Homeward Bound

This will probably be our last blog for this mission.  Sadly we are being sent home along with most other senior missionaries in the world.  We have mixed feelings. Unfortunately, the things we looked forward to doing when we get home are things we can't do now--spending time with family and friends, going to favorite restaurants, movies, shopping malls, etc..  For the first 14 days we are not supposed to leave the house for any reason and probably won't for a while after that.

 

Things are changing faster than we can keep up with them.  Wednesday we got a call saying we needed to stay in our apartments and to not go near the young missionaries.  The office secretary called and said we were given the option of going home.  Later in the day President Godoy called and said going home was mandatory.  Then we got a call asking us to drive an elder to Reno and to pick up another elder in Elko on our way back.  So much for staying away from the young missionaries..

Our Zone Leader, Elder Fitzsimmons (from Maine), was just called to be an Assistant to the President.  We are happy for him but will miss him.  We have served with him since we got here last summer.   

Elder Williams and Elder Fitzsimmons

 We feel sorry for the young missionaries as they are all confined to their apartments for at least 30 days.  At least we have TV and internet!

Sunday Meeting at Stake President's House

Last Sunday we were invited to the Stake President’s house for “church”.  The elders were there as well (this was when we could still be around them).  There was a sweet spirit there and we appreciate everything President Fullmer has done for us.  There was young, newly baptized family there also.  The father was able to pass the sacrament for his first time.  It was a special experience for all of us. After church we went to our Bishop's house for lunch.  He is a former marine and you can tell.  We love him.

Home Church

Yesterday, Marc and I had our own church meeting.  Marc blessed the sacrament.  I don’t remember when I have felt the spirit so strongly before as I partook of the sacrament.  Our Stake Conference had been scheduled for that Sunday so our stake presidency recorded their talks on Facebook and we were able to watch those. 

We feel like we have accomplished much but finished little.  We were making progress with many people who we taught.  We have grown to love them and wish we could stay and see the fruits of our labors.  We have made many friends and leave with heavy hearts. Marc sent a final report to the bishops saying that Ministering Brothers and Sisters can do anything we have done.  We hope that they will follow up.

Marc was asked to do a  baptism interview
at this ranch about 56 miles from Ely.

Gilbert Ranch.  Members own it and let the Stake
have activities there like Girl's Camp.

. 

More Gilbert Ranch

From the little town of Ruth.  Dump Truck on the Top
dumping debris from mine.

We were fascinated at this dump truck bed (?) that was
just sitting on the side of the road.

Giant Tonka Truck Part

From one of our short drives.

Abandoned House in the Middle of Nowhere

Loneliest Road

Life in Smalltown America

We have not posted very much on our mission to Nevada mostly because we don’t seem to do much besides visiting people and teaching the gospel.  We know these are very important things, but they are very hard to write about without revealing personal information.  (At least, that’s our excuse and we are sticking to it!)


We do find it hard to believe that our mission will conclude in less than four months!  We have even talked to the couple that will replace us.  The Meyers received their mission call a couple of weeks ago and they called us right away to ask a million questions.  We weren’t sure when we talked to them that they would be replacing us in Ely, but we have found out since that they will be.  They are 60 y/o, from Gilbert AZ, he was an electrical engineer and they seem like really nice people!  They will arrive in Nevada in mid-April, so we will overlap for a few weeks.  That will make living arrangements interesting, but we know it will all work out somehow…


One of the fun things about Ely is all the unique lifestyles we come across and get to learn about!  Lots of miners, lots of prison workers, and one of the people we are working with and getting to know is a government trapper.  He’s on retainer with the state, plus he gets to sell the pelts.  He told us the current market is $100-$1000 per pelt, with large bobcats being on the upper end.  The picture shows some of his pelts being prepped on the back porch, and he said he has about 70 others so far.  It’s fascinating to talk to someone who knows so much about something we (and probably most people) know so little about!  He’s on the road 4 or 5 days a week setting and checking traps, while his wife works for the school district in special education.  They also have a son and two grandkids living with them, so it’s a busy place (and difficult to find a good teaching situation…).  He’s the nicest guy in the world, and has been less-active for years, even while serving actively in scouting for years.  

