Rain In Kenosha!!

Dear Family & Friends, "April showers bring May flowers." We will see how true it is. Rain this morning and good possibility of it off and on most of this week, although it might turn to snow flurries later in the week. The temp ranges from the low 40s to the mid 50s. Brown grass is starting to show some green, and what look very much like leaf buds starting to show on trees. So this must be the beginning of spring in WI. What a wonderful General Conference! We enjoyed being able to watch the Sat. sessions in our apt. on the internet. Priesthood session was at the church. The R.S. room was set up for Spanish. I am very sorry to say that not one branch Hispanic adult or youth showed up for the priesthood session broadcast. Hard for me to understand, but apparently that is where we are at with the branch. Sunday morning we took hermana Cecilia, one of the recent baptisms, with us to conference. Turned out the Spanish broadcast in the R.S. room would not give any volume, so she had to watch the English transmission in the chapel. Fortunately she does fairly well with English. She said afterwards that she enjoyed it. She was most impressed with how big the Church is, its worldwide presence. She loved the choir. She's heard things about the Tabernacle Choir. It is coming to Milwaukee in mid-June. So to be able to listen to "Music & the Spoken Word," as well as the conference music was special for her. My restless companion has prodded us to find service opportunities to fill in our free time. Consequently, we are now officially volunteers at the Kenosha Shalom Food Pantry. We are scheduled to serve on Wed. and Fri. from 9:30 AM until everybody has their monthly food given to them, about 2:30 PM. We are mostly escorts for the shoppers, explaining to them their options for commodities and the quantity limits they have. We also help with translation needs. We are the only Spanish resource they have. A lady and her daughter from Puerto Rico, who spoke only Spanish came on Fri. The director needed some translation help to get the lady registered and qualified to receive commodities. So we were able to help with that, as well as with escorting them for their shopping. Of course we wear our missionary name tags while serving there. We do not do any proselyting, but can answer questions if people ask. We have had nice opportunities to share what we are about with several of the other volunteers already. We are an LDS presence at the Pantry. We had talked about and planned to go to the temple in Chicago on Thursday. Since that is out of our mission boundary, we texted the mission president Wednesday night to ask his approval. He immediately called us and in his very kind and sweet way corrected us. He reminded us of the policy for missionaries, even senior missionaries, regarding attending the temple. Once every six months, or with members we are working with when they go to the temple. As President Jones talked to us, I felt the Holy Spirit remind me that we are here to serve others, not ourselves. Although it is a good, and wonderful thing, to go to the temple for ourselves, it is not the appropriate thing for us to be focusing on at this particular time. We were very grateful for the sweet inspired way that he re-directed us. How can you be upset when you feel the Holy Ghost confirming to you what your priesthood leader is teaching you?? As much as l love being in the temple, I am very grateful Heavenly Father loves me enough to give me reminders like He did on Wednesday night. Since our morning was open on Thursday, we decided to go to the church and do service by deep cleaning the kitchen. For some time we have both been commenting to each other of the need. Armed with some cleaning materials and determination to make a real difference in that kitchen, we went to work. Fortunately there were no local members hovering to pass judgment on whether some of the items long kept in the kitchen should stay. It was pretty amazing what we found. Some of the stuff just needed to go into the dumpster. The Salvation Army Thrift Store was the beneficiary of other stuff. Even the window curtain got washed, ironed and replaced. This building must be the only one that has no wet mop. Instead it has some kind of high pressure cleaner. It looks like it washes and then vacuums up the water. Only one problem. It doesn't work. So, as of Thursday, the building has its own wet mop, and it has been duly broken in and tested in the kitchen. We are making a list of other service projects at the church. The limbs from the pine tree that broke off during winter and are laying on the front lawn. The massive amount of lost and found articles, piled in the corner by the Primary room. Vicki has already taken over the long-neglected Primary bulletin board by the branch president's office. It now shows the monthly sharing time theme, with pictures and words to support it, all in Spanish. That companion of mine is amazing. How does she know how to do that in Spanish?? We have had wonderful, Spirit-filled visits with the recently baptized people that we visit each week, giving the new member lessons. We have completed the restoration lesson and will move on with them to the plan of salvation this week. These lessons are a review of the basic lessons they received from the missionaries as they