October 1, 2018

Cameron Hill--Paul Ison Award Winner

Lawrence Budge and Ivan Gerratt's

Graduation

Tanner Samuelian

Elder Wells

Lunch with the Elders at Pedro's Tacos

A sweet gift from Broderick Becker

Taylor's Honey

Montage Painting by

Cindy Lundquist

Elder and Sister Nygren visit Basilone Branch

October 1, 2018

Time to change the calendar and see our last full month of missionary service begin.  

On Monday we were able to attend a missionary correlation meeting at the Lang's.  It was Sis. Lang and Elder Wells' birthday.  We were able to review our wonderful ward party honoring military families and learn about several new investigators that the Elders started teaching.  It was a great meeting.

Tuesday we attended two graduations.  Cameron Hill was selected as the Paul Isom Award Winner for Delta Company which is pretty exciting.  We felt badly that we didn't get to talk to Erickson and Zorn at graduation.  Zorn's family was there with him and they are not too happy he is joined the Church so he didn't talk with us.  We will miss him.  We did get to talk with Lawrence Budge and Ivan Gerratt from Kilo Company.  They both served missions in the Philippines and enjoy conversing in Tagalog.  They have been loyal battle buddies.  We took the opportunity between graduations for Tanner and Elder Wells to handle the marine equipment on display and snap a few pictures for their families.  After the ceremonies we took Elder Pack and Elder Wells (Tanner's ride was waiting for him) to Pedro's Tacos for lunch.  That was our farewell meal for Elder Pack.  We've been able to share many meals and wonderful experiences with him while he has served at the Basilone Branch.

Wednesday after a busy day at the NMCRS, we received a call from Broderick Becker.  He graduated a few weeks ago and went home to wait for his Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) training to begin.  He drove his car back from Utah and wanted to drop it off at a dealership for an oil change.  We met him at 8 pm to unload his Mustang (we stored his things until he picked up his car on Saturday) and drive him to the base.  He surprised us with 6 lbs. of honey from his grandparent's honey business in St. George as a gift.  It was wonderful seeing him again.  

Thursday we were scheduled to go out to dinner to celebrate Ed Pernal's birthday.  Unfortunately, his sweet wife Melodee fell and broke her wrist that day.  She was scheduled for surgery on Monday to repair the break.  She is very fragile so we're praying for her quick recovery.  There was no cake cutting on September 27 so after our service at the Thrift Store we went to the main commissary.  That was probably our last big shopping trip.  Now, we get to use up everything in our cupboards.  Because of the change in plans, we were able to attend ARP which is always an emotional experience.  Eric's family sent us videos of Grandpa's latest candy drop which they attended.  Those events are really fun for all of the kids to attend.  Grandpa is an amazing man.

We enjoyed a visit from Sansoms Friday morning.  They were coming to see our apartment in preparation for Elder and Sister Session's arrival.  It was a slow day at the San Onofre Office so I had a nice visit with Donna about her family.  They have a very strong family and are such good people.  On our way home we stopped by Cindy Lundquist's to pick up a painting she did for us of Montage Laguna Beach. (Our favorite beach in Southern California).  We so appreciated Cindy using her talents to create a painting we will cherish.

Elder Halvorsen was very busy Saturday preparing a talk for Sunday and completing a quarterly report for the base.  So, after some cleaning, I went to the gym and rode a stationery bike for seven miles.  It was some much needed exercise.  We were disappointed that BYU football team got thrashed by Washington that evening.  The best part of the day was seeing autumn pictures from Eric and Kaden hiking in the beautiful Utah mountains.  We miss this time of year.

Sunday was super busy.  Brad gave a fabulous talk about personal revelation in our morning meeting.  There were 15 marines in attendance so he got to share his insights with a big group.  Sister Jolley also spoke that morning and shared why we serve at the Basilone Branch.  We had a special meeting at the San Clemente Ward and discussed social media.  Apparently, overuse is becoming very detrimental to our youth's well being.  We learned a lot.  In the afternoon Broderick Becker called and asked us to help him find a place to park his car--he was not given permission to park it on base.  Since we live in a gated community with parking passes, we couldn't help him.  We arranged for him to park by the Richard's home.  We met him after he had parked the car and drove him back to the base.  Hopefully this is going to work out for him in the long run.  He will need a lot of shuttles.  

Elder and Sister Nygren (senior couple from the Irvine CA Mission) had made arrangements with us to go to the fireside at the Basilone Branch Sunday evening.  We met them at the San Clemente Stake Center and when they were getting in the car, we realized Sis. Nygren didn't have any ID.  That was a problem.  After discussing the situation, we decided we should reschedule for another day.  Then as we were driving away, we realized a few weeks ago when we had to help get people on base, they didn't stop the car behind us when we told the gate guard that we were sponsoring them.  We decided to give it a try.  We went through the Cristianitos Gate instead of the main gate and felt it was a tender mercy that that the gate guard let them pass through behind us.  It was nice to have them visit.  Elder Nygren is a former Green Beret and was very interested in seeing the base.  And, they enjoyed seeing the Elders teach the marines.  Usually we have 5-6 marines leave the meeting to meet with the Elders.  But, Sunday night 22 stood up when they were invited to join the missionaries.  They ended up handing out 20 military size Book of Mormons.  It was as grand farewell for Elder Pack.  We also learned that Elder Wells is being transferred so we are being "white washed" and will have two new missionaries next week.  Besides the Nygrens--Sattleys, Kapololus and Hogues also visited the fireside so we had a very large crowd.  The marines always love seeing this faithful missionary couples they have learned to love.