This week I feel like is an update week.
Update #1: Sister Gali finished a successful mission and
went home. It took her two days to fly
home but she knew the minute she arrived she would go to the ward party,
celebrating her arrival home and rejoicing with her about her mission. Wouldn’t
it be great if every missionary knew they would be welcomed home that way?
Elder Hardman reminds me that we do that as a family for our returning
missionaries. That is special but in Samoa everyone is family and they join to
celebrate. We are so happy we had the chance to serve with Sister Gali.
Update #2: We saw wild horses! We kept hearing about the
wild horses in Nevada but hadn’t seen them.
Lori saw them when she was here. I was starting to think it was like a
snipe hunt. Everyone sees them but you. This week we saw them! That was fun.
Update #3: We work with the Food Bank of Northern Nevada,
coordinating the Mobile Harvest Pantry assignments and the missionaries. We have met with the lady “in charge” several
times (Angie). She is a cute woman who really appreciates the help from the
missionaries. We were invited to go to the Food Bank Warehouse, have a tour and
have dinner. We rode in a Chartered Bus from Sparks to the warehouse. We toured their new facility, it is
beautiful. The Chartered Bus company donated the bus and their services. (makes
me like them) Famous Dave’s Barbeque provided the dinner. (please support
Famous Dave’s) Walmart has their warehouse next door and is their biggest
supplier for food. (Gotta love Walmart) Zulilly’s warehouse is down the street
and they pay their employees to volunteer and work at the warehouse. (Yay for
Zulilly!) There are many good people out there that do so much to feed those in
need. Our eyes have been opened by this
involvement. There is so much need. Angie met us later and asked if we would be
able to help in Fernley. They have a Catholic Church that is starting a Food
Pantry. We have been wanting to find something for the missionaries in Fernley.
The missionaries love to help with these. They are so cute to watch as they
interact with the people. On our own we
pick two times a month to help at one of the Mobile Pantries. We enjoy it too.
Update #5: Our very pregnant lady had her baby. The baby was
born on Sept. 8th and she was at church today. She did not look like someone who should be
at church but she was there to see the Bishop and ask for assistance. Oh man,
we struggle with this. The needs are
real but there are so many of them that can’t contribute and have so many
needs. We brought our blind lady to church today. Her plumbing is backed up and
she needs to have some major repairs to the sewer and she was asking us to talk
to the Bishop. I think the Bishop goes
in his office after Sacrament meeting and hides. We feel like we need some
training on Government assistance programs. There is so much we don’t know
about and we don’t know how to help.
Update #6: When Elder Pearson came he told how on his
mission to Finland they would talk about finding pineapples. Finding a
pineapple growing in Finland would be rare indeed. Golden investigators are
pineapples. The mission is doing all
sorts of pineapple activities. The A.P.s
did a game where they had some missionaries go out of the gym and then told 5
other missionaries that they were pineapples and would accept the gospel as
soon as the missionary talked to them.
The missionaries came back in and had to talk to all of us, trying to
find the pineapples. It was fun. (Sister Gali was a pineapple) Pineapple pictures are posted in the mission
office. There are pineapple pictures in
the missionaries’ apartments. Thursday,
Elder Hardman and I took a pineapple to all of the new companionships in our
zone. Ha ha! We thought perhaps that we
had found a pineapple of our own. We
have upstairs neighbors that we have talked to a few times. They are a cute couple and have been
cautiously friendly. Yesterday we got out of the car as he was going
upstairs. He stopped and said, “I have a
question for you”. He asked us when and where church was. He is a return
missionary, he grew up in Elko. We gave him our “welcome to the ward” bag
because it has the address of the church, the Bishop’s number, and the meeting
times. We don’t even have their names on
the ward list. Sadly, they didn’t come
today. Maybe they aren’t quite ripe yet. We will keep checking on them.
The work continues….
At the tour for the Food Bank our tour guide said, “Nothing
runs on empty”. She of course was making a point about physical hunger. That
phrase has stuck with me all week. We can’t run on empty spiritually either. We
also can’t expect someone else to fill our tank. I remember when one of our children started
driving they would go out and take whichever car had gas. When they brought the car home, it would be
empty. We had a little talk about this habit and were told, “but gas costs
money”! Yep, filling the tank costs something, there has to be effort on our
part to fill the tank and you might have to give up something to get where you
want to go. Sometimes we let the tank get dangerously low, thinking we can make
it to the next station in time. Nothing runs on empty. How much gas in your
tank? We are reminded daily how blessed we are, our tanks are full. We are so
grateful for our family and friends. We knew we were grateful before, we feel
it even more now.
The Gospel’s true and we love you!
Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman
The pictures are of the hot air balloon race and wild horses
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