August 19, 2012
Today I have been thinking about how blessed we are with luxuries like warm showers.  Out of all my ancestors I think I am the first who could just get into a warm shower when I want.  Perhaps my parents, later in their lives, had this luxury, but for most of their lives they just had a bathtub - and that later in their lives.  No one before them, out of the thousands of ancestors of mine who have been on earth, had such a wonderful and easy blessing as a warm shower!

We love our ward here.  One of the women said to me today as she sat down, "We have assigned seats."  And laughed.   Most of us in the Church have 'assigned seats.'  And single sisters.  They have their own rows and sit together in every ward I've been to.  Here, too.  I love these enduring and faithful sister's.

We love the office.  We are so grateful for the other senior couple.  They have really taken over their
jobs.  Sister Smigelski is making a big difference in the mission.  Among other things she is over sending baptisms to Salt Lake so there is an offical record made of them.  She also calls the missionaries about how referrals are going.  This motivates some missionaries to follow thru on the referrals they get.  Referrals are some of the best kind of people missionaries can find and teach.  So this is good.  Elder Smigelski takes care of cars.  What a huge job.  Thousands of dollars invested with cars and young missionaries driving them.  Teaching them how to care for these investments.  More luxury for our time.  Recently we had two 'rabbit wrecks.'  Missionaries driving home in the
dark from the long distances they go to teach here - and hitting rabbits.  It is amazing to me how much damage a rabbit can do to a car.

We have just finished zone conferences all over Nevada - that takes a lot of travel for Pres. and Sister Hermansen and the Smigelski's.   We hold down the office while they are all gone.  In about 10 days we have 24 new missionaries arriving so we are busy.  No departures yet.

I wish older couples understood how wonderful it is to serve missions.  They are so needed and seniors can do what they are asked to do.  There are so many ways to serve and so many are needed.  I stop to think about how hard it would be to stand in front of  Heavenly Father and say I was scared or didn't think I could do what was needed.  If any of you knew how many times we call Salt Lake in a day and say, "Ok, what do we do now?"  Salt Lake is wonderful to help anytime.  Plus I think of our 47 grandchildren - about half of whom are boys.  How can I ever ask them to serve a mission when their incovenience will be so much greater than mine?  If only we understood how much joy and happiness comes from serving God - it would be so much easier to serve.

We love you all and you are in our prayers - family and friends and other missionaries.  He can take so much better care of you than we could if we were with you.

Dad and Mom,  Dee and Lois Ann