- Fruits of Fresno -: September 2016

Monday, September 26, 2016

The Land of Raisins and U-turns

Our p-day (preparation day) outing for this week

Working in our "day-off" clothes instead of our usual missionary attire

What an amazing thing to see the scope and range of taking the word of God to every land and isle of the sea! What a privilege to have some small part in that!

Last week was our first week without our predecessors there to help us. Of course they were as near as the phone and we made a few calls. Len was pretty confident from the beginning. My learning curve was steeper, but by mid-week I was able to stop reaching for the Tums as soon as I got to the office. As promised, “everything works out” one way or another. That happened over and again. After dinner several nights we went shopping to get what was needed to supply household goods for the apartments. In eight more days we will reach a total of five new apartments rented and furnished. By then all will also be occupied.

We continue to marvel at what mission presidents have on their plates! Until the mission was divided a year ago last July, the Clarks were in charge of around 240 missionaries. Now they have more like 170 and about a 3+hour drive diameter to the mission. That’s still a tremendous responsibility, details of which we never fully understood when our children served their missions.

Fresno is not only the raisin capital of CA (and maybe the world), it is also U-turn central. There is a special sign shown in the traffic picture, which is seen frequently here. GPS knows about it too, and often includes making a u turn in its instructions.

Time to go to bed.

With love from

Len and Kit

Monday, September 19, 2016

Learning the Ropes

At the mission office

18 September 2016

We drove into Fresno about four in the afternoon last Sunday and hit the ground running. We had about two hours to get our car unloaded and the apartment set up before dinner at Mission President and Sister Clark’s home. The other mission office couple (and our next door neighbors) was also there, along with the couple that preceded us who returned to CA to train us for the week. After a lovely evening, we scrambled to get our bed made and get ready for Monday morning.

Our workdays here begin at nine. We expected the building to be old, but it burned down a decade or so ago so was rebuilt, and several years ago half the building was transformed into a good mission office. Walking thirteen laps around the interior perimeter is supposed to be about one mile. We were taking good advantage of that at first, but not so much as we felt busier and busier as the week progressed.

A bumper crop of new missionaries (20+) is expected to arrive about the 27^th. We will all be working hard to have apartments secured and set up for them, bikes and/or automobiles for their transportation ready and waiting, materials for their study and teaching, meals for everyone involved – pretty much a million details. . .

It is great to meet missionaries as they stop by the office to pick up mail and solve bike problems and a myriad of other issues. In addition to English- and Spanish- speaking companionships, there are some Hmong-speaking missionaries and even a mixed language pair where one speaks Hmong and the other Korean, we think. In one supply closet are Books of Mormon printed in many various languages of people in the Fresno area. We have never heard of some of the languages.

Church today was a treat! The Bishop thanked everyone for working in ‘the vineyard’. In a few days they will ‘roll the grapes’ from the welfare farm. We think it has to do with making raisins. The ward members are very friendly. They rotate four organists (today’s young man was great). The lessons were inspiring. It felt like home.