Seminary, Junior Missionary Day, DCM, Teaching Visit, Inspections, and Dinner / Dance

We went back to Seminary this week. It was hard getting up at 5 again. We enjoy our time in Seminary and really enjoy meeting with the kids. After Seminary on Monday morning, we had a Temple Prep lesson with Madison. We only have one more lesson left. 😢 We are going to see if she would like to continue meeting with us each week. We could do Come Follow Me or continue to talk about the Temple or whatever she would like. We have thoroughly enjoyed meeting with her each week.

We also got to visit MyLiege's family. Djeryd, Eva, and RUTHIE come over too. Djeryd shocked us with a haircut and shave. He looks so handsome. 😇And Ruth is so big. She turned a year old earlier this month. I can't believe it. I'm hoping they will join us more often. I have to make sure Ruthie knows us when we come home.

We actually watched a few movies in the afternoon for our P-Day. It was nice. Just after the second movie ended it was time to go to our Family Home Evening appointment. The Elders taught the lesson that night. We had a nice discussion, played a game and light refreshments. 

Tuesday has become our Junior Missionary Day. Not long after Seminary, we got a call from Elder Dixon wanting to know if they could come for Comp Study before Elder Cockbain had to do his "My Plan" call at noon. Of course, they also had some laundry to do. 😉We covered lots of things, including study, discussing people they are teaching in the ward and how we could help, as well as the Seminary lesson they were teaching on Wednesday.

While Elder Cockbain was on his call, Elder Dixon studied and took care of other business, I made some follow-up calls on some of the issues at their flat that we have been waiting on for a while. I also reported a new issue. Just before Elder Cockbain finished, Elder Moyes and Elder Tuaina showed up for their Pathway class. Elder Cockbain and Elder Dixon hung out for a while longer to check on the laundry before they headed out to do some work. We told them we would finish it and they could pick it up later. After the other two Elders left, Steve went grocery shopping and I worked on my Seminary lesson for Thursday. We were supposed to have the Sisters' comp study after that, but they postponed it until Wednesday.

The Seminary lesson the Elders did on Wednesday morning turned out awesome. They brought a big whiteboard and put it on top of the table. Everyone had to draw a four-square comic strip was a story about how to help a young woman who was struggling to understand how Jesus Christ could help her since she had committed sins. I think they learned about the Atonement as they drew their comic strip about how to help the girl. 

Elders Dixon, Cockbain, and Lea'ana in back.
Elders Sanders, Wilcox, and Sister Wilcox in front.

We had a great DCM meeting. Elder Sanders gave the training on a Seminary activity I used to do when I taught early morning Seminary. It is called Scripture Squeeze. I shared it with him last week when he and Elder Lea'ana were over for comp study after he asked me a question. I learned the idea from someone else when I was teaching Seminary. Anyway, it is a great activity and we had talked about ways missionaries could use it to help friends learn more about particular verses of scripture. It is a great way to teach them HOW to study the scriptures and more important, to find answers to their questions. It was a great training activity.

Elder Wilcox, Elder Moyes, Sister Wilcox,
and Elder Tuaina

After DCM, we stopped at several houses to invite them to our dinner/dance on Friday on our way to a teaching appointment. When we got the appointment, the sister had forgotten about it and was on her way to take care of something. She was standing outside waiting for a taxi. We rescheduled it for the next day.

Once we got home, the Bishop stopped by with some stuff for us to do. Not long after he left, the Sisters came for their rescheduled Comp Study. We barely started that, when we got a call from Elder Dixon asking us if we could go to the hospital to give a blessing. The brother was in Elder Sander's ward, but they were tied up in a lesson. They asked Elder Dixon, but Elders Dixon and Cockbain had to be at the flat at 4 to meet the repair many for their heat pump and asked if Elder Wilcox could do the blessing. 

Elder Wilcox, Sister Wilcox, Sister Chapman,
and Sister Ali

We had a great comp study with the sisters. They wanted some suggestions on how to share with a family they were teaching a little later that day. I hadn't come up with the right intro to the lesson. We brainstormed for a while and settled on a sports analogy since the whole family love sports. The Sisters were very excited to try it. Since they had the teaching appointment scheduled and they had a ways to go to get there, we ended our comp study so they could go to their appointment and we could go to the hospital. 

The brother at the hospital was in pretty bad shape. He had fallen off something and broken 5 ribs and punctured a lung. We told him we were there to give him a blessing and he said his nephew had just given him one and left just before we got there. We said we were glad he got a blessing and we visited with him for a while. Elder Wilcox and him swapped young missionary stories. He served in South Dakota from New Zealand and Elder Wilcox served in Australia from the US. They served about the same time and swapped some MTC stories. It was a nice visit.

Sister Enosa, Sister Ngawaka and Sister Wilcox in back.
Elder Wilcox, Sister Szott, and Sister Muaiava, in front.

We had a full class for our Thursday Zoom Seminary class. The three sisters that normally have sports on Tuesdays and Thursdays didn't have them and showed up on our Zoom class. It was nice to have more participants.  After Seminary we had our Mission Zoom SPF meeting. Elder and Sister Bennion trained on Alma 32. They showed a sweet interview they made with a sister in their ward who found the Church and then went inactive for a few years and then came back stronger than ever. They related her story to planting a seed in our heart and nourishing it. If we don’t nourish our seed, it will wither away. We can revitalize that plant by nourishing it again and it can still become vibrant and grow into a full tree. It was a great analogy.

