Beautiful and interesting....

We took a trip to Carlsbad this week to see the flower fields. They opened March 1st and so some fields are not fully grown yet, but it was gorgeous!

We were invited to tour the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier after graduation this week. It is huge!

We were very lucky to be able to tour with an oral surgeon in the Navy who is a member of the church. Several other senior missionaries went also.

When we got up to the flight deck, Brother Mack told Jim to take over and explain about what happens with the jets, etc. because he has landed on aircraft carriers many times. Brother Mack also told us about being there with all the noise and said that even with double hearing protection, the noise just vibrates your whole body.  He told some stories about feeling the heat from the after burners even when he was far away on another deck. 

Every time we learn more about the military and all the things they have to do, I am so grateful for the sacrifices they make for our freedoms.  

We are grateful to help in some small way with the new recruits and marines as they train and prepare for their service to our country.  

We testify that the Lord loves all his children and desires all to live in such a way that they will return to live with Him. We love our mission!!

Fun, fun, fun.....

We did not have a graduation this week, so we spent time catching up with paperwork, cleaning our apartment and generally enjoying the beautiful weather this week.

We were able to take one of our graduates out to dinner and on a tour of the Mormon Battalion because he was leaving the next day for his MOS school and was staying in the USO at the airport overnight.  He is an amazing man. He was in MRP (medical) for 7 months before he was picked up by a company and finished his training. During that time he brought at least seven of his friends from MRP and many were baptized. A wonderful missionary!

We also had a sad/happy occasion to celebrate as one of the other military relations senior couples is scheduled to go home this week. We all met at the Cheesecake Factory to say goodbye and share a FHE lesson together.

We will miss Elder and Sister Lawson so much!

Sister Storrs gave us a lesson about Lucy Mack Smith and made these angels out of sea shells. Each one was designed for the Sister she gave them too!!! I love mine....

We are breaking records for temperature this week in San Diego.  So we decided to enjoy a day at the beach.
We ended up at Tory Pines State Park because we just drove up the coast looking for a beach :-)

We love our mission and the blessing of time to enjoy all that Heavenly Father has blessed us with!

We feel honored.....

This week was interesting. We had our usual reception and cake cutting on Thursday for India Company.  During the reception, Elder Hodges received a phone call from the protocol officer inviting us to have breakfast at the Brigadier Generals home before the graduation the next day!

It was an honor to be invited and the breakfast was very fancy; china, a special menu prepared by the Bayview restaurant chef and a tour of the general's home, complete with a Major General Smedley Butler room and a John F. Kennedy room (remodeled just so he could take a nap on the day of his visit to MCRD right before his last trip to Texas). 

Lots of really great displays of history.

On Saturday, the USMC Drum and Bugle Corps from Washington DC put on a performance. 

Again, we received a personal invitation and VIP seating. Wow!

 The USMC Silent Drill Team was also performing.
We had seen them in D.C. many years ago, but it was so wonderful to see them again.

Because we have no graduations until April, we decided to make a quick trip to see Suzy, Taylor and Madison and how we loved it!

Snuggling with a three week old is the best!  Oh, we also enjoyed visiting with Taylor and Suzy too!

We are so grateful for the blessings of family and knowing that as we serve, they are watched over and taken care of by a loving Heavenly Father.  We see so many miracles here with the recruits.
It strengthens our testimony and desire to continue working each day.
One more year!

Wedding!!

Camden and Eric Christiansen were married on March 5th and the reception was on the 6th.
We flew home with permission from the mission president for five days.  It took only one day to get home, well Austin and rental car...but it took two days to get back. (Lots of pictures!)

Thursday night at 8pm Eric and Camden were sealed in the San Antonio temple.

We also were so glad Cameron and Becky came with the children. We got to meet Noelle for the first time.

And play with the other children....

A Wonderful Week......

Another exciting week!

We had a wonderful opportunity to attend Lamb's Theatre in Coronado with 5 Senior Missionary Couples.  We saw "You Can't Take It With You"  a Pulitzer Prize winning comedy.  It was so fun.

First we all shared dinner together then walked over to the theatre.  We laughed so much.

Those of you who really know me, know I am horrible with plants.  They are very lucky if they survive, much less, bloom.  However, the Bullicks, who serve with us on Sundays gave us an amaryllis plant for Christmas and it not only survived, but it bloomed! Amazing!!
 

The next exciting event was the birth of our 25th grand child on Wednesday, the 25th to Suzy and Taylor Williams. I can't wait to hold her!

