high 90s with heat indexes of 110 degrees F.    Please know we encourage them to drink lots of water.  If you can add your sustaining influence in that matter, it will be greatly appreciated!

They play hard and they work hard.  They are working and seeing many miracles.  They play and relieve some of the stress.  A group of them got together to play soccer in the rain a few weeks ago.  The warm temperatures make the rain a welcome relief.

Then, they stack the wet shoes outside the house for drying and future use!  They're sad because the current temperatures are too high to do anything overly strenuous after about 8 AM

We started interviews two weeks ago and got through the majority of the areas.  We have only one zone remaining this next week and hope to get those pictures up quickly.

The first zone had one theme and then it changed at the next area with stairs to a 'prom' type picture.

 We blew it with the pictures below, I don't know what we were thinking being out front.  It's your missionaries you want to see...

 We finally figured it out here...

 Looks like the camera got away...

 Totally out of control...

 sorry for the problem with the lighting.

 Again?

These two escaped from interviews without getting a picture with us, but we wanted to include them as well. 

As you can tell we are not professionals nor are those we delegate the photography responsibilities to so not everything is perfect.  Any way you look at them, there's lots of light radiating from these fine young men and young women.  We have some couples here with us as well and we are so blessed to have them.  The remaining 18 or so will be on the next blog.

Fulfilling our purpose, we had several great baptismal services these past few weeks.  So many amazing things are happening!

We have great participation in the music area in the ones we were able to attend.

We did some training of our district leaders in the past two weeks, helping them better understand their role so they can be more successful.  We have fun with these guys.

Sister Turner showed she can be a missionary as well. She chatted with a man about why she's here and got his phone number and a chance for the missionaries to teach him.  The sister missionaries with her sent President Turner a note stating, "When Sister Turner does better work than we do!". You can see the sisters missionaries at each end excited for her.

We have a language program that helps missionaries be better in the language and to be better teachers.  Having completed and certified, we have a lunch with them.  We've had several of these luncheons, but we've been very remiss about pictures. We've been too busy cooking and eating!

We will include more of these every six weeks or so.  That's how often we do the evaluations.

Two of the zones had a special activity at a museum where they could make and fire ceramic cups.  They invited us to participate.  Several missionaries didn't attend because the cups take about a month to dry, fire, etc. and they didn't want to spend more money on shipping than the cost of the cup.  They are pretty wise young people.  We had a great time with them.

We were having a visitor from our Church building management group so Sister Turner helped do some basement cleaning with some very hard working, very smart elders.  We appreciate all they do.

Sister Turner and a few of our Sister Training Leaders and other missionaries will be participating in some training in September.  The initial meeting to discuss the training for the area resulted in this wonderful picture.

We caught sight of a couple on a date.  I'm rethinking our date nights...

Another couple of weeks have gone by in a blur (kind of like some of our pictures) and the next will also as we have so much to do to prepare for 17 wonderful missionaries leaving and six new ones coming.  So many tears of loss and profound gratitude for the small fraction of time we get with them now and an eternity of joy with them.  Thanks for preparing them! All our love, Roger and Terri Turner