27 June-3 July 2016

This will be a short blog. Paula left for the U.S. yesterday.

We attended a Family Home Evening in Accra on Monday.  This is the time of year for many people leaving and this week, President (Elder) and Sister Curtis were recognized.  He has served as the Africa West Area President for the last few years.  They've been here a total of five years.  He will have a new assignment in Utah. They were special to us because he was Andy's mission president in Italy.  Very nice, kind, gracious people.

This first week with our new missionaries is when we go to the temple on Tuesday and Wednesday.  However, the temple closed yesterday, so we were unable to take the missionaries for a second time.  We always have about 25% of our missionaries that have lost at least one parent and sometimes missionaries that have lost both parents. We try very hard to get the missionaries who have lost parents to the temple so they can have the personal experience of doing the work for their mothers and fathers. In those cases where a missionary has lost both parents, it becomes our first priority to get them to the temple and do the work so they can be sealed to their parents. 

On Friday we took these sisters to the temple to do family names.  Most of them have lost at least one parent.

These two sisters, Sister Okpara from Nigeria and Sister Soja from Nambibia, were able to be sealed to their parents on Friday. President and Sister Brubaker were proxy for Sister Okpara's parents and Paula and I were proxy for Sister Soja's parents. They are both the sweetest sisters.  Paula has become very close to Sister Soja.

These were the 14th and 15th missionaries sealed to their parents since we went back to the three week MTC schedule. The temple experience is a huge part of the MTC experience, especially for those missionaries that have not been able to go to a temple.  As a result, the missionaries do quite a lot of temple work while they are here. They have done over 300 family name baptisms. 338 live endowments, 250 family endowments and over 600 temple name endowments since February.

The temple is closed for the month of July, so the MTC will close for three weeks because of our dependence on the temple to endow about 55% of our new missionaries.







As I said, Paula has traveled to the states and she's visiting Andy and Julia. I will join her in Utah in 10 days.  Some of you reading this may see her before I do. We will return on July 21st and travel to South Africa with the Brubakers and Paula's sister Ginger for a safari. We'll see if there is a blog for the next two weeks, but, at the latest, we will post again after we return from South Africa.