Dear Friends and Family,
Hello
again from the hot and humid south. We actually aren’t minding the
humidity much. If we get out for our walk early enough it is very
pleasant. Sometime
we walk in the evenings and it is quite a bit warmer and muggier but then we get to see the lightning bugs by the nearby creek. Carol likes what the humidity does for her skin and her dry eyes.
We are both well and very much enjoying
our mission. Since my last letter we have been up to Kentucky to attend
zone conferences. The first conference was at a stake center in
Lexington, just across the street from the Univ. of Kentucky campus. I found
myself wishing it was college basketball season but I am sure I wouldn’t be
able to find any tickets. I may have to check into it if we find
ourselves back up there in January or February. While in Kentucky,
between conferences, we were able to visit the birthplace of Abraham
Lincoln. There is a monument there and a small visitors center. We
also visited the farm that the Lincolns moved to and where Abraham spent his
boyhood years which was located a few miles away.
The last zone conference in the
Louisville Mission was held in Evansville Indiana. When we were called to
serve in the Southeast Area I didn’t imagine finding myself in Indiana but
there we were. Curiously, we found a great Mexican restaurant
there. Sister Merrell will remember Evansville for escaping with her
life. Since we spend so many nights in motels I was trying to save money
and booked us into a motel there with “decent” reviews for a great price.
It turned out to be kind of a scary place. We had pre-paid for the stay
but probably should have not stayed there anyway. But we did. Carol
wouldn’t take off her socks. She didn’t want her feet to touch the
carpet. She wouldn’t kneel on the floor for prayer but knelt on the bed
instead. The air conditioning unit was pretty bad and I am still not sure
we didn’t get Legionnaire’s Disease from it. But neither of us is
coughing yet so we are probably OK. Carol has directed me to spend more
of our children’s inheritance to stay in nicer places.
We really enjoy attending zone conferences
and meeting so many wonderful young elders and sisters, hearing their
testimonies and feeling their energy. They are amazing.
A couple of weeks ago we accompanied our
Mission President and several of the office couples to Macon and Columbus Georgia
to meet with the missionaries who had been transferred into the Georgia Atlanta
Mission when the Georgia Macon Mission was closed. Once again, we met
some wonderful young men and women. We met a delightful sister who I
already knew of because of a medical report I had received regarding her.
It seems that Sister Stephens went with 3 other sister missionaries from her
area to a local safari park. She was sitting on the bus and it stopped
for people to take pictures. A giraffe came to the bus, stuck his head in
the window next to Sis. Stephens and went for the lunch she had on her
lap. In the process the giraffe bit her on the thumb. It wasn’t a
very deep wound but it bled a bit and Sis. Stephens passed out. She was
taken out of the park in a wheelchair. Everything turned out just fine
but it was an exciting day for the sisters in Pine Mountain. I
would not have predicted that a giraffe bite would be one of the hazards of
serving in Georgia.
We are blessed to have the Atlanta
Georgia Temple in our mission boundaries and have been able to attend the
temple almost every week. We also attended the Louisville Kentucky Temple
on our trip there. We hope to visit the temples in Nashville, Columbia
SC, and Raleigh NC during our time here.
We are serving at the local food bank for
several hours each week and we also volunteer at Meals on Wheels every other
Friday. We have met some very fine people and have been able to teach
them a little bit about our church. One of the ladies we met at the food
bank works in the movie industry as a script supervisor. She explained
that she works with the second unit, the stunt men etc., and takes notes from
the director to use when editing the movie. It was quite
interesting. Pinewood Studios is only a few miles away from us and the TV
show “Walking Dead” (which I have never seen) is filmed in Senoia, about 10
miles south of us.
We had transfers this week and because
President Clayton was trying to integrate the two new zones into the rest of
the mission almost every companionship was affected. We lost more than
half of our district. We had them all here for district council and fed
them lunch and birthday cake on Tuesday. Six of them left the next day-
two of them to return home. We miss them but we are excited to get to
know the new additions.
Well, that’s about it. Hope this
finds you all healthy and happy.
Love,
Rod and Carol, Mom and Dad, GrPa and
GrMa, Elder and Sister Merrell
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