Sunday, 25 February 2018

We arrived in Monterey at 5 p.m. on Monday, 19 February 2018. It is fun to be back on the Pacific Ocean. The peninsula is hilly and covered with trees, making it challenging to find our way around. We moved in to our little 1-bedroom apartment at 201 Glenwood Circle, Apt H17, Monterey, CA 93940 and are settled. It is snug--to say the least--and once again we have traded our 7-bedroom home for a tiny apartment, but we love it. Part of this week has been dedicated to learning the roads and lay of the land. The other has been given to reaching out and making connections with bishops of 4 wards, chaplains at DLI, and military members of the church. We've reached out electronically to some less-active members attending DLI, but haven't had much response yet. Wednesday, we attended institute at the Monterey chapel and almost wound up teaching the class. We also had a nice visit with Bishop Stewart of the Monterey 2nd ward about his military folks. He gave us three names to follow up on. Friday, 23 Feb, we attended a zone conference in Santa Cruz, about 40 miles north on Cabrillo Highway (CA 1). Met all the young missionaries in the zone, as well as Pres Hunt and others. Pres Hunt reminded me that he was going to rely "heavily" on me for counseling with elders struggling with addictions. Saturday morning we stopped in and dropped some cookies off to a non-member wife of a military member who is currently in Taiwan for a month. That evening was adult session of stake conference. We got to meet the entire stake presidency, bishops, and many members of the stake. Pres Green said he wants to spend some time talking with us. Afterwards, we went to the Curtis home for an ice cream social and met more of the YSA. Thank heavens for GPS. Sunday, we attended the sacrament service at DLI and met chaplain Troy Allan (LDS) and two students at DLI. One's wife and 2 little sons also came to church. They just moved into military housing and he hopes to be able to join them tomorrow or in a day or two. The other's family of wife and 5 children are arriving tonight from San Diego and he also hopes to move off base as soon as they have housing. We had originally thought we would just pop in and out, but once we were there with that little group we knew that this is where we belonged - not at stake conference. However, afterwards, we made it to conference and enjoyed the talks. We've included a few photos of the apartment, landscape, chaplain Allan & me, and members of the YSA ward (names withheld for privacy). The 2 photos of the SL temple were taken from the 24th floor of the Church Office Building during our last day of training. The last 2 pics are of the Pacific Ocean at sunset at Carmel-by-the-Sea from the home of bishop Spencer, and of the YSA group that met at his home for Sunday evening scripture study. The Spencers are gracious hosts and fun to be around.