Another ‘fun’ thing about Ely is working with people’s schedules.  For example, mine workers at the big mine work 4 12-hour shifts, then 5 days off, then switch to nights for 5 12s, then 4 days off, then switch shifts and start over again.  Even the office workers work non-standard shifts, like the geologist we are working with works 9 straight 10-hour shifts, then 6 days off, then repeat!  Prison workers also mostly work 12-hour shifts. It makes it hard to have what we consider normal lives, although it’s normal for them.  We assume the strange work schedules are a prime reason the activity rate in the stake is only 30%.  


Another interesting thing about Ely is that so many people are connected in some way.  Ely isn’t a suburb, but its own unique town three hours away from any other larger cities in any direction.  Here’s a good example that just happened to us yesterday:  We went to the car wash to wash off the mud and grime from our trip to Elko (see below).  There was a line of ten vehicles (one car wash in town, nice sunny day), so we waited in line for an hour (only one wash station) with the stereo playing. When we got to 2^nd in line our car wouldn’t start – battery dead!  (I knew the battery would need to be replaced soon, as it was 5+ years old.)  Two guys in vehicles behind us got out and helped me push our car out of the way, and one said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back with some jumper cables!”  He drove off, leaving the line after waiting nearly as long as us, went to the sheriff’s office a few blocks away and came back with jumper cables and gave us a jump.  (He told us he was a member of the church and recognized our name tags when I got out of the car.)  What a nice guy!!  
So we dropped by the one auto parts store just after closing time, and they opened up and sold me a battery, then we went home to replace the battery.  While I started working on the battery, Diane called the trapper guy’s wife to tell her we wouldn’t be able to stop by later as planned.  She said, “I know!  The guy who helped you was my son-in-law, and he already called me to tell me the story!”  We were amazed, but that’s not all.  I needed a wrench, so I went over to the elder’s quorum president a few blocks from home to borrow one.  While he was getting the wrench, I told the story to his adult kids, and one young woman said, “Oh, Chris Brewer (the guy who helped) is my brother-in-law.”  One other thing—the sheriff who loaned the jumper cables is the son of a man we’ve been working with.  Pretty amazing!  Quoting Diane’s Facebook post, “We will go to church today with a dirty car, but with warm hearts!”


We got a new assignment to check elders’ and sisters’ apartments in Elko (3 hrs away), so we went there Thursday and Friday this week.  It was fun to meet elders and sisters that we don’t know and see where they live!  We gave them several days warning, and they did a pretty good job of cleaning.  Missionaries are good people!  When we finished, we were in Spring Creek, about 15 miles south of Elko.  We filled up the tank there, then told the GPS to “Go Home”, assuming it would take us back the same way, but you know how assumptions go…  It showed two routes within 10 minutes trip time of each other, so we chose one, only to find that it took us on nearly an hour of dirt (now mud, due to recent snow) roads on another route through the mountains.  It was spectacular scenery, but thank goodness for all-wheel drive and new tires!!  (I thought I did a pretty good job of hiding my concern about getting stuck from Diane, but she may have seen through it…)  We were never so thankful (well, maybe one time in Idaho) to see a paved road again!  Hence the waiting in line the next day for a car wash…

'Snow Moon" just rising last night

We do love our mission!  Life goes on, and we find ourselves getting tired a little sooner than we used to, but we feel so darn useful when we are helping people become closer to Christ.  That is the purpose of our mission, and we love it even during the challenges!

Breakin' Rocks in the Hot Sun

Old Church in Ruth, NV

We are heading into our 3rd week in our new ward and time is flying. Our teaching pool is growing. There are still days when we only have a few hours of work but we are seeing more and more days when we are running all day.  We like those busy days.  Time goes faster and we feel useful. A bad day is when we knock on doors all day and don’t talk to anyone.  The really good days are when people are excited to see us and let us in.  Those days may not outnumber the bad days but they definitely outweigh them and make our work seem worthwhile.

We just met with a family in Ruth yesterday.  They are converts but have gotten out of the habit of coming.  We asked them how they found the church and they told us a really great story.  They were on their way to the courthouse about 10 years ago to sign divorce papers when they met the missionaries on the street. They stopped to talk and the family told them where they were going.  The elders suggested that they meet with them first.  The rest is history.  They ended up being baptized and stayed together. 

