Month: June 2024

Another week of mission life has come and gone. We’re gradually finding our place here, figuring out how we should be serving in this little corner of California. Unlike junior missionaries, who receive substantial training and continuous guidance, we’ve realized senior missionaries don’t get much of either, and are essentially dropped into an area and trusted to do what’s needed. That’s given us a great opportunity (and responsibility) to work hard.

One of the great joys of our work here is spending time with the younger missionaries. There are ten of them serving here in the valley, and not only are they hard workers, they’re doing everything in the hot days where the temperature is regularly hitting 110 now. Although I didn’t take pictures of everything we did, here are some samples of our time together.

We played a very serious game of Skull King. (This is the moment before the traditional Yo ho ho declaration of bids.)

In our district council meeting, Elder Bushman shared his award-winning pickup line.

We spend a day or two each week working at the food bank, loading cars with donated food.

Elder Skousen knows the secret: when it’s 95 degrees at 7:30 in the morning, you choose to load watermelons. Why? Because they’re chilled!

The missionaries use some computers at the church to write emails to family, practice their Spanish skills, and fill out reports. However, the computers are ancient and were running a years-out-of-date Windows operating system that was limping along. I spent a couple hours rebuilding the computers with Linux, and now they hum along nicely. I might’ve inadvertently signed up for a year of being the “tech support guy” but I’m glad I could improve the tools they’re using in their work.

We attended a mission conference in San Diego, which is always a nice opportunity to enjoy a 75-degree afternoon. Sisters Johnson and Bodily carpooled with us, and we had a grand time with them.

Elder Bruderer and I fixed his toilet, which has been spouting water for weeks. He’s heading home in a few days, after serving faithfully for two years, but didn’t want to leave a broken toilet for the missionary who will be taking his place. Good man.

As the week wound to a close, we had a special opportunity to spend a little time with the sisters. During our conversation, I commented “It’s the Spirit, man!” We laughed, and agreed it sounded like something you’d see on a bumper sticker. So…

These fine men and women are an inspiration to me and Pepper. We’ve only known them a few weeks but already they’re family. The Spirit is absolutely with them.

Every now and then, we “meet up” with the kids on Google Meet to have a video call and play some online board games. Today we all took advantage of Meet’s special effects and donned sunglasses and mustaches.

After a bit, we chose to play Bang, which is a social deduction game with a Spaghetti Western theme. Naturally we had to wear cowboy hats!

It was a riot. The family who plays together stays together. Yeehaw!

Over the last few years, Pepper and I have become quite enamored with our standing desks. It’s awesome to be able to sit for a while, then stretch a bit and stand. We love that they’re motorized and can adjust to various heights.

Here in our new digs, we don’t have the luxury of custom-designed built-in standing desks, so we have to make do. We’ve been using a couple of folding tables, and they’ve been… fine. But not great. Thinking back to my ghetto desk thirteen years ago, we headed over to Home Depot and bought four cinder blocks. Bam, a standing desk for less than eight bucks!

Although she doesn’t mind standing all the time, I prefer the option to switch, so I bought an adjustable desk on Amazon. It arrived today and I built it in about twenty minutes. For the cheap price, it’s actually pretty sturdy and well-built.

A bit at a time, we’re putting together the comforts of home in our new home.

I feel like in our world today, people are condemned for changing their minds. Given new insights, or a well-reasoned argument, shouldn’t it be acceptable– and in fact lauded– when someone decides to change their view? Shouldn’t we be able to say humbly “I misunderstood” or “I was misinformed” or even “I was wrong”? Yet here we are, in the age of the internet, where everything we write and say is recorded for all time: where past statements and opinions are held up to scrutiny when we say something different now. Where changing our minds is perceived as weakness, insecurity, or indecision.

Although I’m not saying I feel oppressed or mocked for changing my mind, I’ve been studying and learning a lot of late, and I must admit my views of certain things are shifting. It’s a good exercise, and one I hope brings me to a better place of understanding. Moreover, I hope I can avoid judging others for shifting their perspective, and instead celebrate with them as they find a new way to look at something.

I stumbled upon this wisdom from one of our Founding Fathers:

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.