 Today we attended the graduation of Echo Company.  This marine and his family visited with us after graduation and thanked us for watching over their son.  He was great, a returned missionary and an asset to the branch.  He assisted Elder Hodges today in conferring the Melchizedek priesthood on another marine graduating today from the same company. Wonderful and exciting day!

I was struck today with a story one of the grandmothers told about her grandson.  Apparently, he had been offended when he was a teen attending seminary and mutual and stopped going to church.  His father was catholic and gave him a cross necklace to wear. He wore it to church and one of his mutual leaders grabbed it and said he should not be wearing it!..I was so sad to hear this young man stopped attending because of this act.  He attended every week while he was here at boot camp and hopefully he has felt the spirit and regained a testimony of the gospel.  It helps me to realize we need to be very loving and kind to all who come to church and always say positive, Christlike words because we never know how we can hurt someone even unintentionally.

I know our Heavenly Father loves ALL his children and wants us to earnestly strive to be more like Him in all we do.  I also know none of us are perfect and the need to repent is a daily event but, our Savior, Jesus Christ atoned for all.

We love the opportunity we have to serve these recruits and Marines who will serve our country and protect our freedom.

Our Regimented Schedule

Below is the Matrix we use every week to follow our recruits through bootcamp.

The letters to the left represent each company as they arrive.  You can see that at the top we will pick up Foxtrot.  We meet our new recruits almost every Friday except when you see an open come around.  These usually represent that there was a holiday either the week they were suppose to enter or a holiday the week they would be graduating.

On the far right you see the 3 phases.  We have the recruits for phase 1 and 3.  During phase 2 they go up to Edson Range at Camp Pendleton. This is also part of the MCRD branch, but there are other senior missionaries there.

If you enlarge the picture, you can see what they are doing each day in boot camp.
We shift the letters down every Sunday and prepare for the next week, pick up, Cake cutting and reception and graduation.

In the meantime we are doing most everything else on Sundays ....There are weeks were we will go and visit recruits in Balboa Hospital. This happens rarely, and I only mention it because last week we were there 3 times :-(

It is amazing when your barely know one of the recruits and then something happens and you are worried, losing sleep, and praying everyday for their recovery.  I think this immediate feeling of love and caring comes as we serve.

I have also continued to create baby quilts for the military families. I am now up to 10.

I try to keep them very simple now so I can produce more in a shorter time....
I did create this quilted pillow this week for one of our dear senior military couples who will leave us soon.  They have helped us every week with the reception and cake cutting for the graduates. We will really miss them!

We recently found out from the Military Relations Group in SLC that the amount of Senior Missionaries is declining.  That is ALL Senior missionaries, not just military, so many of our Seniors will not be replaced when they return home.  This makes me sad, as I have seen how many older missionaries offer so much to all that they serve.  They have many gifts and a year or two out of our lives is nothing compared to the blessing and amazing miracles to be seen.

So to those of you reading this, please pass along the message that more Seniors are needed!!

The gospel is so true and the Lord blesses all of us as we strive to do his work!

Volunteering and Outstanding Marines

This week Lima Company graduated.  Before the actual graduation starts, they form up in front of the theatre to get ready to march onto the parade deck.  

This is a picture of the Series Guidon bearer. He is one of our LDS marines and just recently received his temple recommend so he will return home with his wife and be sealed in the Fresno temple.
We are so happy for him!

 They are instructed to not move as they stand in preparation for marching to the parade deck and even though I stood directly in front of him for this picture, he did not move a muscle, what a marine!

This marine was without family for graduation and we just love when we get to spend some one on one time with them getting to know them better.  We took him out for Mexican food and then to the airport to fly home.

On Friday night the Marine Corps Community Services group held their yearly 

Daddy -Daughter dance. 

I volunteered to help with decorations and also both Jim and I helped at the actual event. We worked at the cake and punch table.  It was very busy with 400 attending.  Jim kept making more punch and I was continuously cutting cake.  We had two cakes donated by Sea World.  They were beautiful and fit perfectly with the theme for the night: "Under the Sea".

I took lots of pictures of the decorations.  The group did an amazing job! I only helped with the tissue flowers on one day for 4 hours, but lots of other work was done as evidenced by the result.

For the centerpieces they had some as pictured below and also some centerpieces were bowls of live goldfish which were raffled off as door prizes. The little girls loved it!

They set up different areas where the daughters could "fish" for jewelry or see "mermaids" inside their caves under water.  It was done in the field house (gym) and all the floors, walls and even the basketball hoops were covered and Jelly fish were hanging from them!
What an extraordinary activity!