District Meetings

We always plan on attending District Meetings on Tuesdays.  We follow a rotation through the three zones that we work with.  We had intended to visit two districts in the Sarasota Zone today.  However, last evening, we found out that those District Meetings had been rescheduled because the missionaries were to have interviews with President Cusick.  So we traveled to the St. Petersburg Zone instead.

Elder Stuart is the new District Leader of the South District in the St. Petersburg Zone.  He had the missionaries do a fun activity.  He and his companion had hidden 72 Easter eggs in various rooms in the building (not the chapel).  He sent the missionaries on an Easter egg hunt.  Most of the eggs had candy in them.  However, there were four special eggs with had the four main points of his lesson.  He had those who found those eggs read the notes which served as the introduction to the lesson.

The focus of the training in the District Meetings this week is on working with ward leaders.  They were trained on asking in ward council the four questions that Elder Zwick taught the ward councils in the special training meeting a few weeks ago.  1) What are the names of the investigators who will be in church meetings today.  2) What are the names of the investigators who have baptismal dates.  3) What are the names of the ward members who are fellowshipping those investigators.  4) What are the names of those whom you will have taught in your home this week.  The last question is the most challenging for the ward council members, and the missionaries will need to keep pushing it.

Elder Stuart's District on a sugar high from their Easter egg candy.

A Normal P-Day

Today we had a normal preparation day.  I waiting until the sun came up before I went jogging (it was 45 degrees out when I got up).  After returning, I dusted and vacuumed while Renee did some laundry and went to the fitness center.  We then ran some errands.  Later in the afternoon, we drove to the "celery fields" to take some bird pictures.  This is a wetlands area which was drained and used to raise celery for many years.  Twenty years ago, the county purchased the land and restored it as wetlands to use in storm water collection.  The birds have discovered it, and it is a well-known site for bird watching and bird photography.  I only had a little time, but I was able to get a few pictures.  As you can see from the following pictures, my bird photography techniques need improvement and practice.  I'm not sure how much time I will have to try to improve.

The names of the birds are courtesy of my newly purchased Florida Birds Pocket Guide.

Black-necked Stilt with a Lesser Yellowlegs in the background.

Sandhill Crane - Three of these flew right near me.  They are big birds!

Another Busy Sunday

We attended the Venice Ward today.  Although it is a 30 minute drive from our apartment; the drive is almost all interstate, so it is probably the easiest building to get to.  Venice is a retirement community, and the ward reflects that.  Although there are some younger families, many of the ward members are snowbirds or permanent retirees.  We were told two descriptions of the ward by ward members.  1) God's waiting room, and 2) retired folks live in Sarasota and their parents live in Venice.

The people in the ward are pleasant, but I don't know how committed they are to missionary work.  They did have a baptism last week of a 9 year-old boy whose father is inactive.  He was baptized and confirmed by the ward Cubmaster, whom I am guessing is at least 75.

After visiting the ward meetings, we returned home for a couple of hours, and then drove to Gulfport.  President Cusick had asked us to take his place to speak at a youth fireside about preparing to serve as missionaries.  The fireside included the Gulfport Branch, Seminole and St. Petersburg wards.  About 50 youth were in attendance.  Renee and I spoke for about 35 minutes, and then we had about 35 minutes for questions.  Four missionaries were in attendance, so I had some of them answer questions, such as how did they get their hair cut.  Hopefully, it was a beneficial meeting for them.

Baptism and Senior Missionary Gathering

Late this morning, we drove to the Bradenton building to attend a baptism for Jessica.  She is the girl friend of a members and has been taught by Elders Nelson and Spach.  They reported that she was very enthusiastic about being baptized and invited us to attend the service.  She is very excited about being a member of the Church.  Her parents, who are not members, are less enthusiastic, but they attended her baptism.  Now her challenge is to help her boyfriend decide to serve a full-time mission.  He isn't sure he wants to go, but she wants him to go.  Hopefully that will help encourage him.