It was a good sign that they gathered the whole family together (they have 2 kids and a gecko) when we came in.  They have agreed to meet with us regularly and we are looking forward to working with them.  We love them already.

Other good news:  We invited one of the women we visit from 2^nd ward to attend church on Sunday.  She didn’t sound like she would come but the Bishop told us later that she had actually come.  Yay!  We love those small successes.

We took a short-cut to a lesson and met
these guys.  They weren't interested
in hearing our message.

They took their half of the road out of the middle.

People here don't throw anything away and we see lots
of old equipment used as lawn ornaments.  

One of our challenges is that Ely, being a small town, everyone knows everyone else and many have been offended by someone (or in some cases, by almost everyone).  It amazes us that people will stop attending church because of something someone else did or said.  (I may have asked one older gentleman why he was punishing himself for something someone else did.)

Our single adult discussion group is growing slowly and we are working to make it self-sustaining by making sure it is a discussion and not a class.  The refreshments may help to get people there.  I keep hinting that maybe someone else may want to bring refreshments but no takers yet.  I’m keeping a stockpile of cookies in the freezer.

It’s interesting how the Spirit shows us the needs of the area we are in.  In Reno we tried to get a similar discussion group off the ground but it just didn’t take off and we ended up forming a Senior Mission Prep Class.  We came here thinking we could start a Senior Mission Prep class like the one we had in Reno.  That didn’t seem to fit this area so we dropped the idea.  We soon saw the need for something single adults.  People have told us that they have been looking for a single adult group for a long time.  The Lord knows the need more than we do and we just have to be willing to listen to the Spirit.

View from Garnet Hill

Our p-days are sure different here than in Reno or in New York.  In New York we didn’t have enough p-days for all the things we wanted to do.  In Reno there was always Lake Tahoe.  Here there is not a whole lot to do in the winter so we do a lot of relaxing.  Today, however, we checked an item off my bucket list. We bought a rock hammer and drove out 10 miles to Garnet Hill.  It was 3 miles off the main road and was snowy and muddy.  Lots of fun and adventure.  We didn’t find any garnets but had a great view of the mine and had the opportunity to help a grandma, her daughter and teenage grandson whose pickup was stuck in the snow.  Four of us pushed while grandma tried to back up.  We had a little fright at first when she gunned it in drive.  But we lived to tell the tale and got them unstuck.  Marc & I were feeling pretty buff since we had worked out this morning (haha).

Garnet Hunting

Garnet Hill

View from Garnet Hill

Garnet Hill

More Garnet Hill.  Love the Outdoors.

From Garnet Hill

Giant Diesel Engine in Someone's Yard.

Lots of people have these old mining carts in their yards.

Just up the road from us.

En Route to Zone Conference in Elko.  Lots of mountains here.

Saw these guys in a yard while we were knocking on the door.

It's Nevada, not Nevaada!

Sorry, but I can only think of two things to write about!  Once I start maybe other things will come out…  Last night we held our first Stake Single Adult Come Follow Me discussion meeting.  It was fun and successful, though small.  We had 6 people and us, which was between our best hopes and worst fears.  The good news is that three of the six were unexpected.  One was a nonmember friend of one of the sisters we’ve been working with, so that changed the discussion quite a bit!  Lots more explaining than you would normally do.  Anyway, it was a great discussion of the introductory pages of the Book of Mormon—pages that I often skip, so I learned a lot!!  We’ll try to grow the group as we meet new people, and as the participants get the word out.  We hope to get to the point where the discussion leadership can be shared, so it will continue after we leave in June.


Our time in the Ely 2^nd ward is drawing to a close, and we will be assigned to the Ely 1^st ward for the next 12 weeks. As we expected, 12 weeks is way too short to help most people change their lives, but it is long enough to find some people who seem receptive and start a relationship with them.  We have told the Ely 2rd ward council that we will keep working with 7 individuals and families (the ones we feel like we have a connection with), and turn the remainder of the 22 families originally assigned back to their ministering brothers and sisters. As I’ve mentioned before, we feel strongly that MB’s and MS’s could do anything we are doing, if they were willing to put in the time.  (I’ll try to be better at that when I get home!)  We met with the bishop of our new ward last week and asked him for a list of 20 or so to start with, and for the various ward lists we need to work effectively.  He’s an interesting man—ex-law enforcement, ex-military, and a current gun shop owner!  Says he does a lot of work with small police forces and their automatic weapons.  (I couldn’t tell if he was carrying when we met with him. Probably.)

