I’ve said before that orange juice is the “nectar of the gods”, and it remains my favorite drink. Today my friend Stephen dropped by with two gallons of fresh-picked fresh-squeezed juice. He has several orange trees in his yard, and this is the end of the citrus season, so he juiced what was left on the branches.
It’s so, so good! Although I don’t mind drinking orange juice from concentrate– and have been doing so for my entire life– there’s something magical about juice right from the tree. Thanks, Stephen!
Missionaries are famous for wearing out their shoes, since they walk all day, every day. Pepper and I don’t walk quite that much; our mission responsibilities are pretty different. But for the past eleven months, I’ve been wearing a shirt and tie (and dress shoes) for many hours every day. This is new for me, and time has taken its inevitable toll.
I bought these shoes at the start of our mission, and they’re really comfortable. They’re not full-on proper dress shoes, but they suit my style. In any case, after eleven months the soles are both cracked halfway open, the insole is worn through, and the laces are fraying. It’s time to retire them. I picked up a new pair of the same shoes and can finish my mission with them. And I’ll even have them handy as I continue “civilian” life back home!
In a weird way, it feels good to know you’ve worked hard enough to wear out a pair of shoes.
A few months ago, some of our young adult friends were talking about how awesome it would be to attend General Conference in person. It’s a semi-annual event, every April and October, held in Salt Lake City. Around twenty thousand Church members can attend to watch the events in person; the remaining millions watch online. It’s tricky to get tickets, because they’re so limited in number for a worldwide Church where many, many people want to attend Conference.
With the help of our bishop, we requested some tickets. The weeks passed, and to our surprise, he was able to secure eleven of them! We only needed six, so we wondered what we’d do with the other five. More on that in a bit.
Transportation was the next issue. We decided to rent a minivan so everyone could ride together. What about housing in Utah? Well, it happens we own a townhome there! Zack is living in it, but there’s plenty of room for our little group. All the hurdles had been cleared. We were off to Conference!
It’s a seven-hundred-mile drive from El Centro up to our townhome. Ugh. Along the way, we stopped for lunch in Las Vegas and introduced the ladies to Cheba Hut (the same one we’d visited on our way to California in May).
In Utah, we encountered some snow! All of our young friends grew up in the heat of the Valley, and some of them had never experienced snow in their lives. They were so excited.
As the drive wore on, we were treated to a nice sunset.
Our tickets were for the Saturday afternoon session, so we decided to make a big breakfast beforehand. Pepper and I walked over to the grocery store to pick up some food, and bumped into one of my former seminary students! Morgan was in my Longmont class way back in 2018, and amazingly we still recognized each other. Small world, right? Since we had those extra tickets, we offered three to her and her husband and sister.
We arrived early and wandered around Temple Square in the crisp spring sunshine.
The Salt Lake City Temple is still under renovation!
Eventually we made our way into the Conference Center, which was really nice. It seats a little over twenty thousand people, and it’s designed specifically for these conferences (although it serves other purposes throughout the year). We found our balcony seats and settled in.
What about our remaining two tickets? Well, we’d offered one to Zack a few weeks ago when we knew we’d have a spare, and that left one final ticket. He asked his friend Afton if she’d like to join us, and she did! It was fun to meet her.
The experience of watching General Conference in person was really cool. Obviously it’s fine to see it via internet video, but there’s a special spirit in that building. It’s amazing to be united in purpose with twenty thousand other believers (the seats were all full), and to see the Apostles and other Church leaders in the flesh.
Afterward we went to the roof and watched the grounds below. So many people!
On Sunday we drove back home… another seven hundred miles through Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and finally California. Coincidentally, we’ll be on these same roads in a little over a month when we head home from our mission.
I’m glad we were able to go. And I’m especially glad we could do it with these four amazing women who, a few months before, just had a dream of making it happen.
I saw this sign at a Via 313 pizzeria in Orem tonight:
There’s a lot going on in the world these days, and it’s so easy to get caught up in anger and frustration and despair. But, as this sign reminds me, things will work out. Tenga fe.
