Another day in the life of the Great California Ventura Mission!

Last week we were able to go to all 10 of the zone conferences which is divided into 4 conferences.   The tiwi devices that are in each of the missionary cars, had to be audited and made sure that they were paired with the tiwi corporation in SLC before the Church puts more tiwis in the cars throughout the United States – if that is what they decide to do.  In order to accomplish this task with 21 cars in each conference, Elder Ruse needed my help – because I am sooo fast, so President Castro had 2 missionaries study in the office until the mail came – for the days that they weren’t in zone conference.  I was excited to go to all of them as I haven’t been able to do that yet.  Our first conference was at the Ventura Stake Center and as the missionaries pulled into the parking lot, we started pairing.  It took about 15 minutes to do each car and so it was a good thing that I was there to help.  The next zone conference was in Oak City – which is south and a little in-land.  It is a beautiful city with lots of roses and it is beautifully landscaped.  The next one was in Thousand Oaks – which is a little north of Oak City and at a Stake Center which is enormous!  You have never seen a Stake Center so big!  The local members claim that one day it will be a Temple.  It doesn’t look like our Stake Centers, and we do have beautiful Stake Centers in Utah.  This one is HUGE!.

The next zone conference was in San Louis Obispo on Friday.  We had to leave at 6:00 a.m. to get there by 9:00.  We thought we were going to have an easy day, because we knew exactly what we were doing at this point; however, we learned quickly that there was only 1 person working in the tiwi office while the rest were in a meeting.  Therefore, we kept him on line and we just kept passing the phone back and forth between Elder Ruse and myself so that we didn’t have to call in everytime.  We were able to get all 92 cars done during the week and we were glad.

We spoke in Sacrament meeting on Sunday and I am glad that is over.   We talked about member missionary work and how we need the help from the local members.   One thing I told them was that if they could go to an investigators baptism and see the joy on their face, they would do everything they could to find those who have been prepard by the Lord to be taught by the missionaries.   We think we should be good now for about a year!

We received some exciting news – Elder Russell Nelson, Elder Garn and Elder Bowen will be here on the 19^th of April where they will speak to our missionaries – and we think we will be invited to attend.  That will be exciting!  If you will remember, Elder Bowen talked about being reclaimed and about the land in Idaho that was made into a beautiful park and airport.  Go to LDS.org and search for the video and watch it - it is incredible!  Search for Elder Bowen reclaimed and it will come up.  Watch the video.

The weather has been a bit gloomy the last couple of days.  If I saw weather like this in Utah we would be sure to get rain – but not here.  They call in low fog.  I like the sunny weather  - especially since we don’t get rain from this weather.

We did feel an earthquake a week ago last Monday.  I was just getting out of bed when the room was swaying back and forth.  That was all we felt - but they do make a big deal about it on the news.

We love the fields - they are everywhere in Oxnard and they are beautiful!  It is amazing how fast they grow produce, pick it and then replant it again.  I want Elder Ruse to take lessons from them on how it is done!

Elder Ruse saying good-bye to the 27 old cars in the parking lot.

One of the zone conferences - getting set up in the parking lot for the missionary cars to come.

Here are the missionary cars - already for us to work on.

more hard-working pickers in the fields

At one point, we had about about 27 cars in the parking lot.  We transferred 9 old cars to the Fresno Mission, 4 to the Anaheim Mission, and sold the rest.  Our parking lot now only has 3 new cars that will probably be deployed in the next transfer.  Here is a picture of Elder Ruse looking at the empty parking lot and a picture of the truck which came twice to pick up the cars and take them to the other missions:

This is the first time that we haven't had a parking lot of many, many cars since we started in the mission 6 months ago.  It has made it a very busy 6 months.  Now our focus will be on making sure that the TIWI's all work in every car!

Spring is here in California, although it looks about the same as the rest of the time of year.  Flowers are blooming, birds singing and a beautiful sky.  We really are fortunate to be living in a beautiful place - expensive, but beautiful.  We try to walk along the beach a couple of times a week.  Last week we saw a women sweeping the sand off around her beach house and we asked her if that was an ever-ending job and she said she has been doing it for 43 years!  She said summer is crazy and she can never get out of her driveway.  I guess living on the beach does have it's "down side". 

We still need more rain.  They need about another 6 inches to make up for the lack of water in previous years.

Next week we will have zone conferences for 4 days.  That will be fun to go to each one and see the missionaries.  We now have 10 zones.  They took zone 4 and split it making zone 4s for the Spanish speaking missionaries; and zone 5 and spit it making zone 5s for the Spanish speaking missionaries.  They think this will make it more manageable since those were large zones.