After the baptism, we drove to Tampa to join with the other senior missionaries for a social gathering.  We met at the clubhouse of the apartment complex where the Healey's are living.  The purpose of the gathering was to say good-bye to two senior couples who will be leaving shortly, the Judd's and the Ainscough's.  The Judd's have been serving as CES missionaries and running the institute program.  The Ainscough's were originally assigned to the Venice Ward, and then they were transferred to Tampa.  They have been helping the Healey's with apartments and also worked two afternoons a week at the Orlando Temple.  They have served a 6 month mission.

We returned back to our apartment in time to watch the Women's Conference Session.

Elders Spach (l) and Nelson with Jessica and her parents.

Mission Leadership Council

We participated in the monthly mission leadership council meeting today.  It was scheduled for a beach pavilion at Fort Desoto Park.  This is a nice county park located on 5 small islands.  There was a fort built there in the late-1800s to protect the entrance to Tampa Bay.  It was on my list of places to visit on P-Day, so I was excited when I found out that is where the MLC would be held.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate.  We started the meeting with strong winds and occasional light rain.  That made it difficult to hear was was being discussed.  Then the wind picked up.  The radar map on our phones showed a major storm front moving in, so we decided to move to the Gulfport Branch building which is 15-20 minutes drive away.  Unfortunately, we waited about 5 minutes too long, and the rain started as we were moving everything back to our cars.

We drove to the Gulfport building and discovered that half of the missionaries, including President Cusick, had driven to the wrong address.  When they figured that out and headed back to the Gulfport building, they were caught in traffic.  So it turned out that we had about a one hour break in the middle of the meeting.

The meeting itself was good.  President Cusick really considers this a council and solicits opinions and feedback from the missionary leaders -- the zone leaders, sister training leaders, and assistants.  One of the ideas generated by the missionaries was to have all the missionaries take a break from their cars for three weeks.  The idea being that if they are out on foot, on public transportation, or on bikes, they will meet more people.  So beginning with the district meetings on Tuesday, the missionaries will be asked to not drive their cars for three weeks (with some exceptions such as to drive long distances to district meetings and health challenges).  It will be interesting to see the results of the experiment.

It was good for us to find out the location of the Gulfport Branch building because we have an assignment there on Sunday.

Again Not Too Busy

To start the day, we needed to find a Post Office to mail our packages.  We discovered there aren't any that are very close.  The nearest one to us is a contract post office operated by the Amish community.  We have discovered a very large Amish and Mennonite community lives in Sarasota.  Some of them live here year round while apparently others are snowbirds and return to their farms, etc. in the midwest come spring.  As I understand the story, the US Post Office was going to close the small post office located in the area where the Amish live.  I assume the Amish don't use the internet, so mail is important to them.  So the community purchased the small post office building and operate it.  And they don't take credit cards for purchases there.

The Amish and Mennonites are quite noticeable in the community.  They wear plain clothes with not makeup on the women.  The women wear a type of bonnet' and the men mostly have beards.  Since they don't drive cars, their form of transportation is to pedal three-wheeled bicycles.  They look like large tricycles.

We had a meeting with the Sarasota Stake High Councilors who work with the missionary effort in the stake.  We drove to pick up Elder Nelson for the meeting while his companion went with another member to teach a lesson.  Because of the traffic, we were late for the meeting with the High Councilors, but we were still able to have a productive discussion.  I commented about the need for newly baptized members to have home and visiting teachers.  They understood the concerns but noted that none of them had home teachers.  And at least one was not assigned as a home teacher despite his requests.  Yes, home teaching and visiting teaching statistics are low.

Not Much Today

We didn't have any assignments today, so we focused on buying Easter gifts for our grandchildren and also birthday presents for Violet upcoming 6th birthday.  We also had enough time that I was able to go pick up the new suit that I purchased following the alterations.