Town of Ruth

This morning we went for a drive to the town of Ruth, about 10 miles from Ely.  It’s a small mining town near the largest mine in the county.  In fact, the town was owned by the mining company, who originally built the houses for their miners, and one of the mine workers told us that they recently covered up some of the old buildings in town because the huge dirt piles needed more space!  The pictures below show some of the town and the dirt piles that almost envelop it.  According to what I understand, the dirt in the huge open-pit mines are scooped up, put in huge trucks (Our friend said his front end loader bucket holds 50 tons! That’s the weight of 10 full-size pickups! According to Seri…), then the dirt is hauled to the mill in 100-ton trucks, crushed and processed, then hauled to the huge piles.  Another friend told us that the huge trucks have a diesel motor to run a generator, and that each wheel is powered by its own large electric motor.  We’d love to go on a tour, but we are told we have to wait until family day.  We hope it happens before June!

Driving to Ruth on a beautiful Winter day

Town of Ruth, with encroaching dirt pile

Making a new dirt pile

Everything is going on mostly as usual on our mission.  We are looking forward to getting a new crop of people to work with, and we are hoping that Diane’s lungs will allow us to serve until June.  She gets really out of breath from any exertion.  As she mentioned in the last blog, the lung doctor said the tests didn’t show anything unusual in her lungs, and assumed the problem is from the combination of asthma, 6500 ft
elevation, and different allergens.  This week we bought a humidifier, and we are keeping the bedroom at a higher humidity, which seems to help at least temporarily.  As anyone who knows Diane knows, she has a few health challenges, but she keeps keeping on, and does everything she can.  She is a choice daughter of God!   If I had to deal with ½ of what she deals with, I’d be in bed in the fetal position all the time.  We do love our mission!  The opportunity to help people grow and change their lives is wonderful and humbling!!  We know God loves his children, both us and all those around us!

Jack Frost Nipping at our Noses

This past week we took a short trip to Utah to see a doctor.  Ely is 3 hours from anywhere so the people here have to go to Salt Lake or Cedar City to see a doctor.  There are a few here but not specialists and we have not heard good things about the doctors in Ely.  We left Tuesday and got there just in time to go to dinner with our former New York Mission President and his wife.  That was a fun time. 

 

Wednesday morning we were able to go to our granddaughter Bethany’s preschool program.  She was way cute and we wished we could have stayed for more concerts and recitals. 

I spent the rest of the morning at the pulmonologist’s office having tests and doing fun stuff to try to figure out why I can’t breathe (a minor thing).  She said what I had suspected, that it’s probably a combination of the altitude in Ely (6500 ft.) and the allergens.  Marc may have mentioned that there are more people here on oxygen that we have seen anywhere else.  I’m hoping to avoid that last resort.  Then Marc spent the afternoon at Costco having his hearing aids adjusted.  Exciting, I know.

We were anxious to get back to Ely and get back to work.  We stopped by Marc’s mom’s place on our way out of Utah for a sort visit then headed west.  Sorry to those we didn’t get to see on our whirlwind trip.

We are finally past the finding people to teach stage in this ward and are in the actual teaching stage.  Three of the people we are working with were at Sacrament Meeting today so that was a happy thing.  It was our Christmas program so they may have gone anyway but we like to think we helped.  One man even introduced us to all his family which made us feel good.

 With some of the people we visit we discuss Come Follow Me lessons and with some we are starting from scratch with the missionary lessons, depending on where the member is at and how long it has been since they attended church. 

We have seen the need for a Come Follow Me study group for single adults and ran it past the Stake President.  He was all for it since they don’t have any single adult program here.  Now we have to iron out all the details and figure out when to hold it since people work shifts here—usually 6 am to 6 pm or 6 pm to 6 am.  They often alternate shifts and it’s hard on them.

