8th Week—October 31-November 6, 2011

Our car is in the middle of the gate.

We use a garage door opener to get in.

Gate to our garage

Name of our apartment building

 Front sidewalk of our building

Inner court walkway

Another part of walkway

Lap swimming pool

Connie eating at a Korean Restaurant

 Gary, what is all of this food that we ate and DID NOT eat?
Everything but the meat was cold! 

Dale eating Korean Food.

 Connie at LA Temple

Dale At LA Temple

Pomegranate

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR LISA! (November 8)

(We’ll just say Lisa is 40+ this coming week!)

          Monday morning we drove over to the Visitors Center and met with the McDonalds about helping there until Thanksgiving.  We will be working there most of the day on Thanksgiving so that will be a very different Turkey Day for us.  Sizzler around the corner is serving Thanksgiving dinner that day so we have talked about going there when we are finished at the Visitors Center.  We should get back here in our area around 4 p.m.  I always love the leftovers so I may cook a turkey roast a day or two before.  The next few weeks will be very busy with what we usually do and going to the visitors center.  It takes us about 45 minutes to drive there. We don’t know how long it will take during morning rush hour so we will leave about 1 ½ hours early to get there by 8:45 a.m. However we are looking forward to the opportunity to be there and see the workings of a visitors center.

          This week was a bit slower than we are used to but Dale was still recuperating from the flu so maybe it was good it was a bit slower.  We had a couple of cancellations but we had some good experiences also.  When we visited the Perez family, Matthew and Emma was happy to see us.  Matthew has shown interest in Dale’s occupation so Dale took part of his  rocket engineer power point to show him.  He was very interested and would like to go to college someday.  He is quite intelligent.  He goes to a “magnet” school which is a school for the gifted.  He is being lured into a gang and we hope he will resist that.  His mom left him with Grandma and Grandpa when he was 9 months old.  They haven’t seen her since and have raised him thus far.  Grandma has cancer and is undergoing Chemotherapy right now.  She has lost her hair.  She told us if it weren’t for Matthew, she would just let nature take its course.  Grandpa is an old drunk whose brain is “fried.”  He was very drunk at our last visit.  We really feel for Matthew—sometimes it seems like he hasn’t a chance.  We talked to the Bishop (who is hard to understand) and the 1^st counselor (who speaks very good English and Spanish)  about him today.  They have some great scouting leaders in this ward.  I hope he can get involved and get a support system going for him.  We don’t know how much hope there is for Grandma.  She doesn’t look too great right now.  She tries so hard, bless her heart.  They said they would come to church today.  We hope the reason they didn’t come is because it was raining hard and she is so weak.

          When we went to visit Victoria Olasaba she had a friend there who had lost a son who was murdered a year ago on her birthday.  She was having a very hard time.  Dale had printed out a conference talk about trials: “That Your  Burdens May Be Lightened”  before we left the house and so he was able to share that with her.  We felt the Lord had helped us be prepared to meet her.

          Incidentally, Dale is the unsung hero in our mission companionship.  Because of the language barrier he has carried most of the load.  He has done remarkably well. He has helped me a lot and been very patient.  I try to do what I can do to make his load little lighter.  He is a great missionary and he presents our beliefs very well.  This mission has already been a life changing experience for me.

          The Ramirez cousins with all the cute little girls have committed to be baptized in December.  The elders taught them about the Word of Wisdom this week and the first principles and ordinances of the gospel.  They were at church today.  Elder Filiaga is a great missionary.  I told him when he was playing football for the University of Utah I would be rooting for him except when they played BYU.  He is a well-rounded great missionary.