Week 1

         This has been one busy week for our first week in the mission. We got into our apartment on Thursday and got a little settled. On Friday 8/3 we had our orientation lunch with the Mission Presidency. Brenda and I were privileged to sit at the table with the mission president and the branch president. We had 29 missionaries at the luncheon that are reporting in this month.

          It is a very interesting mission. We have 1200 missionaries in the mission, 70 of them are Elders that have special needs and the rest are senior missionaries. We cover a four block area. We are the largest mission as far as missionaries, but the second smallest, because the temple square missionaries only covers one block. We have missionaries in the Family History Center, Church Office Building(COB), Joseph Smith Memorial Building(JSMB) and the Church History Library.

          We will be in training for the first two weeks. We are being trained on our own family tree and are documenting all the names on our pedigree chart onto our PAF files. It is a lot of work and we come home very tired at the end of the day. After the two weeks of training, we will be given our assignment within the 20 zones of the mission. Once in a zone, we will be staying in that zone for the rest of our mission. Our training is in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the 3rd floor where the mission office is also located. It is wonderful to walk to our building and have to pass by the Church office building and walk through the beautiful grounds.They have already started working on getting the lights up for Christmas. Our apartment is about 1/2 block away from the Church Office Building, so we are able to walk to our training each day.

       The day after we checked in to the mission and had a short orientation, Brenda and I got permission from the mission president to fly home to attend the baptism of Ashlyn, our first grandchild and the blessing of Garrett our last grandchild. We flew home on Saturday morning and attended the baptism/blessing and then flew back to Salt Lake City on Sunday morning and were able to make it to our church meeting. 

            We are in the Ensine 3rd Branch, which is made up of the missionaries that report on the even months. We have at least 250 in attendance with 100% tithe payers and 100% with temple recommends. I hear that they are close to 100% home teaching, but Sacrament meetings are very quiet without any children. We meet in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building chapel. On Monday night, the branch had an aloha dinner in a park up the canyon. It was a wonderful meal and we had an entertainer that came and gave a great program. I wish I would have gotten his name. He has played several parts in church movies and had several songs that were in 17 miracles. He will also be singing for President Monson's Birthday.  

            Brenda got a terrible cold over the weekend. On Monday she was able to meet the on call doctor for our mission. We are the only mission who has its very own staff of doctors on call.

          This morning we were able to walk to the conference center and listen to the spoken word with the tabernacle choir. We met some friends for the broadcast that have come up for education week and decided to come early to visit with us for a little while.

          If you haven't guested by now, we are having a wonderful time and can not believe that we are here. We are really anxious to see where we will be assigned and can start learning our assignment. We will have what they call a "go forth" meeting on Friday to find our assignment, and then we will all go to the temple together and do a session and then have lunch in the temple cafeteria.