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!
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.
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.
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