It's Getting Better All The Time

I remember that my unofficial theme song at the beginning of my mission to Ireland was “It’s Getting Better All The Time”, from the ‘Sgt. Peppers’ album, and that’s how we feel about this mission, too.  As we get used to the schedule, ward and climate, the Mondays get closer and closer together!  Even though many mornings and afternoons are still not full, the evenings are mostly full now (although we still have problems getting appointments on Friday/Saturday nights for some strange reason!).  We try to fill the dead times with service, and we have three regular weekly events: singing with and spending time with some Alzheimer patients at a senior center on Wednesday afternoons, gardening at the temple on Thursday mornings, and cleaning the church on Saturday mornings.  We also go to the temple every other week, and seem to get more and more calls to give the young missionaries rides to places, which is OK with us.  


The Reno temple is a beautiful, small temple!  The baptismal font, session room, sealing room and Celestial room are all on the first floor, which is different than we’ve seen before, but the spirit and peace is the same as at all temples.  Truly it is the house of the Lord!

Pyramid Lake

Pyramid Lake, not the main road

Working at the Catholic Community Services Food Bank

View from the back of the Reno Temple

Looking across our area from the temple. Different than Seattle...

The Gigueres leave next Monday (5^th), and we will truly miss them!  Then, we’ll spend the next few days moving on our regular trips to our area.  Our strategy is to drag it out through the week, so when Jay and Stephanie and family come visit 8/8-8/10 we’ll have room for us all to sleep.  The new apartment has a nice king-size bed, but not a lot of floor space for sleeping bodies.  We are looking forward to their visit!  Marcy and Todd will be passing through the same week, and we hope to see them, too!


As far as activities on preparation day, we’ve been to Lake Tahoe twice, Pyramid Lake, the National Auto Museum, and yesterday we went to the stake “Fun Run” at Truckee Regional Park.  (We walked just fast enough to not be last…)  Just like last mission, Diane loves any activity that gets us out of town and into a forest!  (Yes, she is a tree-hugger.)  The auto museum was interesting (and Diane even liked it).  There were probably 200 automobiles, ranging from 1898 to the mid-1960’s, when John Harrah (whose collection it was) died.  I enjoyed seeing all the engineering innovations that were tried along the way, with most failing miserably.  We also enjoyed seeing all the celebrity-owned cars!  John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Al Jolson, Mary Pickford, Elvis Presley, Sammy Davis, Jr. all owned first-issue, customized cars that were in the collection.  I also enjoyed seeing some full-size “Big Daddy Roth“ custom cars that I made models of when I was a teenager.  (Randy did airplanes, I did cars.)  Automobiles definitely are a great chronicle of the American dream.  

Elder Giguere photo-bombing behind

I made a model of this car, with Rat Fink in the seat

John Wayne's first-off Thunderbird

James Dean "Rebel Without a Cause" car

Frank Sinatra

Diane on "Fun Walk", Truckee Regional Park

We are having wonderful discussions with the members of the ward!  We feel more and more like this ward is really good at most things (as good as we’ve ever seen!), but they are not very good at missionary work, and that may be our mission.  They have been wonderful at fellowshipping the family that was baptized last month (self-referrals), but we get the feeling that most in the ward are so busy raising their families, working and doing their church callings that they don’t take time to develop outside relationships sufficient to share the gospel (sound familiar?)  We don’t know yet how we are going to work on it.  It’s hard for me to imagine anything more difficult, but we know the Lord will bless us if we work at it!  We are starting with the basics of working on the ward mission plan with the ward mission leader, and getting to know the members.  If we have faith and work as hard as we can, it will all work out.  We love The Lord and we know that He loves us and the members of the Peavine Valley Ward!

Week Four

Wednesday, we will have been in Reno for one month, and to tell the truth, we are still waiting and working for our mission to ‘find us’!  The Giguere’s stake president (and a former mission president) told them, “MLS (member leader support) missions are the ultimate in ‘free-lance righteousness’--- you get to go about doing good until you find your true mission, or it finds you.”  That is wonderful advice, and it has given us comfort (as it did the Gigueres) at the beginning of our mission!  We are working to fill our days through service, member visits and teaching one investigator (could just be an older woman who wants someone to talk to—can’t tell yet), but we still have more free time than we would like.  The ward we support is an excellent, strong, small (280 members) ward!  From what we can see, they have very capable leaders, great teachers, and great core of supportive members, so it’s not obvious to see where we can help. 

In the meantime, we are serving wherever we can (Diane says she could get tired of cleaning the church every week, so we are hoping other wards take a turn, too…) and trying to visit the members on our part of the ward list to get to know them and find opportunities to teach.  (I was telling Diane this week that even though we are trying to visit members, it brings back many of my feelings of going door-to-door in Ireland 45 years ago.  It’s fun when you actually get to talk to people, but it’s frustrating knocking on the doors of mostly empty houses!)  As I’ve mentioned before, the ward is fairly affluent, with a several gated communities, and most people work days and/or travel a fair bit in the summer.  We know it will all work itself out, and we will learn our mission, but we do wish it would hurry!


The members we have met with are great, and we do have future appointments with a number of active families and a couple of less-active families, which could lead to some strengthening and teaching opportunities, so things are progressing.  We have also been talking to the brother in our ward who is over the stake single adults about perhaps starting a weekly ‘Come Follow Me’ study session for singles.  We have a good feeling about that, and we hope it comes to fruition!  We also visit ‘our people’ in the hospital several times a week, and have developed a real love and connection with them.  We know that The Lord will bless us as we keep moving forward and doing the best we can.  


On the 4^th of July we went back to Lake Tahoe again and drove the rest of the way around the lake—BEAUTIFUL and crowded on the 4^th.  Then we found that the best fireworks show in town originates on the top of the Nugget casino and hotel buildings which are four blocks from our house, so we sat on our deck and watched the show.  I think it may have been the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen!  (Although the music wasn’t the US Marine band, like in NYC…)  Also, earlier in the day when we were at Lake Tahoe, we stopped by the house we are renting in August 2020 for our family reunion.  Some people were in the driveway, and much to Diane’s embarrassment, I asked them about the house and they gave us a small tour through one floor.  It has nine bedrooms, so it should sleep all of us.  As is often the case, the pictures make it look a little better than it is, but it will be great to be there and spend time with the ‘fam’!

We are happy to be here serving the Lord!  Missions are not vacations, and we know that we will end up loving this mission just as much as we did our first.  My companion continues to be hard to keep up with in every way that is important, and I love her more each day still!  We sometimes get tired, and we sometimes get impatient with our progress, and (I know it’s hard to believe, but) we sometimes even get a little crabby at each other, but ultimately we know we are doing what God wants us to do!!  We are happy to be serving, and want to do it as well as possible.

(Above) Another view from the rear of the Reno Temple towards the city..
(Below) When our GPS first led us to our apartment, we thought this was it.

Luckily, it's not! Ours is behind...