Graduation Week

Saturday, November 16, 2013

This has been a good week by any measure. We have had activities every day which is good. In addition, RoLayne and I have both been able to continue the indexing effort for our ward in Vancouver. Bishop May sent an email out advising all that the ward has completed more than 200,000 names so far in the month of November and that we have only about a 100,000 remaining to reach our goal of 1 million names for the year. We are blessed to come from such a faithful ward. We love them and miss them, but would not choose to be anywhere else at this time of our lives.

This was graduation week. Six of our soldiers completed their training here and are now moving on to the next phase of their career. All six of these soldiers are headed to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California to learn a language. They are learning different languages from Chinese Mandarin, to Arabic. They will be there up to 15 months and then on into the operational world of the army. I will include a couple of pictures of the soldiers during the graduation ceremony

Graduating Soldiers

Preparing to receive diplomas

In addition to our normal shifts at the Turn Around Point and the Giving Tree, we attended the weekly District meeting. I had an interesting observation this week. I was aware that one of the missionaries is dealing with some personal problems. I am not sure if they include homesickness or if his family are having some problems, but I am pretty sure that the District Leader who was conducting the training, was not aware of this Elder’s problems. As he covered the material in his training I sensed the spirit guiding him to say things that I believe were of comfort to the ailing missionary. What I concluded was that missionaries, by virtue of their calling and ordination carry the spirit and teach as directed by the spirit and sometimes are not even aware that they have touched someone in a special way.

I believe that we can all exercise this gift by magnifying our calling, whatever it is and then not be discouraged because we think we have not been successful. We do not always know when we have touched someone. We may never know in this life. I recall a young man, who was part of a priest quorum I was teaching, who came to me about 10 years later and told me that if it had not been for my influence, he would have never served a mission. I had no idea that I had influenced him in this way. He was an active young man from a good family and everyone assumed he would serve a mission. You do not always know who you are touching and how.

Friday night the Chaplain’s group sponsored a night of relaxation and games for the soldiers in training. They do  this once a month. We are pleased to be a part of this. They call it the Coffee House. Interesting name since hardly anyone that I saw was drinking coffee. It was a fun relaxing night for the soldiers. We helped serve food and just talked with and interacted with the soldiers. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the other chaplains as well. I will include some pictures of this activity as well.

Sister Kovacs and RoLayne serving food

88 year old volunteer who makes cookies

Soldiers enjoying some food at the Coffee House

Thorn among the roses/ Volunteer Ladies at Coffee House

RoLayne and I are speaking tomorrow in the home ward where we attend sacrament meeting. I then get to teach our combined Priesthood/Relief Society lesson at the Group Meeting.

The excitement for the week was that we had a power outage on a clear sunny day. It lasted about 3 hours. (Where is Rick Dyer when I need him?) I guess that our life is not too exciting. At our age, I guess that is a good thing.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

We just returned from church. We had a good day with good attendance on the part of the soldiers. We had three young soldiers who came in looking for the Catholics. We told them we were not the Catholics. They stayed to Sacrament meeting anyway. Not sure what they thought, but it was good to have them there. We also had our favorite investigator from Hawaii. We found out that his mom just joined the church in Hawaii a few weeks ago.  He is a great young man. We had nachos and cheese for the soldiers after meeting. Boy can they eat! I think that our talks went ok today. We leave right after Sacrament meeting so it is hard to get much feedback.