Church in Eastland

After we arrived in Cisco, we tried to locate the Church in Eastland. It was listed on the LDS website and we tried to find it with our GPS. We drove around looking, but no luck. Later that day we were driving around in a little town nearby – Ranger. As we drove down one street we spotted the Elders on their bikes. Are there coincidences? They were visiting a member family in Ranger and they explained how to find the Church. It is in quite an out-of-the-way place. It is a very small building, but set on quite a large lot – very beautiful. There is a chapel with a piano, a portable podium, and a sacrament table. There are no benches, only chairs. There is a Primary room, a nursery, a library, a Young Women’s room, a kitchen and a Relief Society room. There is an office for the branch president and one for the clerk. It works for the branch.

We attended our first meeting in Eastland on Sunday, October 18, 2009. There were about 30 in attendance. We met President May, the Branch President, who lives in Breckenridge, about 30 miles north of the Church.

  

He has one counselor, Scotty Wood, who comes from Abilene (about 45 minutes west of Eastland). Brother Wood also serves as the ward clerk.

Relief Society was taught by the President, Karleen Anderson. She did a great job and there was good participation from the members. Sunday School was taught by Brook Bowden, a single gal who is also the 2^nd counselor in the Relief Society. It is a small branch and each member wears many hats. The Primary President, Sharla Carroll, is also the pianist for the branch. She didn’t attend Relief Society so they used a boom box with the hymn CD’s for singing.

President May met with us after the block and went over the branch list with us. He also asked us to speak the next Sunday.

Getting To Cisco

On our last day of instruction at the MTC we were treated to a visit from Janice and Ira Tree. Some of you may remember them from our Mesa ward a few years ago. They had recently returned from their fourth mission. Ira had served a mission as a young man in Tahiti. They left for their first joint mission to Tahiti when they were 50 and 52 years old. They shared some experiences from their third mission in Tahiti (they served one on an Indian reservation in Arizona). They told of one senior missionary couple who took lawn chairs to the beach every day and just sat on the beach. Ira pointed an accusatory finger at all the senior missionaries and said, "Don't you dare do this." He shared an experience of having a native woman come to him at the beginning of this mission. She told him she didn’t like him and would never like him. (She had had some bad experiences with senior missionaries.) By the end of his mission (he knows how to serve), she told him she loved him. They are a great example of senior missionary service.

We left the MTC on Saturday, October 10th and headed for our mission. We stopped overnight in Cortez, Colorado and ran into the family of Moneta Mack. Her brother is in the bishopric there and we got to see Collin Mack whose wife had just had a baby. After another overnight in Cortez, we then proceeded Santa Rosa, New Mexico where we spent the night. Then we were on to the mission home in Lubbock, Texas. We were greeted by a loving mission president and his wife, President and Sister Robison. They hosted us for a couple of nights.


One evening we had the opportunity to do an endowment session in the Lubbock Temple. It is a beautiful temple in a beautiful setting. If any of you are familiar with the ball field on the same property with a meetinghouse in Mesa, the Lubbock temple is in a similar setting at the back of a meetinghouse property. It is a small temple and is only available with an appointment at designated times. This was very different from our experience with the Mesa Temple.

While we were in Lubbock we were also able to visit the Buddy Holly Museum. This was quite a treat for old 50's music fans. They have a short video about his life and a good-sized room with lots of memorabilia from his life. Dennis Stewart - eat your heart out!

The next day we headed for Eastland, Texas, where we would be serving our mission. We stayed in a motel for about a week waiting for a house to become available. This house was offered to us by a family who actually live near Houston, but also own several properties in Eastland County. It is a good-sized house, but we only live in part of it. It belonged to an aunt of the husband who had passed away two years before and the house is basically as she left it. We have everything we could possibly need to make our lives easy since she was a real collector. There are several sets of dishes and a kitchen full of pots and pans and utensils. We are grateful to the Stillwell family for letting us use this home.

Cisco, where we live, is about 10 miles west of Eastland, where we work. We met with the Church area supervisor at the court house on Monday, October 18th, to get started filming records. Cisco reminds me of Superior and Miami AZ. Lots of abandoned buildings. This area was an oil boom town at one time but has fallen on hard times. Eastland is more like Globe AZ. Still has some abandoned buildings but seems to be more prosperous, probably because it is the county seat.

We work in the basement of the courthouse digitally documenting court records. We have to prepare the documents and then photograph them. Some of the preparation is fairly simple. There are big books that come apart and we just have to separate the pages and photograph them. Some other documents are not so easy. We are now in the process of imaging probate records. These are legal letters and other documents pertaining to deaths and guardianships of children. Some of the files have only a few papers. Some have “volumes” of papers. We have to unfold the papers, straighten them out and mash them flat under a glass sheet. This can be back-breaking work. It’s like standing at the sink and doing dishes by had for several hours a day. We arrive at the courthouse about 8:15 a.m. and leave about 4:45 p.m. We have an hour for lunch which we mostly spend at the local library. This is our Internet source since we don’t have a hook-up at the house.

