Missouri Independence Mission Oct. 2022-April 2024

It was the hottest week of the year. Each time I stepped outside I was reminded of Fiji. The heat and humidity just hits you in the face. Even the smell is the same. The air is heavy and leaves a dirty film on the car. At least it wasn't like Fiji in that I didn't have to do any heavy work outside. And I still tried to get some short walks in. Hopefully, the really hot and humid days are over. President Wong I pictured our spider traps last week. The complex sprayed our apartment this week for pests and the next day I killed a spider and mom had one crawling up her arm. Saturday we bought four more spider traps to put out. 😁 The one in our closet got three of them. Elder Wong was fun to have for our mission tour. He had quite a few learning activities in with his teaching so that kept the missionaries engaged. Mom and I had prepared the new MSF cards for distribution after each of the three zone conferences and that went well. The next pay period for missionaries is this week

We had Elder and Sister Healy and Sister Ethington over for dinner after church and by the time we got done talking it was getting late so our letters are a little late today. It's also a good excuse to shorten it up. It was fun talking to the Healy's and exchanging missionary experiences. They have been on multiple missions, also. They arrived here yesterday and, of course, I forgot to get a picture. It was cool enough each morning so that we could go for a walk each day. Things have definitely taken a turn. All next week the temperatures are forecasted to be in the 100's with the lows in the high 70's so things won't even cool off at night. The heat index for today is 113 so we haven't been spending time outside at all. It is supposed to be back to cooler temperatures next weekend. Elder Marble, Jimmy and Elder Kambaya Our mission tour with President and Sister Wong is this week. We received the new missionary credit cards in the mail Friday and got one for ea

It was worse in real time All in all, it was a pretty slow week. I began the rent and will finish up this coming week. It seems there is always something going on that puts us in a hole. This week we had to pay a $75 late fee because transfers were near the end of the month and we were charged $100 fee for two background checks on new missionaries moving in. Then the calendar month turned and we hadn't paid the $100, so the late fee. We called but all they said was "sorry." They get you one way or the other. Mom told you about the downpour on the way home from church today. I am so thankful we were off the freeway when it hit - about 2 minutes. At least on the city streets everyone slowed down. If we had been on the freeway there would have been some cars slowing down and some continuing on at 70 mph running up our rear end.  I was also grateful for the tail lights of the car in front of us. There was ankle deep water on the walk from the car to our apartment. And now the

It looks like another mostly pictures blog as it was a "business as usual week" in the office. It has been interesting watching the price of gas yo-yo. It went up 25 cents and then down a few cents for a couple of days and then had another 24 cent jump. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and fill up tomorrow as it is impossible to out guess which way things will swing. There was another baptism in the branch today. Young David's three sisters were baptized one of the first Sundays we were here. He is a cute kid. His mom speaks only Swahili and not a member. Mushrooms and ducks were in our complex this week. We haven't seen the mushrooms before and I don't know if the ducks are back for the winter or what. The weather forecast says highs in the 80's for the next while which is a nice change. They say it has been a dry summer but we're getting more rain than I'm used to. The summer flowers are still looking good. One of our granddaughter's