Freeway Fun

I talked with Elder and Sister Austin on Thanksgiving and they wanted me to share a photo of the fun mess of a freeway interchange right by where they live that they've been getting used to navigating. If you know my parents, you may know they like to avoid traffic and confusing freeways, so they've had a lot to get used to, but it sounds like they are doing well. They just can't skip using the GPS because it's been a sure way to get themselves lost in a hurry.

Link to Google Map

October Update

We keep telling people we are trying to get things figured out.  And we are still trying.  The four military relations couples are going to meet with the Mission President in November.  We think the meeting is to answer some questions and interact with the Mission President about the military relations program.  

We are assigned to work with four wards in the Honolulu West Stake.  Those four wards have most of the military members who are assigned to Pearl Harbor Navy Station or Hickam AFB.  We are trying to attend all the ward councils of those wards and work with ward mission leaders and young missionaries in those wards.  As you can imagine, we jumped from your pan into the fire!  One of the bishops left us a phone message about talking in one of the wards near the end of November.

Since we have been here Elder Holland and Elder Schwitzer have been here and talked to the missionaries.  We understand two other general authorities will be coming before the end of the year.  It must be getting cold in Salt Lake?  Or maybe this is one of the largest missions in the church.

We plan to go to the Temple this Friday (will try to go once a month). 

We have a nice one bedroom apartment to live in.  It is in a HOA.  We can't get away from the HOA.  It is located near the Aloha Stadium.   Also located near the Airport, Pearl Harbor, Hickam and where several interstate and state highways have exchanges so it's a real spaghetti bowl of roads around us.

Love, Elder and Sister Austin 

Visitors and the PCC

Aloha!

Sorry it has taken us so long.  We had to have the local Time Warner cable co. come hook-up our internet.  They just got it done earlier this week.  We are doing OK and starting to find out about what we should be doing.  

We went to Tripler Hospital with Elder and Sister Caldwell to help with a blessing.  We then went to lunch with them.  They answered a lot of our questions.  Elder and Sister Davis stopped by yesterday and answered more of our questions.  Elder Davis checked out the internet set-up by the cable company and helped us get the printer working.  

Last Saturday we were at the missionary meeting with Elder Holland.  That was special.  Monday night we attended the Family Home Evening at the Mission President's home with the Military Relations missionaries, the Hawaiian Mission office missionaries and several other senior couples.  It was our first chance to meet most  of them.  

We are thankful to be here.

Elder and Sister Austin

Dear President Albright

This is a wonderful missionary story I just read. It's well worth the time. 

Mark Albright served as the Washington D.C. South Mission president during the time Audrey Denison was investigating the church, and this mission covered the area in Virginia where Denison was living. Albright shared this background information along with permission to repost this letter: "I was the mission president in Virginia and was not even aware of the miracle transfer we made that answered her prayers and resulted in her baptism."

Denison sent the following letter to Albright from the Provo MTC, where she is preparing to serve a mission in the Washington Vancouver Mission.

Dear President Albright,
I remember the first time I ever went to a Mormon church. I was 18 years old and a senior in high school. Trust me when I say I had no desire to be a Mormon. My parents divorced when I was a baby, and growing up my mom was a wonderful example of virtue, goodness and working hard to reach your potential. She brought us kids to a local Baptist church, where I learned to love the Lord as a little girl. I am thankful for my upbringing and my mother's powerful influence because I don't know who I would be or where I would be without her. I had just been crowned Miss Teen Nevada, and my dream was to become Miss USA...

Full Story 

It's Your Ship - Michael Abrashoff - USS Benfold

I was given this video to watch in a management class I am taking. There are stories he tells about Pearl Harbor and the Navy and it made me think of my parents.

I've heard from Sister Austin, they arrived safely and are still waiting for their internet to get set up, so hopefully we will hear more about how things are going in Hawaii once that happens.

In the meantime, enjoy the video.