We are taking our charge from President Godoy, to watch over the young elders, to heart and have been inviting them to dinner and/or lunch.  We dropped in on a couple elders one morning (we warned them that would happen) but we took donuts so it was all good.  We wanted to observe them in their habitat and are trying to determine if there are any problems brewing.  So far—so good.  Their apartment is in sort of a sketchy area and we asked them if they felt safe.  They said they did and that there were a few druggies in the area but that they were very nice.

The 1st Ward Elders' Apartment.  I wanted to complain to the
mission but we realized it's fairly nice inside and they would
be hard pressed to find a better place in Ely.

Christmas is a little different on a mission.  It’s hard to teach people the week before and probably after.  People are busy and missionary visits are not high on their priority list.  On Christmas day, the 6 elders will come here for a district council meeting in the morning and then will stay for lunch and maybe games.  Then we have invited a single man from the ward over for dinner.  It will be a busy day after all.  I look forward to talking with our kids, even though we do it often.  It has been cold here but not much snow yet.  A white Christmas is expected though.  Yay!

Our Little Tree

People here are very nice to us and we hope we can stick it out till June.  We’re hoping when the weather starts to warm up a bit I’ll be able to breathe easier.  I’m exercising my faith till then.  We love Ely and enjoy our work here.

An every day occurrence about half a block from us. 

Still in Ely...

Not much exciting has happened, so I’ll start writing and see what comes out.  We had Zone Conference last week, so we drove to Elko (3 hours) Thursday, early enough to enjoy (one of us) a wild shopping spree at Walmart and meet some elders at the East mission storage unit to get a few things we needed.  Then we went out to dinner with the office senior couples (Langstons and Sevys), had interviews with President Godoy and then stayed in a hotel overnight.  On Friday, Zone Conference was from 9-3, then we drove back to Ely.  It was a nice break from the normal day-to-day activity!  We were amazed that Elko definitely felt to us like ‘the big city’.  It’s amazing how fast you get used to the small town traffic and atmosphere in Ely (even if there are no stores, and Amazon is your best friend). 


On Monday we took a drive to the charcoal ovens that are about 20 miles from Ely.  I was more interested than Diane, and she was wearing her good tennis shoes, so she stayed in the car out of the mud and snow.  The ovens burned wood into charcoal for use in the smelting ovens at the mines.  Loading one oven with wood required all the trees on 6 acres of land, so the requirements for six ovens stripped all the land around pretty quickly.  Luckily, charcoal was replaced by coke (from coal) a couple years later, so the whole county wasn’t denuded.  You can see more info in the picture I included.  The road to the ovens was 10 miles of pot-holed dirt road.  The dust was kept down by the recent snow melt, but the resulting mud made a mess of the car (so it looks more like we belong in Ely).  There’s one car wash in town, but most people don’t bother as long as they can see out of their vehicle.

Six ovens in a row

Inside looking up

Road cattleguards are everywhere

Highway is 5 miles STRAIGHT ahead.

In our interview with President Godoy, he reiterated that he wants us to work closely with the zone leader to ensure the safety and success of the six young missionaries in Ely, and he has given us authority to do many things that normal senior couples don’t get an opportunity to do.  He even invited the zone leader into our interview so he would know what President Godoy wants us to do.  Things like apartment inspections, interviews, and working with new missionaries.  We don’t know how we will make it work, but we know it will work out if that’s what the Lord desires.  Right now, we are relatively new to the area, but before long we will be the most stable part of the missionary work here!  We often wish we had more than 6 months, so we could get more done…  However, as is normal in mortality, that desire is somewhat offset by a few on-going health issues.  Diane is having trouble breathing here.  The combination of the high altitude and her asthma has made it uncomfortable (and she reminds me sometimes that breathing is not optional).  We have an appointment with a lung doctor in Utah next week, and hopefully he/she will be able to provide some relief.  Diane has always been such a trooper, and she continues to do what needs to be done, but it would be really nice if she could enjoy it more!!  We know that a way will be provided to keep serving, and we hope it’s in Ely!!  We love the Lord, and will do whatever He wants us to do.