Dear Loved Ones All,                                                                                June, 27, 20016

After reading about the week at the Wyoming sites I decided I had a dull week indeed.  We and the Westergards have been working hard at trying to find information about the 17 presidents of the California Anaheim Mission for the past 50 years.  I have decided after much research, phone calls, and emails, coming up with some information about some of the presidencies and nearly nothing about some of the others clearly demonstrates that record keeping is important at some point in time.  Almost as important is having that information stored where a person could find it.  I also decided if our kids had to report on my life, and probably Elder Macbeth’s life, that they would not find very much (no journals to speak of, boxes of old bills, and not much else!) At least we will have missionary journals that are mostly kept up to date.  Anyway, I have spent many hours with not much to show for it, and Elder Macbeth has been trying to put the bits and pieces together in some sense of order as well as re-created maps of the mission as it has changed.  If I were to guess I would say that he has put almost twice the amount of time as I have.  As a matter of fact as I review my daily planner about all I see is “work on the 50^th.  Friday the ward had a picnic in the park so I made Texas Sheet cake brownies using dark chocolate.  Even I liked them.  (Of course I put nuts on half basically for me.) The following night we has a stake R.S. luau. It was really so the wards could display or tell about service projects the wards have been doing. Some of the projects were quite impressive for example one of the wards has been making stuffed bears out of the clothes of deceased for members of the family to have as a remembrance of their loved one. 

We of course went to Mary’s Kitchen on Wednesday.  It was easy to tell that school is out for the summer because there were a whole bunch of teenagers there to help serve the food to the homeless.  I stayed in and helped the young elders wash and dry dishes so that everything was washed up almost as quickly as the food was served. That meant that we were not there the usual 3 ½ hours or so that it usually takes.  Wednesday we also go to go to our first dinner appointment.  We usually just visit the members during the day and let the young missionaries do dinner appointments. 

I tried the oatmeal sugar cookie recipe in our family cookbook for the zone’s district meeting on Thursday.  They were a big hit, and I even liked them.  So far my favorite cookie is Kim’s molasses cookies followed by these.  I also made the puff pancakes for us and the Westergards when they were down trying to get the 50^th proof-read that Elder Macbeth finished.  While I was at the R.S. luau Elder Macbeth spent the whole time in the clerk’s office trying to finish up the rough drafts for the posters.  Then I waited there with him another hour or so. Finally he emailed the rough drafts for the posters to President Taggart late Saturday night. (Not quite within mission rule hours, but we are under a time deadline.  The celebration is this coming Saturday so they have to be done and sent to the printer.)  We got a text this morning that President Taggart was able to call the Mission Historical Office in Salt Lake to get statistics for number of missionaries and number of baptisms for those years.  So glad he has “pull.”  We were told it would take 6 months.  Thank goodness for Tender Mercies. 

So that is enough down California way.  Have an awesome new week.

Love, Sister and Elder Macbeth