Elder Wilcox, Sisters Chapman, Wilcox, and Szott

We were supposed to have Elders Sanders and Lea'ana over for their comp study, but neither of the Elders were feeling well. We bought cans for disinfectant spray for several flats in hopes of getting rid of these nasty germs that keep infecting the young missionaries. Since our time freed up a bit, we headed over to the teaching appointment we weren't sure we could actually make it. Elder Dixon asked if we could pick him up on the way since Elder Cockbain was a bit under the weather again. He feels good one day and goes out working all day and then he is in bed the next day because he over did it. Anyway, we had a great visit with Peti. No grandkids this week. Lol. We were able to share several things in the Book of Mormon and get her started on reading that. We told her about the dinner/dance the next day and she was excited to go. She asked if we could pick her up. We also scheduled an appointment for next Wednesday after DCM.

Elder Dixon carrying the Washer

We were ready to take Elder Dixon home so we could go pick up Brother Hester and his trailer to pick up the washing machine for Elder Dixon's flat, when he asked if he could go along. He as not anxious to get to the flat full of sick Elders. Lol.  So, the four of us headed to the repair shop. When we got to the flat, Elder Wilcox wanted to get the other Elders to help unload the washer. I reminded him they were sick and I was sure he and Brother Hester and Elder Dixon could handle it. Elder Dixon grabbed the handles on both sides of the washer and carted it all by himself to the laundry room. He 'da man!!! Elder Wilcox got it all hooked up and IT WORKS!!!  Once home we did some ward clerk stuff.

We did flat inspections on Friday. Everyone did a great job. They all managed to either be home or come home when we were there, so we were able to get pictures with the missionaries in each flat. We have six flats to inspect. One of them is empty, but we need to get it ready for missionaries in the near future. The flat we have had all the issues with before is in very good shape. This week the heat pump finally got repaired since the first part of June and we finally got them are working washing machine again. The only outstanding item now is the front two burners on the stove not working.  We inherited three flats from the Kreutzkamps. One is the empty one, and the other two have a few issues we are trying to address. Hopefully they won't take two months to get fixed. It all depends on who is doing the fixing. If Elder Wilcox can do it, it will be taken care of within a week if possible. If it goes to the landlord, then who knows. 

When we finished the inspections, we went home. We had a couple of hours before our ward dinner / dance. I worked on the inspection reports. I filled out a summary sheet for one person, but then I wrote a detailed email to the Garners with lots of other things. Elder Garner had asked us to check on several things that are not in the normal report, but all the different issues we found. Plus, we need to know what he was us to fix and what he may fix and what goes to the landlords. Or what, if any, they just have to live with. We currently have two vacant flats in our area. One has been a young missionary flat that I think they are going to fill again. The other is the Kreutzkamp's flat that EVERYONE wants. Hahaha. We are not expecting any new seniors and I know they want to turn it back to the leasing company, but I'm not sure if the contract has run out yet. Hopefully I will find out next Friday at Zone Conference what they are planning on doing with them. If they stay empty for a while, we have to maintain them to a certain extent because the landlords do visits ever three months.

We headed to the dinner/dance and were almost to the Chapel when we realized that we forgot to pick up Peti for the activity. We turned around and went all the way back because she lives very near us. By the time we got to her house the dinner had already started. I knocked on the door and Peti looked surprised. She told me she sent a text message to the Elders saying she was not able to come. Her grandkids dropped in unexpectedly.  She said she was very sorry. I told her not to worry. It was all right. When we got to the dinner, I gave Elder Dixon a hard time about the message that he didn't tell us about. he knew nothing about the message. Elder Cockbain said he got the message, but he had no idea we were supposed to pick Peti up. So, he didn't know he needed to tell anyone. We laughed and forgave them both. Hahaha. The evening was a lot of fun. I made it a point to invite all the missionaries we saw when we did inspections. Several of the companionships came, which was good because the ward attendance wasn't so hot. 🙁We had a lot of fun and even got on the dance floor a time or two. It was for families so there were several little kids. Everyone had a good time.

The Chicken Dance

Saturday was laundry, Sacrament program updates, and other misc. things on the computer before we headed out to try and fix some of the flat issues on the list. It wasn't as productive as we had hoped. Elder Wilcox tried to fix the slow shower in the Sisters' flat. The best he could do was go from a trickle to a low flowing stream. It more than doubled the trickle so the Sisters were very happy. Without cutting a hole in the shower wall and replacing the whole piping situation, it is the best it can be. We are hoping to get the landlord involved to fix it. For girls with long hair, it is not acceptable. He tried to replace a light fixture in the living room of the same flat, but it turned out to be a VERY expensive light fixture. We are checking with Elder Garner to see if he wants us to replace or if that is something that should be done by the landlord. We did go shopping to get a few things for the flats that we will take care of next week. By the time we finished all that, the day was gone.

Sunday turned out a bit busier than normal. Our meetings went very well. We had a return missionary bear his testimony and then three speakers. The second speaker spoke for a very long time. The last speaker was a High Council member. He only had about 5 minutes. He took a total of about 10 minutes. We dispensed with the closing song. Lol

Brother and Sister Hester Rock'in and Roll'in

After Church, I worked on my recap. Before it was time to go to dinner at Leona's house, we were asked to go to the hospital to give the Sacrament to a member. We gave Brother Hester a call and he went with Elder Wilcox to the hospital. Leona's nephew is the returned missionary. She raised him and his 3 siblings by herself as a single woman. This nephew was only 6 months when she got them. All four of the kids have served missions, both the boys and girls. Since she is single, she has us over for dinner when she invites the missionaries over. After dinner we had a Stake Music Devotional in our Chapel. I think every set of missionaries have done a music devotional almost every Sunday since we got here. They are always nice, but I'm more of a home body.

All our Love,

Elder and Sister Wilcox