— Benjamin Franklin

My watch congratulates me whenever I walk six thousand steps in a day. Today, for the first time, I topped twenty thousand.

Since we were in San Diego for the Miramar 5k, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the beach. Interestingly, we’ve learned that in June there’s a near-constant line of clouds along the coastline, so the beach is always overcast. We’d just come from the Marine Air Base, which is only seven miles inland, and where the sun was beating down with a temperature somewhere around 85. At the beach it was grey and maybe 65.

Even though it’s technically the second day of summer, it didn’t seem like it here. I guess we’ll come back in late July or August and have a real beach day!

One of the senior missionary couples in San Diego invited the rest of us to join them in the Miramar Flightline 5k, which is an annual five-kilometer race hosted by the Marine Corps on their air base at Miramar. That location was made legendary by the classic movie Top Gun, so it was pretty cool to go onto the base and see some of the sites from the movie.

We met up with the two other missionary couples before the race started.

As they’re all twenty years our senior, they elected to walk the course. Pepper and I ran. The morning started out nice and cool but temperatures quickly rose into the 80s so it was a warm run. (Of course I couldn’t help but think of the 110-degree day happening back in the valley, so the 80s seemed downright comfortable!)

After the run, we wandered the tarmac to look at all the cool aircraft. This particular base is home to a squadron of F-35 Lightning fighters, arguably one of the biggest, most wasteful boondoggles in government history.

The Ospreys are cool.

I’ve always liked the F-18 Hornets, although I admit the F-15 Eagles remain my favorite fighter planes.

They had a C-130 Hercules cargo plane too.

And even a Super Stallion:

There was also a pretty cool pace car!

Behind me in the photo above is a little Marine Corps band. They were playing classic 80s music, and even managed to sneak in the Top Gun anthem (played at the start of the movie) and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”. Awesome.

I don’t actually enjoy running at all… the only reason I enter events like this is for the event itself. I ran the Bolder Boulder seven times, starting in 1998, and it was always a blast (except the running part). This was no exception: we had a grand time and were happy to spend a few hours with a few thousand runners.

Pepper and I were driving home from our class tonight, when all of a sudden a white blob rose into the sky and passed overhead.

Little chunks were falling off (you can see a tiny white dot just below the large plume on the left) and the bright spot continued soaring into the night sky, eventually fading as it passed into shadow.

We think it was a SpaceX launch– possibly another batch of Starlink satellites. It was cool to watch.

Today we were invited to lunch with our mission leaders, President and Sister Merritt. They’re the couple who oversee the entire San Diego Mission: some 150 young missionaries and about 40 seniors. They’re very busy people, and only rarely travel out to the valley. Since we’re the new kids on the block, they asked if we could meet them for a brief lunch.

It was great to chat with them for a bit. As we were finishing, President Merritt mentioned this would probably be the only time we’d have to sit and talk together during our entire mission. In general, their focus is on the young missionaries– frankly they need a lot more guidance and support than a bunch of seventy-year-old couples with a ton of life experience. We enjoyed our visit, and decided we definitely don’t want to be mission leaders ourselves…

A friend of ours teaches a twice-weekly Zumba class, and Pepper decided to go. She asked if I wanted to, and I told her absolutely not. Not only do I dislike exercise in general, I especially dislike exercise where I have to guess what the instructor is going to do, attempt to emulate it, and end up looking like an uncoordinated idiot.

So she headed to class, and I headed to the street. I’m in training (so to speak) for an upcoming 5k run, so I figured I should at least get in some running time. It was a little after eight in the morning, but already above 90 degrees. I pounded the sidewalks for a few miles, sweating profusely, and went over to the Zumba class to get a ride back home.

When I arrived, they were still Zumba-ing. I waited for a few minutes but they showed no sign of stopping, so I took a deep breath and walked into the gym. I slid into the back– where Pepper happened to be as well– and finished out the last ten minutes of class. Sure enough, I felt like an idiot, but it was funny how all the women (and they were all women) congratulated me on joining them. I guess they don’t get a lot of guys in there. Or they felt so sorry for me they wanted to salvage what was left of my self-esteem.

Here we are afterward.

Next time I think I’ll just run the rest of the way home…