Riding the Storm Out

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday a couple we know from St. George came to the MTC and took us to lunch and then to their place for a while. We were concerned about the traffic getting back to the MTC because of the  BYU football game with TEXAS. Heading back we got caught in both the traffic and the storm  that hit the Provo area before the game. It was a storm with a lot of heavy rain and a lot of flooding in the streets, We got home OK and the couple also got back home OK.

Elder Austin

One Short of the Record

Hi Everyone,
Today Sept. 4, they said here at the MTC they were expecting several hundred new missionaries and would we "stay out of the way". 
This week we are in classes from "Preach My Gospel", learning to be real missionaries. Our group of 127 Senior Missionaries was only one short of the record for the largest group ever. 
Last night we attended the regular Tuesday night MTC Devotional. The speaker was David L Evans of the Seventy. He spoke about the amazing expansion of Missionary work and how they arrived at the decision to lower the age requirement. He said in every other dispensation the Prophets asked for more time. In this last dispensation the Prophet asked for more servants because the time is short. And they came! By October Conference they expect to have 85,000 missionaries in the field.
This is a humbling experience to feel the level of excitement and commitment of everyone here. Hope we can live up to the high level of expectations. 
Sister Austin

A Sea of Smiles and Suitcases

I just had a fun experience this morning during my commute. When my Trax train stopped at the connection with Frontrunner, a mass of missionaries scrambled on board. They hardly fit with all their luggage. I asked, "Is this transfers? where are you all going?" Come to find out, the MTC is now using Frontrunner and the Airport Trax Line to send out missionaries. I imagine my parents will also be experiencing a sea of smiles and suitcases as they enter the MTC this week. Maybe all I'll have to do to see them off when they leave for the field is to walk down and ride the Trax out with them to the Airport. I told the missionaries next to me that it would be good practice for them for transfers in the field. I couldn't help thinking about the recent comparison of missionaries to a wave. It was fun to have a bunch of them wash on board this morning and join me in my morning ride. Good luck! you're about to have a great adventure.

Military Relations Opportunities

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsorg/callings/missionary/senior-missionary/senior-missionary-opportunities.pdf?lang=eng

Military Relations Specialists Missionaries

Here is some more information on these special missionaries from Meridian Magazine

http://www.ldsmag.com/1/1/article/7643/page-1

 My husband and I are currently serving a full time mission in Jacksonville, North Carolina, as military relations specialists. We work mainly with YSA Marines at Camp Lejeune, Camp Geiger, and Camp Johnson. The prerequisite for this calling is prior military service. (My husband is a veteran of two foreign wars, Vietnam and Desert Storm.)Our work is both rewarding and difficult because members currently serving move around so often with training and deployment that their records have a hard time following them. However, here is the good news. There are senior military mission couples at almost every major base around the world, in all branches of the military. We have couples in Japan, Italy, and many of the bases in the U.S. We are here, waiting to be contacted by the Marine/Soldier or his family.
We are constantly praying for divine help in finding these young people. Sometimes we find them because the spirit sends them our way. For example, we were sitting in our car in a parking lot looking for another Marine and a car pulled up beside us and said (and I quote), "Do you need help? I'm a Mormon but I'm inactive!" It's as if he had no idea that he was going to say that; it just came tumbling out. As it turns out, he was on our list of people we'd been unable to find ― and there he was!
My husband drives more than 100 miles on Sundays making pickups at all three bases to make sure these young people can't use the excuse that they don't have transportation. We have home evenings on Mondays, Institute on Tuesdays and conduct sacrament meeting on Sunday evenings for those coming in from a long 29-day Marine Combat Training in the field. We go to all of their graduations, we take them to the airport, and we pick them up when they need it. We also make blessings available for the sick and ailing, mentally and spiritually. We provide all of that and so much more, but unless we know they are here we can't help them.
Military life is both difficult and rewarding. The greatest challenge is in keeping spiritually in tune to be able to avoid the inherent pitfalls ― the drinking, smoking, tattoos, and other facets of military social life.
The Lord has provided a way to both serve in the military and stay as active as possible but it's a two way street. You need to want what is available. We are all here to help!
Elder and Sister ZollingerNorth Carolina Raleigh MissionMilitary Relations, Camp Lejeune

http://ldsmag.com/article/7716

"...we have a letter from a missionary couple who were featured in our last column.  They sent in a great story that illustrates just how much help our young men and women who are being deployed can find from their fellow Latter-day Saints.  Here is what they have to say:

