Sunshine & Juneau; An Implausibility

Elder Norris and Thorn have been asking me to visit Carl Bogrin with them when they teach him lessons.  I have made suggestions on how they approach him with teaching.  The last time we met we read Nephi's interpretation of his father's, Lehi, dream.  We then discussed this in depth until we were sure he understood it.  He wanted to focus on the spacious building, after we discussed it as representing the pride of the world.  I had a hard time getting him to focus on the Tree and the fruit at the end of the iron rod.  He is a member of the Assembly of God church.  For some reason the negativity of hell registers as more important than the glorious aspects of Exaltation and Eternal Life.  He finally got it.  When I inserted the family into the picture he finally got it.  We challenged him to read Alma chapter 40 for the next visit.  He is making good progress.  When we arrived to the lesson, at 1:00 p.m., he was asleep in his room.  We had to wait a bit for him to get dressed and come down for the lesson.  He is staying with a member for now.  A. J. Collins has made arrangements for him to stay without rent until he gets a job.  I took him a packet from a job fair so he could look for a job.  (We haven't heard anything from Home Depot yet.)  I was quite firm with him before leaving and told him he should be out looking for a job so he can be self reliant.  I also told him not to take advantage of A.J.'s kindness that members of the church are willing to be kind to others but that we should be self reliant.  I hope he got the message.  As I've said before, he would be baptized yesterday if the elders would let him.  When we got outside of the apartment I asked the elders if they had taught the commandments and things such as tithing, word of wisdom and such.  They hadn't.  I told them they need to quit being so slow about it.  They need to inform him of all that is required and then let him be baptized so the spirit of the Holy Ghost can help him to learn faster and better.

We had a wonderful week.  Matt Adamson received his mission call.  He asked us to meet him at Richard and Karlyn Welling's home to be with him when he opened his call.  He skyped his family in Valdez, Alaska and opened the letter.  He has been called to Tennessee. 

Nia Ma'ake received her call on Friday as well.  The mail is a bit slow up here.  She waited until Sunday evening to be with her family to open the letter.  She has been called to the Everett, Washington mission.  Those lucky, and fortunate people will love her. 

Our missionary preparation class was attended by Matt and Nia this week.  Heather Malin had a terrible cold and didn't want to be around anyone.  I had them teaching the 4th article of faith.  When I asked Matt to go first he looked at me with lots of hesitancy and said, "Elder Waldron, I don't know how to start."  I got after him a bit and took him back to the Doctrine and Covenants where we are taught not to worry before hand what we shall say.  We are first to seek the word, and then the Holy Ghost will prompt us with what to say when we need it.  I said, "Just open your mouth and start talking.  You already know this stuff."  He was perplexed, but he opened his mouth and he started teaching Nia very well.  He did know it.  Nia then taught the same thing to Matt and went into more depth with some scriptures.  We love working with these young people this way.  We will surely miss them when they leave.  And Nia leaves in 5 more weeks.  That is a short preparation time.

After the Missionary Preparation lesson, Diane taught them two Temple Preparation classes.  Stacey Storrs joined us for those.  That was the last one of those. 

Thursday, after the Institute lesson, one of the sisters in attendance asked Diane if we were invited to dinner often.  Diane said, "No, not often."  So Diane Lohrey invited us to dinner.  Her husband is a non-member.  She has two kids attending seminary.  Emilyanne is baptized and received her acceptance letter to BYU Idaho this week.  Michael, has not asked to be baptized yet.  He talks about a mission but his sister teases him that he has to be baptized first.  We think he is holding out to respect his Father, John.  John takes them to his church half of the time and goes to the LDS ward with the family the other half.  Diane Lohrey is really quite amazing.  She is a California girl.  She has adopted a learning disabled girl from Russia.  They actually visited Russia for some time before being able to bring her home from the orphanage.  They have adopted two other very young half sisters.  They appear to be about 3 and 4 years old.  They are very rambunctious.  Elders Norris and Thorne were invited to dinner as well.  We had a wonderful visit with them and left within about an hour of having arrived.  And Diane has a Russian foreign exchange student living with them.

Erin Willis and Lynn Hirschi fed their class breakfast Friday morning after seminary.  Sister Waldron spent the time in the kitchen preparing the meal.  A young man by the name of Richard Gould was keeping me from preparing my lesson.  So I invited him to go help Diane.  He is actually too old now for YSA, he's 34, but does occasionally show up at institute.

Heidi and Michael Malin were teaching some scripture mastery in Romans, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ...."  They bought a white t-shirt for each of their students and then had them paint something on that shirt that related to Romans or to Ann Dibb's talk, 'I'm A Mormon. I love it, I know it, I live it.'