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 2nd ward is drawing to a close, and we will be assigned to the Ely 1st 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.)
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| 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!
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Driving to Ruth on a beautiful Winter day
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| Town of Ruth, with encroaching dirt pile |
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| 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!
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