EPISTLE OF JUNE 12, 2016

Elder and Sister Elkington

School is out for the Reservation.  That is good and bad.  The children are available to be taught during the days, but they also are free to go visit relatives.  Some of them have gone to visit relatives in Arizona and in Cedar City.  We pray they will retain what they have been taught and that they will continue to attend Church.  Today we only had Krystin from Sister “M’s’” family to Church.  Others were home, but did not get out of bed until Church was about over. 

We did have three of the children come to the Heritage Park Branch FHE.  They then picked some produce from the garden and took it back to their family.  We changed our incentive program that encourages the children to attend Church.  Instead of taking them to a restaurant, we proposed a pizza party for those who have attended Church at least five times in the past 2 months.  They have been clamoring for the party, so we accommodated them and had the party on Wednesday at our home. Seven of the children attended.  They are like family to us – but it still left us exhausted. We showed them a video about the ministry of Jesus Christ. We scheduled to take 4 of the children to pick apricots in the Church Santa Clara orchard next Wednesday. 

We attended a 6 hour Zone Conference on Thursday that was very inspiring.  But sitting on the chairs for part of the meeting brought home the fact that Sister Elkington is still dealing with bruises or ? from the fall she took a couple of months ago. After about 4 to 5 hours the pain and discomfort made it  difficult to continue.  It reinforced the truthfulness of the phrase, “The mind can absorbe only what the seat can endure.”

On Monday we took “T” to his monthly meeting with his parole officer at Purgatory.  He is doing well - he is working full time and is looking for an apartment with young men who keep LDS standards.  We took him over to the Dixie College Institute Bldg to check their bulletin board and then got him an appointment to visit with the branch president.

We also took some time on Tuesday to celebrate our second anniversary.  We have truly been blessed to be married and to be serving a mission.  The Lord has been good to us!

We received a phone call from a woman who said her ward had a swap activity where women brought clothing and other items to exchange,  She invited us to come with a truck and take what was left over.  We went to the Church building and looked at what was available.  We felt most of the clothes were too worn.  We took a few items to share, but left most of it for them to take to Deseret Industries.  We do not want to take worn out clothes to children who already face teasing .