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!

Meetings, meals, and missionary work

We had three great days of interviews and activities with the missionaries.  Hopefully, you can sense on their faces the happiness they find in being here and doing what they are doing.  We sure enjoy them!

First, our purpose for being here is to bring others to Christ through understanding the doctrine of Christ and making sacred covenants.  We had three more wonderful baptisms this week.  These missionaries are truly putting their hearts out there!

These are dedicated young people that not very long ago were pursuing more self-centered activities.  Now their time and energy is spent in bringing others to Christ.  They can also sing.  Only one sister in this choir because the other was playing the piano.

Like last week, we met in a district council and did interviews with each individual missionary and then had a meal with them.  We ended with a missionary activity on the streets.
Their favorite part is the meal, maybe.  They just enjoy being together.

 For the backdrop of our interviews this time, we used the sign out front of the restaurant in which we ate.  This is a chain favorite among missionaries because it's a buffet!

 They love working together.  We feel bad because two sisters were so anxious to go off to visit with people on the streets that they were gone when we stood to take this picture.

The next district we got a group picture at the park.  We ordered some "Mom's Touch" which is a chicken sandwich with fries and ate at the park.  It's hard to make out the detail, but we tried.  We then took pictures together.  We are using the local outdoor exercise equipment.

They always have fun while Sister Turner poses them...

 yes, she even poses me!

 They had a missionary activity with members of the local ward next to a subway station to chat with people about the wonderful Book of Mormon.  It turned out really well.  We were expecting heavy storms that night, but they didn't materialize.

 Then, the camera ran away again...

The south part of South Korea was hit hard by a typhoon , but when it started to head toward the Seoul area, it's path shifted and went south of all of us and instead of 60-70 mile an hour sustained winds and torrential rain, we had a light rain and slight breeze hit us.  We asked them to have an early curfew and hunker down.  It all ended up a very calm experience.  It lowered the temperatures.  They had a quiet day and then went back to work.  Really they were disappointed they couldn't tell everyone they had survived a typhoon. :}

We interviewed another district and had a great district council with them as well.  We had a nice meal and then together with another district did 'busking' which is singing in public.  Normally, you ask for money, but we just wanted to make people happy.  With 16 missionaries plus Sister Turner and me, we were all very busy at the local Suwon train and subway station talking to people by the bus stop.

We were all so busy talking to people that no one took a picture of those performing!  We have so much talent in this mission.  This zone is particularly loaded with singers and pianists.  The missionaries even captured us chatting with people.

 We missed one sister here because she was busy talking with a person about the possibility of learning more.  She waved us off so she could continue working!

Once again, the camera ran away...

Finally, a very nice church member gave some missionaries fresh peaches.  Just so you know, peaches are in the range of US$3 - US$5 each!  They shared two with us!  These are like gold.  We thanked the elders and asked that they thank the member.  We enjoyed them with our breakfast!

We are blessed by cooler temperatures and some additional rain this week.  We are very excited because the missionaries can be outside much more talking to the people they enjoy so much.  We will have a great mission tour with two members of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy and their wives this week.  We'll have more pictures next week.

Thanks as always for all your love and support.  We are enjoying your sons and daughters.  We try to treat and care for them like they are ours  (which they are :]!) Thank you very much!