Sister Kearsley Teaches Us

The first day that we arrived in Newport Beach at the mission office we were greeted by the Kearsley's, missionaries who all works in the mission office. Sister Kearsly serves as Mission secretary, Brother Kearsly is the Financial missionary and their daughter, Sister Kaitlin Kearsley, is a service missionary in the office. Young Sister Kearlsy's greatest contributaion is to give a colored picture to every new missionary. She spends hours coloring these pictures so that as we arrive in the mission we know right away that we are loved and cared for. As I have stated previously every Monday morning we have a senior missionary devotional and we take turns giving a spiritual thought.  This week was Sister Kaitlin Kearsly's turn and I must say her testimony really touched my heart.  She choose as our song this week Vocal Point's redemption of Savior, Redeemer of My Soul.  She showed us pictures of our Savior, and light and darkness. She taught us about trials and focusing on the light of the Lord.  Her testimony was simple, beautiful and pure.  We are so very blessed to have her and her parents serving in our mission. 

Elder Kearsly and the Sister Kearslys

Every three months, the younger missionaries are able to attend the temple, either the Newport Beach Temple or the San Diego Temple depending on which area they are serving in.  They are assigned a day and each zone decides which endowment session they will attend in the morning between 6:30 and 8 am.  Our zone, San Marcos Zone decided to schedule the 6:30 am session.  Since Elder Houser and Elder Wetsel, who serve in our ward, are now on bikes and don't have a car, they needed a ride.  They rode with us and we attended the San Diego Temple.  It was an early morning but we so enjoyed spending time in such a sacred place with all the missionaries that we see working hard every day.  A discussion at one of our district meeting was about burn out. Basically we discussed that spiritual rest brings physical endurance.  That means as we do those things that spiritually buoy us up- temple attendance, scripture reading, fasting, prayer- we gain spiritual rest that gives us the strength to do the physical things that are required of Christ's disciples.  We will be able to run and not be weary, walk and not faint.  

We also love our time working in the Family Search Center, the last couple of weeks, the center has been busy. We have been able to work on our own research, plus help others.  

Our San Marcos Zone is made up of nine sets of missionaries serving in three different districts.  We have the privilege of inspecting all nine apartments of the younger missionaries once each transfer.  We break it up and do a district of three apartments each day and spent two days this week doing that.  It was a real pleasure to go into the apartments and get to know these missionaries, their tastes and interests as we check their homes away from home.  We try to take a treat and leave them each with a message.  

These missionaries are both from Texas as is Elder Prater.  (pictured is Elder and Elder Blaney)

Our area in Vista, and San Marcos is full of Mexican food restaurants.  We LOVE California Mexican food.  We want to try as many of these places as we can in the next year, a wonderful perk of serving here. 

For our P-day this week we spent some time in Balboa Fun Zone which is on the Balboa Peninsula. This fun zone is located close to where my family owned a beach house when I was growing up, so I spent many hours here.  I always loved to play skeel ball and we would often buy Balboa bars which are delicious bars of vanilla or chocolate ice cream dipped in chocolate and coated with peanuts, almond, sprinkles or whatever you want.  We choose peanuts.  We had our bars, walked around, had ourselves tooned, and just had a wonderful morning.  We ran into at least three family groups of church members from Arizona who were vacationing in California during spring break.  It was fun to talk to these members, they all got excited to see our name tags and meet us. 

After our morning and early afternoon at the Balboa Fun Zone, we attend a session at the Newport Beach Temple.  I didn't realize that this temple is about the same size as our temple in Columbia, South Carolina. It is much smaller than the San Diego Temple but the spirit is the same. 

After our temple session, we were blessed to be able to visit my niece and her family that live in the Irvine area.  They feed us dinner and we got to visit.  This has been another perk of our mission being in California, we get to see so many family members.  It was a wonderful day!

Sister and Elder Prater, my niece and her husband, Jay and Andrea Kesler

In between our other activities this week, we spent time visiting and calling members of our ward.  There are so many wonderful people that love the Lord here in California.  We are just getting to know everyone, those who actively come to church and those that don't- we love them all and learn from each one of them. We truly feel that this is where we should be now. 

The rain storms that have come through our area didn't affect us much personally but from the news reports there have been a couple of homes on hills that their backyards are sliding down the hill.  Also the westbound lanes on State Route 78 in Oceanside have been closed this week as crews work to repair a sinkhole as a result of the storm.  The rain has been a blessing because of the drought. 

And lastly- one perk of living in our apartment complex is that we have food trucks that come!  This Mexican food truck comes on Friday and we finally tried it out!  Delicious tacos that came to us!  Life is Good!!!