He has been praying for Spanish missionaries...

I met a lady that works at the post office. Her son has a different name than hers, but we got talking, and it turns out her son works high-up in estimations or something at Brasher's. Small world; I am blanking on his name though. I also met the Hatch family. Raina sent their address, and it turns out they only live a block and a half away from me, so we stopped by and said hi to them. They invited us over for Thanksgiving! If I am still here around that time, I will go over there.  Thanks for everything, Raina.

So are there any mission calls yet? President Hiers came up this week and talked to us about some possible changes as a result of the new age. He came up to eat lunch with our zone and let us know that Elder Senn's trainer went home early. Elder Senn was pretty sad about that.  President Hiers just kind of told us, “Well you can see what happens when you are disobedient. Try to make better choices than the two of them did, because they both had to go home.”  The picture to the left is a copy of the mission culture we are trying to adopt.

You can keep Elder Senn in your prayers; his dad had a heart attack (he is 85) and is in the hospital. His mom is in the hospital for something else; I can't remember why. (She is 51...huge age gap between them!).  I went with Elder Senn to get his patriarchal blessing finally. The Spirit was very strong, and I understood everything said, then as soon as it was over, I forgot everything. It was really weird. I remember thinking about the things said to him during the blessing, but as soon as the patriarch said, “Amen,” it was like my memory was wiped, and I had no idea what he said. I guess that’s the Lord's was of telling me that's really none of my business to know what was in his blessing.

SO we traveled up to Montpelier for the first time. Se went to the English class, and then played soccer for a little bit with all the students (15 Hispanics), and then spent the night at the missionaries’ house up there, because it’s an hour drive. Then we had a guy named Roger Hunsaker drive us around to see a bunch of potentials all the next day. He is not the ward mission leader, but he has been working with these people for years (he speaks very broken Spanish), and said he has been praying for Spanish missionaries to come up for a while. All the people knew him really well and have taken the lessons before. We will try to work up there once a week now, but it’s tough; work on a ranch doesn’t have a schedule. We will get a ride up once a week with the daily dose couple, spend the night, work there on foot as much as we can, and then Brother Hunsaker will drive us home at the end of the day. I hope work goes well up there. It is a challenge to drive up there and especially without set appointments, but it just needs to be done. I talked to president about the need for more Spanish missionaries, and it surprised him. He said he would work on that, so hopefully there should be more up here soon.

'that's the first time I have been homesick...I can't tell you how excited I am'

So, Elder Kearon had me called up to the front desk so that I could meet him. The security is pretty tight (because of the mission president's seminar), and they don't let missionaries up there. The lady almost wouldn't let us up, but she called the front desk, and they had us sent up. At that point, I still wasn't sure why, but then we met Elder Kearon. He just talked about how much he loves my parents, and he is very proud of me. It was a really great experience. It felt really cool to be called up to the front desk by a general authority. His accent was awesome. He asked us if there was anything he could do for us, and we quickly regretted saying no thinking maybe he could've gotten us some "mission president food," but it was good to meet him. We asked if there was anything we can do for him. He just told us to work hard, so that's what I plan on doing! I did remember you had spent the weekend with him, but he didn't say much about it. He just mentioned briefly that he had seen you. That was very nice of him to think of me. Make sure to thank him again for me. 

Well another week has past. I leave for Ogden in about ten days. I am sooo excited! I got to meet my mission president this week, which was great. President and Sister Hiers seemed very excited to serve with us. They are from Boston. Neither have served a mission, because he was convert at age 20 and married her pretty much right after, but he was just released as a stake president. He has started several different businesses and sold them. For the past few years, he has been travelling the world training CEO's and high-up executives in companies. He defnitely knows how to be a leader. There were about 40 missionaries headed to the Ogden mission there; which is a lot more than all the other missions. They are really packing up the Utah missions, because they want to have a lot more walking areas and focus a lot on reactivation now. Everyone in that room were people that are still staying in the Ogden mission since they will change our boundaries on July 1st before any of us get there. I am so excited to serve with him. We didn't talk to him for too long since there were so many of us, but I look forward to talking to him more in the future.