Our Mission Assignment

Dear Family,

We have decided that, in the spirit of missionary letters, we will send the same letter each week to each family and to Kyle, Drew and Rhett. If we need to add any other emails just let us know.

We have been here just over two weeks now and are finding it really lovely and exciting to live in Salt Lake City. We have already been visited by some of each family except for the Tanners.  That is a real perk of this mission. We live on the 11th floor of an apartment building just one-half block east of the Church Office Building. It is a very nice apartment and the whole west wall of our living room is glass. Here is the view from our west-facing balcony. The Church Office Building is on the left, of course, and if you look carefully at the middle, right side of the photo you see the forest that is on the roof of the Conference Center. The building between here and there is the new Church History Library.

One of the biggest differences that we comment on each day between this mission and our past missions is that everywhere we go, both inside and out, is so beautiful. (There was not a single thing of beauty in Nigeria, except the temple.) The temple grounds, or more specifically the 'Church campus,' is spectactular this time of year with blooming trees and flowers. There are many water features on the quad: water falls, fountains, pools and streams. And our days have been spent mostly in the Joseph Smith Memorial building, which is amazing. Truly, "there is beauty all around."

We have survived our first two weeks! In lieu of the MTC experience the senior couples and single sisters in this mission have two weeks of training in the Joseph Smith building, mostly with a one-on-one trainer, working on just the first 5 generations of our own family history. For both of us that meant just finding sources to prove the events for people we already knew. As you can imagine, that gets a bit tedious after awhile, but certainly not for lack of new stuff to learn.

I was especially fortunate to have Ellen Barzee, from Rexburg, as my trainer. Lou taught her kids in high school and she taught Cheyenne and Natalie in kindergarten. They loved her. As do I, now. She has the patience of Job and great teaching skills.

We even attend church in the Joseph Smith building. The branch we are assigned to is one of two mission branches composed of senior couples and single, senior sisters. Now that's a big change, also! (In Nigeria and in Russia there were 3 or 4 other couples.) You may remember that this building was once the very elegant Hotel Utah built in 1909. The magnificent foyer has marble floors, beautiful rugs, crystal chandliers a mezzanine and the 9 foot statue of Joseph Smith. I remember when I was in high school coming to Salt Lake to Conference with my dear friend, Julina Hart, and visiting her grandfather, then-Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, who lived in the Hotel Utah. Many of the general authorities lived there.) We meet in what I call the Italian Renaissance chapel because of it's architecture. The ceiling and walls are white with ornate wood carving trimmed in gold. Even the organ is white. I'm sure there's no other LDS chapel like it anywhere.

Thursday it was raining so we used the underground parking when we went to the cafeteria for lunch. As we were coming back we saw several of the brethren being driven through the parking lot in a golf cart. Then, a short distance behind them we passed right by Elder Robert D. Hales, who was being pushed in his wheelchair. As dictated by one of the cardinal rules of this mission, we just smiled and said hello and kept walking, but under my breath I added, "cousin." If I had dared to blurt out, "I'm the grand-daughter of your Aunt Edna Hegsted," he may have stopped to talk. But I'm proud to say that I maintained my decorum.

Our most exciting day was last Friday when, having completed our training zone, we were given our assignments of where we will be serving. There are 22 different zones in this Church and Family History Mission, each doing entirely different work, but you don't normally move between zones . We are assigned to work in the Church History Library (not to be confused with the Family History Library). Yeah!! That was what we had hoped for. More specifically, we will be working on the first floor with We will now begin another two weeks of training, but this time it will be on what we will be working with.

We are loving this place and being missionaries again. We especially love that you can come visit us. Everyone, have a good week.