We are half-way to a firm departure date. We received official Salt Lake notice that the Francos will arrive in Phoenix on September 16th to train with the Poulsons for two weeks. We have unofficial information that the Thorntons will arrive in Phoenix on July 15th. Nothing from Salt Lake about them yet because there are still hang-ups with their ecclesiastical endorsements. Evidently, a medical form was still missing so the bishop was waiting on that. But, the Thorntons are planning on a July 15th arrival. Then, we will train them for three days and head for home on Thursday, July 18th and arrive on Saturday, July 20th. Fingers crossed.
We went into the office for half of Memorial Day. We always have a Monday office meeting and we needed to finalize our Mission Tour plans. We left at lunch time and did our usual grocery shopping but then we had a relaxing afternoon back up in Anthem. It was nice.
The Mission Tour this week was a visiting general authority, Elder Peiper of the Seventy, who came for four days. Two of those days were zone conferences - four zones on Wednesday and four on Thursday. I was asked to put together a special musical number and I wanted to take advantage of the several string players we have scattered across the mission. I picked a simple hymn arrangement to "As I Search The Holy Scriptures" (Hymplicity to the rescue) and created some string parts to accompany. I had to come up with a couple of iterations because I was not sure which strings would be playing on which day due to a transfer literally the week before the conference. I had a violin-violin-cello version and a violin-cello-cello version. As it turned out, for the Wednesday performance, I had NO strings. All my musicians just happened to be in the four zones for the Thursday conference. Oh well, we would just have piano and choir that day. There was to be only ONE 30-minute rehearsal on the day of the conference (which meant getting up at 4:45 to be out the door at 6:00 to arrive at the meetinghouse by 6:30 for a 6:45 - 7:15 rehearsal because a group photo was at 7:30 and the conference started at 8:00) So, Wednesday morning came and, the sister missionary I had asked to play piano, for various reasons, didn't practice at all and and she didn't let me know. She also arrived late to rehearsal. And, it was only then that it was evident she couldn't play for the choir. So, I got to sight read the music and I had to accompany. It really wasn't that difficult of music - I just over estimated her musical abilities. Happily, the number went nicely. It went even better the next day with four practiced string players, a practiced pianist, and a slightly more robust choir.
Steve and I hosted my cousin Kay Winfield for dinner on Friday night. We picked her up and brought her up to our place in Anthem. We had such a good visit.
We were supposed to host a man and his son from our congregation for dinner last night (Saturday) - we made homemade pizza - but he apparently double booked himself and was unable to come. So, we ate on our own, took some of our huge salad over to the sister missionaries, and we watched "The Blind Side".
I am excited for June. Two weeks of regular mission work and then two weeks of travel. Thankfully, our mission president is allowing us to honor those long-time made commitments.
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