NMFM Week 10: May 21-27, 2012

Hello family!  We are finding out what a holiday weekend in Farmington is like.  Today there were firetrucks blaring their horns for a while and Sunday meetings were pretty sparce.  George invited us to a Memorial Day potluck social in their yard tomorrow -- I guess it is something they have done with a number of their friends for quite a few years and has become a tradition.  This is transfer week for our mission so there will be a lot of activity at the office for the next couple of days.  It is really fun to see the missionaries interact with each other when they all get together and we are looking forward to watching it all happen again.  President Jones told us that more missionaries will be moved during this transfer than any they have had previously -- then explained that it just worked out this way and pointed heavenward (which is one of his favorite things to do when talking of the workings of the spirit). 
     George keeps reminding us that he sure hopes our kids will come visit us this summer.  So far, Maren is the only one who made reservations -- she will be here with us the week of July 4 and fly back to Seattle the following Monday. 
     Elder Tad Callister will be visiting our mission this coming week and we hope to be able to see/hear him -- he is one of our old BYU days contemporaries (he was in my ward my freshman year and was in a couple of Elder Hunt's classes that same year).  His general conference talks are always  powerful (he is LeGrande Richards' grandson, no wonder!). 
     We love hearing from family, keep the calls and emails coming!  We send our love, Elder & Sister Hunt

Monday:  We spent most of the day shopping and loading the trailer for our delivery to the new St. Michaels place.  Four elders have been living in an old, cramped trailer behind the church and a new trailer was brought in for two of them.  All four of them want to live in the new trailer, so it will be interesting to see how the split works out.  President Jones said he doesn’t care which elders move in so it will be up to the elders to decide. 

Tuesday:  This was our first delivery trip solo without the Langkildes.  Our first stop was at Sheep Springs to meet the elders from Crystal with old beds that they hadn’t been able to dispose of.  While there we met the Browns, the senior couple serving the Sheep Springs area, and had a fun visit with them.

     Our next stop was St. Michaels and the four elders there made our errand an easy delivery:  Elders Jones, Neilson, Christensen, and Earl were great help!. They unloaded the trailer and went to work putting together a desk, bookcase, and hooking up the washer and dryer.  We were there about four hours helping out.  We had a delivery in Gallup but didn’t want to drag the trailer down and back so we parked it in the church parking lot at Tohlakai.  While we were unhitching the trailer Sister Freestone came out of the church and invited us to join “the group” which turned out to be four senior couples who happened to be there all at the same time.  What a delightful visit! The following were there:  the McNeills from Ganado, the Bouwhuis from Window Rock, the Browns from Sheep Springs, and the Freestones from Tohlakai. 

     We met the Gallup elders in the parking lot at Pep Boys and gave them bed frames and cleaning supplies before heading over to visit the Haneys, the new senior couple in Gallup.  They live in a trailer next to the seminary building across from Gallup High School on the west end of town.  They were happy with the dresser and nightstand we took to them and asked if it might be possible for them to get a desk as well – we will make that a priority!  Sister Haney became quite ill during their week at the MTC with trigeminal neuralgia – we certainly hope and pray for improvement in her behalf.  They are from Missouri and are serving as counselors for the addiction recovery program – both of them are certified counselors and are a wonderful asset to our mission!  Our visit there with them was so interesting that it was difficult to get back on the road.

     We rehitched our trailer in Tohlakai and headed north and were home by midnight.

Wednesday:   We did some routine office work  and had lunch at Olive Garden, which is always a treat for us! 

Thursday:  Dennis gave our devotional on humility and shared some good thoughts – our hymn for the day was “Be Thou Humble.”  Staples gives the church a nice discount on their merchandise and it depends on the specific item how much of a discount is given.  On Monday we talked Elder Langkilde into getting two computer-type desks for the elders in St. Michaels (they only had two for the four elders there).  The interesting thing about dealing with Staples is that you don’t know how much of a discount you will get until you check out.  It turned out that the desks that were on clearance for $69 (originally $150) rang up for $3.99 at the checkout register.  So we talked Elder L. into going back to get the two desks they had left and also a couple of other desks needed by senior missionaries (the Haneys in Gallup and Sister Balling, a nurse instructor in Chinle).  We didn’t didn’t get quite as good a deal on those desks, but figured that it still averaged out to a considerable savings for the package. 

     During the afternoon there was a little down time in the office so I did some indexing.  We have been taking our laptop to the office each day and it has worked out well for us.

Friday:  During the morning we had an office planning meeting for transfer week.  It was our first time to attend this kind of meeting – we were out on the road before the last transfers took place.  We met with President Jones in his office along with the APs and the rest of the office staff.  We will have two new sisters coming in and five new elders – we will be having two sisters leave and seven elders.  After our meeting I did several baptism report entries and Dennis worked on key indicator reports that hadn’t been taken care of for a while.  We have to share office computers, only four computers have the IMOS church program on them so it takes a bit of cooperation on the part of everyone to make it work.  The APs needed the computer hookup and desk space that I usually use (getting ready for transfers next week) so after lunch I came home to work on a project that I could do at home and Dennis didn’t go back to the office until 4:00 pm (when he thought there might be a free computer) and stayed and worked until 7:00 pm.

Saturday:   After breakfast we drove over to the office and traded vehicles for the mission Silverado to do some furniture “swapping.”  We took the Bloomfield elders a better couch and loaded their old one into the back of our truck.  Next we went to Aztec to help the elders there fix their toilet, and then came back to Farmington and took our load to Good Will Industries.  While we had the truck we wanted to make it count, so we took two more loads of “Good Will” that was stashed in the AP garage over to their store.  Then we came back to our apt. and took care of our P-Day chores.

Sunday:  We attended meetings in Kirtland 2^nd Ward – had planned to meet Stephanie Benally there, but she didn’t show up today.  Maybe next week! We didn’t have much luck finding some of our contacts home so came back for lunch and a little Sunday nap.  At 4:00 we met Jared at their chapel for his first organ lesson.  It went really well – he is a gifted musician and will pick organ up quickly.