MISSIONARY EPISTLE 10/16/16

FRROM

ELDER AND SISTER ELKINGTON

Monday was spent preparing for the Heritage Park Branch FHE at Anasazi Valley.  We took six children from the Shivwits Reservation to the FHE. A lesson was given as part of the FHE and the children really enjoyed playing with the other children that were there.  One of the purposes of the joint FHE is to build friendships within the branch.  That certainly was accomplished this week

We received a phone call on Tuesday from Melvin, a recent convert who was baptized last month.   He has been working on a ranch in Shonto, Arizona and had come to St George to receive medical treatments.  He was very ill and needed a place to spend the night. We took him to our home and fed him and gave him a bed for the night. We also called our stake patriarch to come and assist in giving him a blessing.  We then gave him breakfast on Wednesday morning and took him to St George to catch a ride back to Shonto, Arizona (On the Navajo Reservation).  While he was in our home he read from the Book of Mormon and asked several questions about the principles of the Gospel.  He is going to continue his medical treatments in Flagstaff, Arizona.  So we don’t know when he will be back to St George.  He said he wants to come back to this area, but does not know when.

We also took two of the boys to scouting Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.  Shaden has completed the requirements for two merit badges.  We are trying to get these boys integrated into scouting so they will be more apt to continue in Church activity when we are no longer here.

On Thursday we had two girls from the Shivwits Reservation to our home for cooking lessons – they cooked Halloween cookies and dinner Parmesan rolls.  While the girls were cooking,, their cousin helped Elder Elkington remove dead brush from the yard. We had the opportunity to discuss Gospel principles as we worked with them.

We also had district meeting on Friday morning.  It has been frustrating because we do not get notified when the district meetings are to be held.  This week we were notified what time the district meeting would be about one half hour before it started.  And that was after we phoned and sent text messages to find when the meeting would be.  It seems communication with the district leaders is not good right now.  Once we got to the meeting, we were spiritually fed – it was a very good meeting!

Our daughter, Karol, came to visit on Saturday and attended Church with us today.  We were disappointed that many of the branch families were not in Church today because their children had their Fall break this week and they went back to see relatives on the reservations in Arizona.