prepared for baptism. Each new member needs to have the chance to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. We have had the opportunity to share doctrine of family history and temple work with them. They are amazed at such a wonderful doctrine. (We all should be!) Each of them has the "How do I begin my family history?" worksheet in Spanish. It is the starting place. We will soon see what resources are available for doing Mexican family history on the Family Search website. Each of them needs to experience identifying an ancestor and taking them to the temple. It will be an interesting process. We have a little Family History Center at the church. Twice we have visited there asking for direction. So far they have not been much help. But, if we can help our new people to find a starting place, maybe help can be found to proceed from there. Missionary transfers took place on Wednesday morning. We were asked to help shuttle some of the companionships to the transfer point, our Milwaukee South Stake Center, located in Hales Corner, to their new assignments. We now have Elder Fisher, from Florida, who has joined us in the branch. He has been out more than a year. Elder Ashcraft, from ID, was been sent to Neehah, up north, near Oshkosh. The mission received 19 new missionaries; 3 went home. You might think about the logistics of all these new missionaries President Monson talked about on Sunday. Think of the transportation and apartment needs that accompany them in each mission. New places of assignment have to be determined. Places are receiving missionaries that have not had them in the past. Elder Shumway, our mission "car czar," told us at the transfer point how desperate the mission is for more cars. He said he spoke to somebody at Church hdqtrs. about the mission's needs and was told that the Church just ordered 3,000 new cars to support these new missionaries. Do the math on that purchase. Even with the fleet prices the Church must pay for the cars, it is mind boggling to consider the financial impact to the Church of all these new missionaries. I don't think the change announced last October was a sudden inspirational idea that the prophet had. I think it was well thought out and planned for. It had to be. The ripple affects of that announcement are astounding. Our telephone and mail contacts with Stuart are very interesting. He has been telling us about meeting on Sundays with Bro. and Sis. Hale at the jail. After asking some him a few questions, we have determined that it is Steve Hale and his wife from Mesa who are serving in that assignment. We know them well. Stuart says he is reading the Book of Mormon, and doing a fill in the blank worksheet with his reading. He also has received the conference Ensign from last October and is doing some reading in it. He attends anger management classes too. He commented in one of his short letters that the idea had come to him that we had probably been praying that he would end up where he is at, so we could serve this mission without having to worry about where he is at or what he is doing. He did not seem to say that in any sense of anger. It was more like a light of understanding had come on in his mind. We constantly pray he will receive a sentence and prison assignment that will allow him to receive drug addiction help. We love him and know that Heavenly Father loves him. We hope he will be remembered in all of your prayers. As a result of the good experience Stuart is having with the Hales, we are looking into doing some volunteer work at the Racine Correction Center, a medium security prison located about 15 miles from where we live. We spoke with the chaplain by telephone last week. Our background checks should be completed this week and then we will be able to go into the prison and see what the situation is, and what opportunities may exist for the Church to have a presence there. How excited we were for little Reed Jesse Skinner's arrival on April 2. We are very thankful for this new grandson. We are thankful that his mother and he are doing well. His naming an blessing on May 5th will no doubt the most costly of any of our grandchildren for us to attend. But we will be there! We are very excited for that occasion. May will bring another Aaronic Priesthood holder to our family as well. Wyatt will turn 12, and be ordained a deacon. President Monson got my attention in priesthood meeting on Saturday evening when he talked about the huge number of missionaries that are serving are will be serving shortly. Then he said, in two years these will all be back home, and their places will be taken by you Aaronic Priesthood holders who are here present in this meeting. My thoughts immediately went to Preston, Jarom, Riley and even to Wyatt. It will come sooner than any of us realize. Our English missionary, Elder Jordan Jones, will have his 20th birthday this week; no longer a teenage boy, but a man, even a man of God. He has been very blessed by serving in the motherland. He has been and will continue to be a blessing to that historic country. We are very thankful for his faithful service. He is a blessing to our family as well! We reiterate Elder Nelson's invitation to each of us to catch the "missionary wave" as it moves forward. What an amazing time we live in. How blessed we are! Love to each of you! Charles & Vicki