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Every six weeks, after a missionary transfer, we all gather for a set of meetings called zone conference. It’s a bit of a misnomer, because it’s actually four zones, and there are two separate conferences since there are eight zones in all. The entire mission is divided into those eight zones, so half the missionaries (roughly a hundred in all) gather on one day, and the other half the next. Confusing? It sure was for us when we began our mission.

Anyway, today was our session of zone conference. We drove out to San DIego, along with the fourteen missionaries in our zone, and enjoyed about five hours of training and discussions from the mission leaders and some of the younger missionaries who’d been invited to present topics. Although much of the training doesn’t really apply to us– as senior missionaries our responsibilities and rules are very different– it’s valuable to understand what the younger missionaries are learning so we can better support them.

At the end of each conference, we all gather in the church chapel and sing “the mission song”. Yes, there’s a mission song. It’s fun to watch because all these young adults stand up, put their arms around each other, and really belt out the song. It thunders in the chapel.

During our time at the MTC back in May, it was really cool to see hundreds of missionaries on campus. Here, it’s just as cool to see a hundred of them as they navigate this difficult job they’ve volunteered to do: learning and growing and making mistakes and being frustrated, but all united in purpose and dedicating their time and talents to this work. We sure love them.

A few months ago a couple of the missionaries asked Pepper to cut their hair. Then one of them was brave enough to have me do a bit of trimming. I warned him I’d never cut hair before, but he was unfazed. The result wasn’t too awful.

Then a couple of other missionaries asked if they could come over for cuts. I reiterated my warning, and told them I wasn’t responsible for damages. They consented, and afterward seemed pretty pleased. One of them even sent me a text from his mom:

Apparently word got out, because today two other missionaries asked if the barber shop was open. “Sure, elders, come on over…”

We were playing remote board games with the kids today, and Ollie was sitting with Alex. On Google Meet you can turn on “visual effects”, and Ollie thought it was hilarious to wear aviator glasses and a little mustache.

Then Alex turned on the wizard filter, and Ollie loved it.

He probably spent half an hour admiring himself onscreen, trying different poses and laughing as the rest of us played games. Super fun.

Every year, the tiny town of Westmorland holds a celebration called the Honey Festival. Apparently the town refers to itself as the “Honey Capital of the World”, which seems like a bold claim considering its size, but I guess everyone wants to be known for something. Anyway, we trucked up there to see what all the buzz was about. (See what I did there?)

There were around fifty booths where locals were selling toys and trinkets and handmade crafts. Two of the booths sold honey, so they legitimized the Honey Festival name. There was apparently a spelling bee and some sort of essay-writing contest for kids, both of which we missed. We posed with a beekeeper’s uniform, because it seemed fitting:

It was fun to bump into some friends there.

Pepper bought a jar of honey; it just seemed like the right thing to do. After looking at all the booths, we headed over to the Westmorland Date Shake Shop, where they sell– you guessed it– dates. Oh, and they make shakes using dates. Here’s the huge sign outside their store explaining why dates are so amazing.

It was a fun way to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Small towns are such fun.

The four missionaries serving in Brawley were helping to clean out a house, and the owner happened to have a bunch of old sheriff’s uniforms in his closet. He didn’t need them, he offered them to the missionaries, and of course they accepted.

They asked me to take a picture of them and “do something cool with it”. The result:

It’s time to say goodbye to another fine group of missionaries. It seems our little family is growing; when we first arrived there were ten missionaries in the Valley, and then it became twelve. The incoming group will be fourteen.

We have a good time together. Here’s our farewell shot:

About an hour from our home is an area called Slab City. It’s out in the desert, well-known enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and has sort of an odd legendary status amongst the locals. Anyway, today we drove out there with the missionaries.

The first sight that greets you is Salvation Mountain. It’s a fifty-foot-high man-made mound of… something. I don’t know. And it’s been painted in bright colors. Lots and lots of bright colors, using lots and lots of paint. According to the volunteer tour guide (!) it took over a hundred thousand gallons of paint.

Many of those paint cans are still there, probably from back in the 1980s.

You can follow the Yellow Brick Road painted onto the mountain to climb to the top, which of course we did. From that vantage point, you can see the desert all around, as well as Slab City itself in the distance. We asked the tour guide to take a picture of our group:

In addition to the hill and the paint, there are a bunch of rusted-out cars covered in Biblical messages.

