Our First Week

We started the week out by going to church. We live in the New Tampa Ward. It seems to be a great ward. We introduced ourselves to the Bishop and he was so surprised. He had no idea that his ward was being assigned a missionaries couple. They were so excited his counselor said, "This is like manna from heaven." He gave us a list to work on. We have 3 sister missionaries in the ward. They are like balls of fire. They gave us some suggestions on who they wanted us to start visiting. We also have been working in the office. They really keep Dad going with the accounting. And they keep me busy with the little odd jobs that they don't have time to do. I have done everything. On Tuesday I was really tired when we left the office about 5 I told Ralph, "Lets pick up a hamburger on the way home" and we had one of those "tender mercies" again. Ralph forgot to turn on the street we were suppose to turn on. He said I will just turn on the next street and go home a different way. Which happened to go by our church. As we went down the road there were people waving signs which said "Free Barbeque" It was our missionaries and they were helping the YSA with a free barbeque. So we went in and had our dinner there. We worked again at the office on Wed and Thurs. Thurs we went to visit a sister from a part member family. It was a long ways away and she was not home, but her son was there. He gave us her number and Dad called and talked with her later. We will see if the visit motivated her to come to church on Sunday. The sisters came over one night and help Dad with the GPS. She loaded the addresses of all the in-actives and part member families into it for us. That sure saves a lot of time. On Friday we left the office in the afternoon to go visiting again. This is a hard job, but we will do it. However I had an eye opening experience. These are members of the church mostly in-actives. We knocked on a door and a man came to the door and he was stark naked. He said, "wait a minute, because all I have on is my short shorts." they were short of nothing. He closed the door and got dressed and came out to visit. I was shocked to say the least, but he came out and acted like it was just normal. I hope I don't run into that again. Sat. Morning we got up and took another missionary couple with us and went to the Temple. It is such a beautiful place . It was great to be able to go there. I am glad they will let us go over to Orlando for that. It took us a little over and hour to go there.

We have arrived!

We arrived in Tampa Florida on Wednesday. They took us to our apt about 8:00 PM. It had a mattress and box springs which we were grateful for. The frame is yet to come. It has sofa and love seat and a large tall coffee table. No food, dishes, pans etc. We went out for breakfast and to a grocery store. Spent a lot of money for food. It is hard to buy food that you have in food storage at home. Then they sent us from the mission office to buy other essentials. Like the dishes, pans, garbage cans etc. Now we can at least eat. We are in a very nice 2 bedroom apt in a gated community. It has a pool and a workout gym. They have assigned us to the New Tampa Ward. We will meet everyone on Sunday. At least we have church at 9:00 AM. They want Ralph to help in the office at least 2 maybe 3 days a week with financial. It is in a big mess. They had 25 new missionaries arrive last week and they had 15 go out. They are really scrambling to find apts for everyone. It is going to continue that way. The weather is great here right now. Not too much humidity yet, but the temp has been in the nineties. Enough to warm my bones. We have to have the air on all night to keep cool. It is beautiful here. The traffic is not great, but with the GPS we are getting around Ok. The temple is 2-3 hours away and they told us we could go when we wanted.