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!