Apparently it’s quite the tourist attraction, because in the brief time we were there, at least three other carloads of people stopped to get out and wander the area. There’s literally nothing else around for miles upon miles, so they must really be coming just for this.

Anyway, our next stop was the House of Dots. You can’t miss the road sign.

Bonus: it’s Next to East Jesus! We never saw mention of Jesus in any other cardinal direction, though.

We drove into “town”, which is really just a scattered assortment of burned- and rusted-out RVs decaying in the sand and hot sun. But people live here! We eventually arrived at the House of Dots.

We met Dot. She invited us to wander around her little area, which was more or less a collection of not-quite-habitable trailers and tarps.

Imagine all the junk no one wants from every yard sale you’ve ever seen, baking in the sun for years. That’s Dot’s house. After a bit of that we wandered over to East Jesus, which is an “art exhibition”. There we met Wizard, a grizzled old man who spends his days sitting on a busted couch under a tarp. The art consisted of things like collections of old whiskey bottles, a piano that you could hardly tell was a piano, a broken fishing boat, a bunch of propane tanks, and so on. Someone dragged a washer-dryer combo out here, for example.

The highlight for the missionaries was the giant seesaw, which launched you about twelve feet above the ground and was extremely rickety. There was a sign that warned us not to use it, but Wizard said it wasn’t really all that dangerous. Thanks, Wizard!

More art:

Some of the “displays” had obvious messages, like these old televisions.

Others were just inexplicable piles of trash. Art comes in all forms, I suppose.

The best description I can give for Slab City is from Elder DeMordaunt, who quipped, “This is like if Mad Max had an art project.” It’s absolutely a one-of-a-kind place.

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.

Thomas Monson

Every year the US Navy hosts a series of shipboard events called “Meet the Fleet”. Unlike the tour of the nearby USS Midway, which is a decommissioned World War II-era ship, these are modern active-duty warships. We thought it would be pretty cool, and we happened to have an event to attend in San Diego that evening, so we drove out early.

First we met up with a new senior missionary couple. They’d just moved to San Diego and were probably feeling a little lost as they began their missionary service (I know we felt that way!). We had a great lunch with them, and introduced them to the magic of Hodad’s.

After lunch we headed over to the naval base. We spent about half an hour in the line of cars slowly creeping onto the base. Then we spent over an hour standing in the line of people waiting for the tour of a small frigate docked nearby. We snapped a photo while we were waiting:

When we thought it was time to finally get onboard for the tour, we learned we’d be standing in another line. That one was about half an hour.

Eventually we made it to the ship, where we spent about an hour on a tour that should’ve taken about ten minutes. Members of the crew showed us a few features of their ship. It was interesting, I guess, but they couldn’t really show us anything because of course it’s an active ship and you can’t have the general public going around pressing buttons and pulling levers.

All in all, it was kind of a letdown. We’ll just go to the Midway again.

As evidenced by my blog over the years, I love Halloween. I have a variety of costumes stashed away at home: Jedi (or Sith?), pirate, a low-effort Waldo, Doc Brown, and perhaps my favorite, Dread Pirate Roberts. There are many others, and I keep all the accoutrements in bins so I can pull them out when needed.

This year, we’re serving a mission and of course I didn’t bring costumes to El Centro. When we realized we’d be attending not one but two Halloween parties on the same night, I wondered what I might use for a costume. We trucked over to our local Spirit Halloween store, but the selection didn’t inspire me. The pineapple hat just seemed… off.

And the chicken hat didn’t inspire me either.

In the end, I bought a fancy top hat: the sort of thing Uncle Pennybags (of Monopoly fame) would wear. Yet it didn’t feel quite right, and we ended up attending the parties dressed as… missionaries. To be fair, that very morning our mission leaders had stressed to all the young missionaries in San Diego that costumes aren’t appropriate for the representatives of the Lord. Although as senior missionaries we don’t have the same rules, we felt like we should be examples. Sigh.

That was last night. Tonight was Halloween proper, and since the temperatures are dropping into the mere 80s, we thought it would be nice to go on an evening walk.

We learned that in El Centro, the people passing out candy set up chairs and tables in their driveways, and just sit outside in the nice weather to greet the trick-or-treaters. How awesome!

So, sadly, it wasn’t a “true” Halloween for me. But next year the costumes will be back.

Oh, and I fully expect that at least one of my offspring will take the pineapple or chicken photos and use them for nefarious purposes…