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!