Spiritual Experiences at the MTC

We had some really great spiritual experiences while we were at the MTC. Hope you're okay with our sharing some of those with you.

Really, the best part was mixing with the young missionaries. Just being on campus with them every day was an uplift. They were so polite. They raced to see who could open the doors for us first.

We had arrived at the MTC early (we were to check in on Monday and came Friday instead), so Sister Omerza would be able to attend the Relief Society General Conference with all the other sister missionaries. Wrong. They show the R.S. General Conference at the same time the men are watching the Priesthood session (the next weekend). Sister Omerza attended at a ward building in Provo about 3 blocks from campus. Elder and Sister Omerza attended the next weekend with all the other missionaries.

Our first experience seeing all the missionaries together was at a mission conference - the first Sunday we were there. We were told there would be a conference in a big building at the south side of the campus. We didn't think too much about it, and, for sure, no one told us to be early. Someone did tell us that they held seats for the senior missionaries at the front of the room. About five minutes before the meeting was to start, we entered the room to be greeted by 2000+ missionaries looking at us. Sister Omerza turned around and walked back out. Elder Omerza urged her to go back in. That was the only entrance we could see. Later, we found out that if we wanted to sit with the senior missionaries, we needed to be in our seats about 20 minutes before the meeting began.

The speakers at this conference were members of the MTC Presidency, their wives and one of the district presidents. Gordon Brown, district president, spoke first. He reminded us of the experience of King Lamoni's father. Christ can take our sins if we will repent. The next speaker was Pam Craig, a counselor's wife. She talked about being stripped of pride. Do we choose to be humble or must we be compelled? Her husband spoke next, President Laurie Craig. He talked about using the Book of Mormon in our teaching. Sister Mirian Clegg was next. She talked to the senior missionaries. She said if we have a hard time making contacts, remember we can always say "Tell me about your family." That seemed like it would not be too difficult. Her husband, J. Halvor Clegg, spoke next and spoke a lot about the repentance process. How will you know when you have repented? President Ralph W. Smith spoke last; his wife was ill and not in attendance. He reminded us that the major purpose of life is self-mastery. We need to control our thoughts which leads to control of our actions. Great meeting!

There were three devotionals held while we were at the MTC. The first one featured Robert Swenson, one of the Seventy. He reminded us that we "receive no witness until after the trial of our faith." (Ether 12:6) and the Lord gives men weakness so they can be humble (Ether 12:27).

Another devotional was given by Margeret B. & Stephen D. Nadauld. You may remember that Sister Nadauld was YW General President at one time and Elder Nadauld is a Seventy. She reminded us that we are all children of God and that we have never been closer to him than we are right now (on a mission). He reminded us that fear and faith cannot coexist.

The other devotional featured Ben B. Banks, an emeritus Seventy. Elder Banks asked 10-12 missionaries to choose their favorite hymn, tell us why it was their favorite and choose one verse for us to sing. He then talked about the power of music in our lives. One of the great parts of these devotionals was being surrounded by 2000+ missionries while they sing - especially "Called to Serve." There is nothing like it.

Anyone who wants to serve a mission should IMMEDIATELY immerse themselves in the manual "Preach My Gospel" This, of course, is the training manual for the MTC. It is a great resource and was used exclusively, along with the scriptures for our classes at the MTC.

Of course, we were able to watch General Conference while at the MTC. Since all of you probably watched as well, we won't share highlights of that with you.

MTC

We arrived at the MTC the weekend of October General Conference. We enjoyed our stay there. We were assigned to a study group with two other couples - the Urbans from Utah (left) and the Prices from Gilbert, AZ (right).

We had two trainers who were returned missionaries.

We had a trainer, Jay, who helped us learn how to use the digital camera.

While we were at the MTC we saw Elder Pico from our ward and Elder Guthrie, our daughter-in-law's brother. That was great!

Our dorm room was small, but we didn't spend too much time there. We had our own bathroom (thank you) and a desk where we could study. We brought our own towels (there were actually some available) and there were sheets and blankets there for us to use. It was fun (?) to eat every meal in the cafeteria and not have to cook.

Getting Ready

Our mission call was to the Texas Lubbock Mission. We were called to be "Records Preservation Specialists." We had no idea what that meant or where Lubbock Texas was. By looking it up on the Internet we found that Lubbock is in the Panhandle of Texas. When we got to the MTC we found that Records Preservation Specialists photograph documents in county courthouses around the United States. There are also specialists around the world. From the time we got our call until we had to report, we had three weeks. In that time we had to get our house ready for our son and his family to move in. That was quite a task since we had been living in our house for over 30 years. During the three-weeks' time, Jen (our daughter-in-law) and Londa Stradling (our son-in-law's sister) had a farewell party for us at Londa's house. It was fun to greet friends and say good-bye for 18 months. We appreciate the Stradlings acting as hosts and Jen for helping with the food and the dress-ups. We've included a few pictures from the party.

Lubbock Texas?

This is Sister Omerza trying to decide if she knows where Lubbock Texas is.

Our Mission Begins

This is Elder Omerza opening the mission call. The hands in the pictures are the kids helping their out-of-state siblings join in the fun.