Serving in Southern California

Hello everyone,

We are now officially serving in our mission. We are called to the California Carlsbad Mission and began (at the MTC) on the 6th of May and are now in our place in Irvine, California. The Carlsbad and the Irvine missions are being combined on July 1st and they put us in an apartment near the Irvine mission home. As of July 1st, our missions (all of Irvine and a large portion of Carlsbad) will become the Newport Beach mission, named after the temple in our mission.

This is a picture Shauna took of the temple in one of our recent visits there (only about 10 minutes from our apartment).

We arrived in Carlsbad on the 19th.

This is a picture of the office door in Carlsbad (with my reflection in it).

A day or so later, we made it to the beach (in Oceanside).

This is a picture of us on the beach.

So far, we have been visiting both mission offices and learning from the office missionaries there. It appears that our main function, at least for now, is to get acquainted with the process of each office to be able to help our new mission president, President Reeves, and the offices get going as a combined concern as soon as possible in early July.

So far, we have been to lots of office processes, apartment visits (Shauna with Sister Van Aarle) and car inspections (me with Elder Van Aarle), etc. including me helping Elder Okine here in Irvine take in and pick up cars for maintenance issues.

It is interesting that we are in the church directory (CDOL) in the Irvine mission, but in the computer system (IMOS) in the Carlsbad mission, so we are pretty much dependent on accessing our tools through the two couples we are replacing. Even at that, it is not certain how we will end up in our duties. We are flexible and willing to do anything that comes up.

Also a great blessing is to get to know so many of the wonderful missionaries serving here in these two missions. One of the new sister missionaries is from Tahiti, so French is her native language and she misses hearing it. Shauna spoke briefly to her in French and the missionary was so excited to hear it (It also turns our the our president here, President Clark is fluent in French as well). Also, we have a Farsi Group of members (from Iran) and a very vibrant Chinese ward. We attended our first baptism here the night before last and it was all in Chinese, with an interpreter. It was wonderful.

This is a great work and we feel the hand of the Lord in everything.