Week 49...Happy Mother's Day!!!

May 12, 2014

      Motherhood is a tough job...there are days when it seems that the job is less the glorious and it most certainly couldn't be divine.  Plain and simple, it's hard work!!!  The hours are long and the pay is almost non existent.  There are never any paid holidays and it seems that it's hard to ever get a day off.  There's no user manual for those sweet little things that come from heaven and even if there were, there's not a troubleshooting section.  During my lifetime, boot camp for the kids and a deserted island (or a sanitarium) for me have seemed like lovely destination spots at times.  There are times when "calling it quits" seems like the only option.  However, when the payoffs come, they come BIG and yesterday was one of those payoffs for me.  Life doesn't get much better for a mom than when she gets that long awaited phone call from her favorite missionary son on Mother's Day.  It made my heart swell about 10x bigger than normal and I was filled to the brim with gratitude and joy as we were able to talk and laugh (for over 2 hours :)  and all while seeing his handsome face too.  Technology is amazing and I'm sure lucky to have a son serving during the "techno" age with all of the finest techno gadgets available.  He looks and sounds fabulous.  It was reassuring to be able to see that he's healthy and happy and that aliens and raccoon rabies have not overtaken his body :)  It was fun to see that he still has the same cute little mannerisms and quirks as he did when he left.  I didn't think that Mother's Day 2013 could be topped (missionary farewell :) and 2013 will always be memorable and one of my favorite, but Mother's Day 2014 will go down in the record books as Fantastic, Divine, Joyful, Filled to the Brim with Gratitude, Awesome and Happy :)  It pays to have him living in the sticks and confined to his little town.  Without the opportunity/time/miles to travel anywhere else for the evening we were able to talk until it was time for them to return home.  Special thanks to the single man, Bro. W. for letting the Elders invade his home and evening and use his computers. 

