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!

Two Special Witnesses and some Interviews and an Engagement

This was a busy week without many pictures.

We had three busy days with two members of the Asia North Area Presidency visiting our mission.  Elder Choi, Yoon Hwan is the Area President. Elder Takashi Wada is his Second Counselor in the Area Presidency.  They are both members of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy.  Elder Choi called nine years ago and Elder Wada called in April of this year.  They and their wives stayed with us in the mission home and we had great visits.  During the day they taught and inspired our missionaries and especially our leaders.  

If we were thinking we'd have taken more pictures during lunch and during training, but we were running busy!

After they left on Thursday, we hurried and prepared for more interviews.  We visited with the eight missionaries from Shinpung and Gokbanjeong before traveling to visit the couples in Pyeongtaek.  Unfortunately, we forgot to get a picture with one of the couples.  We'll have to make that one up very soon!

On Saturday, we had a special visit from one of our former Assistants and his fiancé.  We had the opportunity to have brief lunch with them and get to know this special young lady.  They will be an awesome couple!

Sunday, we had a wonderful "Why I Believe" fireside with the Seoul West Stake.  I wish we could have more pictures.  Only one picture got taken of the singers.  On Facebook you can find the two of them.

We did capture a few more random pictures this week:

In case you wondered where he was, he's here in Korea...

Yes, we still enjoy being together

 Just outside Camp Humpreys for dinner we could see the Army helicopters doing maneuvers.  The chopper stayed like that for what seemed like 15 minutes.  It was pretty cool.

 While running one morning I found these.  This one is a 50 something man on a bike with training wheels...  He must be a kindred spirit.

We also found a dog that looked a bit like our last dog who past away about five years ago. We acquired Chokosan (Chocolate Mountain in Korean) about 25 years ago when we lived in Korea. This was a fun moment to remember her.

We've heard many wonderful things about this hamburger place so we decided to take a trip.  We quickly found three local elders who wanted to venture to the same place.  It's somewhat like IN/Out Burger in the states.

Finally, here's to the woman who runs the mission office!  Happy Birthday, Sister.  We are a better mission because of all you do.

Another week has flown by.  This week will be full of more interviews, especially with the 13 who will be going home on the 11th.  We hope you enjoy these as much as we do.  We hope you all had a great Labor Day holiday in the US and there was joy in your life no matter where you live!