I wish that the Church would find a way to list all the bases that have Military Relations Specialists Missionaries in the Ensign or Church News. I can't tell you how many calls we get from parents who tell us how hard it was to find a representative on base.

When we first came out here we were told that we could not wear our name badges on any of the bases unless we were conducting sacrament meeting at Camp Geiger. As we developed a good working relationship with the chaplains we discussed the fact that our own membership couldn't recognize us without the name tags. They were surprised that we had been told not to wear them because as far as they are concerned they know that our members need to know we are here and they (the chaplains) can't do what we do!

So now we wear our name badges everywhere on base and as a result we have military personnel come to us and introduce themselves. We have begun to find many of these young kids who really need to know they are missed in Church. 

I want to share an experience that is the defining moment for us in this mission.

We went to a nighttime farewell for two of our members who are currently deployed to Afghanistan. While we were standing there, some parents came over and introduced themselves, telling us their son was a returned missionary who had gone inactive. He was also there that night to deploy. We only had a ten-minute time window to talk with him, but in that ten minutes we were able to get the military set of scriptures in his hands with his promise that he would start reading them again.

The last thing he told Elder Zollinger was that as soon as he was able, he was going to get active again. That young man, Lucas Pyeatt, was killed by an IED just two weeks later. (You can do a web search to find his information.)

You tell me, just how important was that nametag? I hope that you are able to let people know how important the Military Relations Mission is to our Marines/Soldiers."

Elder and Sister Zollinger 

North Carolina Raleigh Mission
Military Relations-Camp Lejeune

Mormon Military Missionaries

In Honolulu, Lloyd and Ann will be working on military bases as Military Relations Specialists Missionaries. Here is some information I found in a Desert News article by Joe Walker about the program.

"The most recent numbers from the Defense Manpower Data Center indicate there are nearly 20,000 Latter-day Saints on active military duty — 7,174 in the Army, 2,694 in the Navy, 2,486 in the Marines and 5,787 in the Air Force — among the top 10 most common religious preferences in the U.S. armed forces. For those who choose to enlist, local LDS leaders provide a pre-military orientation meeting so they can know what to expect regarding church services and activities for those in the military, Purdy said. The orientation 'offers suggestions on how service men and women can remain faithful and practice their religion in the armed forces,' he explained.

There are also 64 retired military couples serving as senior missionaries at U.S. military bases around the world. Purdy said these couples assist local church leaders in serving and encouraging LDS service men and women.

'Stake presidents and bishops around the world are responsible for making the blessings of church participation available to service men and women,' Purdy said. 'Members in the military normally participate in wards or branches located near their military installations. In some instances, a new branch or service member group may be formed for deployed members of the church.'"

 http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765608238/God-and-Country-Mormons-mix-missions-military-service.html?pg=all

Contact Info and Dates

Ann will be using her personal e-mail and cell phone while in Hawaii, so you will be able to contact her the same as in the past.

They are speaking in church Aug 25th, then flying from St George to Salt Lake City Sept 2 and will be in the MTC 2 weeks.  They are scheduled to arrive in Honolulu Sept 14th.

I Hope They Call Me On A Mission

♫They've called us on another mission

That's why we've made this blog for you

And soon enough we will be ready

To teach and preach and serve

Just like we used to do ♫

Hi, This is Aaron, I'm going to maintain a blog for mom and dad's mission. Let the countdown begin!