El Fin

Oh yeah. For my last Sunday in our Spanish branch I was able to get up and talk in Spanish without notes for fifteen minutes. Obviously the Lord helped me because I still couldn't understand much after church when everyone came up to give Glen and I farewell hugs. Of course that could have been because I was sobbing.

There have been a lot of "lasts".
 
The whole zone threw us a surprise good-bye party after our zone meeting. It was with balloons and cake that they made themselves.  I will sure miss associating with the young Elders and Sister missionaries.  We loved them.

We took a last trip with the Malhums to San Francisco and then the next day to the Oakland Temple. Glen really wanted to see the Temple before we went home.  I wanted to see what I could remember from 50 years ago when Uncle Louis was working on the temple.  Not much.  But we have really enjoyed the time we have spent with the other Senior Missionary couple, the Malhums.  Today was our last luncheon together after district meetings. Hopefully we will see them again after their mission here is over.

Packing up has been very unpleasant.  We have one pile of mission boxes that will go to some other Senior Missionary couple somewhere, along with the furniture.  Then we have one huge pile we are going to try to cram into our car.  And then we have another pile of things to distribute to the branch members because there is no way it is all going to be able cram into our car.

We have been doing all this around our missionary work.  They haven't called anyone as the new Relief Society president so I passed everything along to my counselors.  They haven't called anyone to replace Glen as Ex. Sec. so he is trying to tie everything up to hold them for awhile.

Plus he had the Spanish speaking Patriarch come up from Fresno and give blessings to five of our members.  And he pushed himself really hard to get Pastor Infante (80 years old) and his wife Rafaela to the temple for their own endowments and to be sealed together afterwards. Most of the members of the branch with recommends attended.

It has been amazing to see how much help we get from the Lord when we are on His errand.  We have loved being missionaries.  It has been serious work.  And it has paid serious rewards.  We see much that could still be done.  But we have no regrets because we worked every second to fulfill His purpose in sending us to the California Fresno mission.