 Elder Muir

 Elder Muir & Elder G retelling the fate of the raccoon

 Elder Muir & Flat Zach

 Mother's Day 2014 family selfie

1. How was your week?  What were the highs/lows?  I’m sure we all know what the biggest high was…it was awesome being able to SKYPE with you all yesterday.  I hope you were able to see the church’s new social media campaign about Mothers and the divine calling of motherhood.  There is a video and a bunch of quotes.  It was really awesome and I thought of you a whole lot while I read through the quotes and watched the video.   http://motherhood.mormon.org/?cid=HPTH050814094.  I loved talking with you all yesterday.  But wait, believe it or not there are a lot more highs this week besides Mother’s Day.  So last week we had a Zone training that was down in Johnstown.  Monday night we slept over at the DuBois Elders’ apartment because it was such a long drive.  It was a 3 hour drive and we would have had to leave at 7am Tuesday morning to get there on time.  It was pretty fun, but that was an all-day event. We did not get back to DuBois until about 4:30 pm.  The Zone training was very good and President attended the training.  He gave a good lesson on how to use our time wisely and become better planners.  After the zone training I had an exchange with one of the DuBois Elders so I ended up staying overnight there.  It was fun to be in their area.  With all of that going on I was not back in my own area until Wednesday night.  Another high was that we had a couple of less active lessons on Saturday.  One of them was with S, (the girl we picked up from Sis. S).  We had a great lesson #1 with her and we really focused on the importance of the BOM with her.  It was cool to teach her and see how she really wants to start coming to church again.  We’re praying she can continue to progress.  Also, another less active lady in the ward reached out to some members and she wants to start coming back to church as well.  So we started teaching her on Saturday too.  Her step mom is an active elderly lady that lives in the ward so this should start going well also.   A low is the weather has been hot and humid.  Also since the weather has been nice, a low has been seeing everyone outside having big bon fires and doing work and things around the yard.  Basically, it just made me jealous and I wanted to be doing all this back at home.   
2. How's the weather been?  It has been hot, humid and rainy.  It is supposed to be warm and rainy most of the week and then cool down by the weekend. 
3. What's your favorite area to visit?  Ridgway is pretty cool.  However, I'm going up to Kane this week and that sounds kind of cool also. 
4. What town is the most city like?  Which has the most businesses?  St Marys and Ridgway probably feel the most city like.  Ridgway is the county seat for Elk County so they have a lot of government stuff there.  In Johnsonburg the main industry is paper.  They have a huge paper plant there and it always smells like sulfur.  It is awful!!!  They have been making paper there for a long time and they are known for paper milling. 
5. Are you starting to feel comfortable in the area?  Yes, I do wish I could get to know the members better, but like I keep saying, everything is so spread out it is hard to get to know everyone because we don’t have enough miles to travel everywhere.
6. Does Elder G think he will be transferred?  He is not sure.  He thinks he is staying but we will find out this weekend. 
7. Who's the DL in your district?  His name is Elder H . 
8. What do you have planned for this week?  We are possibly going to help the S  do some yard & garden stuff on Friday.  On Thursday we are going up to Kane.  A lot of the time is spent driving around and then parking and walking around the smaller towns.  We don’t have many miles so once we get to the town we walk.  Especially with our car situation we have to conserve miles so we can get all the repairs done.  We have to get an emissions test but it’s not required in our county but it is in the other places (the mission cars move around the mission).  So we have to drive a considerable amount of miles to the city that does the test and we don’t get extra miles.   We are going to try to do that when we drive to Cranberry for Elder Holland’s meeting next week.  Also, we need new tires but we’re waiting for approval from our fleet coordinator (he’s waiting to hear from SLC).  So that is the main stuff going on right now.  Also we have a dent in our car (it was there when we got it, no one seems to know how it got there) and we have to get it repaired. 
9. What are your plans for pday today?  We’ll go shopping at WalMart and then I am not sure we’ll do after that.  We can’t get together with the other missionaries because it takes too many miles.  
10. What are 5 positive things from the week?  1) The Zone training  2) The sleepover with the DuBois Elders  3)  Obviously, our Mother’s Day SKYPE  4) We had quite a few less active lessons
11. Dinner appointments this past week?  Upcoming week?  Any interesting/new food?  We don’t have much planned for this week, bu we do have dinner on Sunday with a family in the ward that has 12 kids.  The mom and dad are from Africa.  We had a dinner appointment with B family last Monday and it was fun.  The live near DuBois in a place called Treasure Lake.  It’s kind of like a gated community (kind of like Pepperwood idea) and they live around the lake like at Tahoe.  We have dinner with our branch mission leader every other week.  Last week on Saturday night we had dinner with an elderly lady from the ward.  Afterwards we taught her step daughter a lesson.  I tried brussel sprouts and they were pretty nasty.    
12. How's the work with your investigators going?  It is going decent but still kind of slow.  Unfortunately, we spent a lot of this past week doing mission stuff (zone training) and traveling. 
    
    
1. J Joan?  We found out that she is still in the hospital so at least we now know where she is.  We are going to try to visit her in the hospital.  We still have not seen her except for the one time a couple of weeks ago. 
2. Tim & Rachel?  They keep flaking on us so we are about ready to drop them, we’ll see what happens.
3. The girl with Sis. S (new investigator)?  She is doing well. She’s the one that we focused a lot on the BOM with and she really wants to come back to church.  We are going to go back with Sis. S  on Thursday and we’ll see how it goes.  Her name is S.   
4. Any new leads?  The other less active lesson we had on Saturday was a step daughter of an active lady that wants to start coming back to church as well.
13. Any service opportunities?  Like I said above, we may go help the Shicks this week  and then just our normal stuff at the senior center. 
14. Did Elder G get to SKYPE with his family?  Yes, he SKYPED and they got it all figured out. 
15. Who's house were you Skyping at?  Do you know him very well?  We Skyped at a member’s house, Bro. W.   He live by us in St Marys.  He is a convert of about 8 years and he is the branch clerk.  I kind of know him, but not super well. 
16. How many members live in St. Mary's with you?  We have about 6 or 7 active members and there are quite a few less actives. 
17. How come you live in St. Mary's instead of Ridgway (if the church is in Ridgway)?  St. Marys is the most central to all of the areas that we cover.

It’s hard to believe that another week has gone by, time is passing quickly.  It was so great to talk with you yesterday.  Love you and miss you!

Love,

Elder Muir