In our apartment, I’ve gradually been adding photo prints to our living-room walls. We didn’t want to pay for fancy artwork, since this isn’t really our home, but we wanted something on the walls. It’s become our “mission wall”, with pictures of all the people we’ve met.
Sister Bodily was serving in the Valley when we first arrived, and we loved spending time with her. After a few months she left and served in various areas of San Diego. But now she’s back! And that means more photos as we’re with her.
The other day she was in our apartment, and counted all the pictures she’s in. She came up with an astounding twenty-four! (There are around three hundred in all, so that’s a sizeable fraction.) She was feeling pretty proud of that. Today as I was adding some more photos, several of them featured her, and I joked that the “Bodily Count” was rising.
Her companion, Sister Brown, decided she wanted to have her likeness all over our wall too, so when we bumped into her this evening she insisted on a picture with us. Another one for the wall!
The Bodily Count now stands at twenty-eight. The Brown Count is at four.
About a month ago, the missionaries were notified by their apartment complex that they were being evicted because their building was going to be renovated. Everyone knows this is the way landlords skirt laws against radical rent increases: kick everyone out for renovations, spruce up the place with some quick paint, and jack the rent. But we were secretly glad, because their apartment is really run-down and worn out.
There isn’t much available to rent in the area, partly because a bunch of people are being evicted by this complex, but we eventually found a swanky two-story three-bedroom place a few blocks away. This new apartment will be the envy of other missionaries in San Diego, who are generally crammed into tiny places because rent is frightfully expensive there. Out here in the Valley, things are cheap!
This afternoon we went to work loading everything into a truck, hauling it to the new place, and unloading it. We finished in under two hours, which was awesome. And afterward, we all went out for burgers!
Now the missionaries have to unpack everything, but they’re pretty excited. Well done, crew.
When we arrived on our mission almost a year ago, we went to our first activity with the young adults. It was sort of awkward– we didn’t know any of them, and there were only about half a dozen (we’d expected many dozens). But we made small talk and got to know them a little.
Fast forward to today, when we have a slightly bigger group and we know them all really well. One of the young adults, Ben, has been preparing for months to serve a mission. That day has finally come, and we threw him a little surprise party.
He’s been one of the leaders of the group for a few years, so when he leaves he’ll definitely be missed. Back in July we “sent off” one of the other young adults for a mission, and it’s exciting to see another one head out.
If there’s one tourist place we’ve visited more than any during our mission, it’s probably the Imperial Sand Dunes. We were last there in February, and before that on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and even back in June, July, and August. But it’s a thing, and all the new missionaries want to experience it. Out we went.
Today it was really windy– I’m guessing 20mph or more. That’s not a good combination with so much sand. It’s a really fine sand, which feels wonderful on feet but not so good when it’s blowing in your eyes. And tongue.
No matter. The missionaries loved it.
We snowboarded (err, sandboarded) down the steepest dune for a while, complained about the hike up, watched the side-by-sides zipping around in the distance, sat and chatted, and eventually decided it was time to head home.
Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, it’s always a good time with these yahoos.
Pepper and I love hiking, and we haven’t had many opportunities during our mission. Our day in Joshua Tree was great, and we’ve hiked a few other trails. So we were excited to head up to Palm Springs today and hike an area called Murray Canyon.
The hike begins in the desert (of course), and the sun was beating down. Even in mid-March it was edging toward 90 degrees. Still, there’s a different sort of beauty in the desert.
As we approached the canyon, we saw a grove of palm trees.
Coming up to the trees, we were surprised to hear the sound of running water! There’s a spring up in the mountains that feeds a sizeable stream, and that stream runs through the canyon. In the shade of the trees, there’s plenty of refreshing shade and water.
The trail crosses the stream multiple times (I think I counted seven) along its three-mile course, so it’s really cool to hike in the desert amongst rocks for a bit, and then dip beneath the palms for a stretch.
At the end of the out-and-back trail is a large rock formation where the spring water cascades down. It’s called Seven Sisters Falls, although I have no idea why. It’s a little hard to see the waterfall behind us, but it’s there:
We agreed this is our favorite hike thus far in our mission. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.
