The Changeover! Officially The GA Macon Mission!

Macon Zone before Transfers!

President and Sister Cottle from Logan, UT  next to us- sitting.
Our new Assistants to the President, are at the ends.
Elder Lash on left, coming from the So Carolina Mission.
Elder Christian, far right, used to be our Macon Zone leader, in Ga Atlanta Mission.
The Johnsons (left) are the mission housing/ vehicle coordinators, from Monroe, UT
The  next couple are from Macon, but have been called as regular full time
 missionaries, living at home, to be the office secretarial and financial affairs staff.

Milledgeville District

We will be losing many of these missionaries this week - three are going home right from our small district, and another - Elder Cherry was asked to report with his suitcases.  We hope he will be back, but for a week at least, we will be the only ones here in Milledgeville, and the Sisters will be alone in Grey - half an hour down the road.

The Milledgeville District
From left:  Sister Wood, Vernal UT;  Sister Mortenson, Centerville, UT;
Elder Darrow,  Peoria, AZ;  Elder Castleton;  Elder Cherry,  San Tan Valley, AZ;
Elder Chase, Brea, CA - District Leader;  Elder Taylor, Newport, WA.

Elder Darrow, third from left, was in our first District and we will always be grateful for his quiet encouragement.  He is the one that brought the birthday surprises - remember?  He is still doing sweet little things for all of us.  He and his companion, have helped four brand new sisters get oriented in their Grey area in the past few weeks.  He also knows the Preach My Gospel Manual inside out, including page numbers of where to look - impressive!  We will miss him!

What an interesting time this is.  We have 140 missionaries right now over the mission, but we will have 200 by December, so the office staff is scrambling to arrange transportation, and apartments.  We will be losing a big segment of missionaries, finishing their missions in August as well.  They must have done that on purpose, so our mission will be starting with lots of new faces and fresh enthusiasm, to be trained under our new President.

Remember the Watsons?

 Josephine and Bobby were at the Temple earlier this year for her Temple Endowment.  She has only been here from the Phillipines for four years.  She has learned to speak English well enough to study Medical Assisting from those huge complicated medical texts.  She is finishing her last two weeks of clinicals and then will take her board exams.  We are so proud of her.  She also drives - even her husbands huge rig.  It was her birthday this week so they invited us back to Dublin to go to dinner with them.  It is fun to share happy successful moments with our new members, as well as difficult, challenging things.


Sister Jackson

Sister Jackson is a lady who just had cataracts removed this week, who lives out in the country by Sandersville.  She lives with a grown son in a mobile home, and has worked really hard in her life.  She is very isolated out there, as the Sandersville branch was dissolved a few years ago with the loss of families in the recession.  She worked as a housekeeper until recently, when she could not manage it any more.  When we were there, she just finished reupholstering car seats for someone's vintage vehicle.  It was beautiful work.  She is an amazing, resourceful woman at 70 years old.

She sends out letters every month to people we never see in Relief Society.  She does it faithfully, as it is something she can do even if she doesn't have transportation into church.  It sometimes seems like a thankless job.

Today however, something interesting happened.  A lady came to the Gospel principles class who we had tried to visit - as we were hoping to increase her desire to return more often - we have seen her only once.  During the lesson in her comments, she was saying that one of the best parts of this church was that you are never lost - that someone always looks for you when you are away.  She went on to say that this lady she didn't even know - Sister Jackson wrote her a letter every month, so she knew she was not forgotten, and she needed to come back.

Sister Jackson was here today.  I slipped in to Relief Society to tell her about the comment before going to YW where we had an assignment.  She started to cry.  She said she didn't even know what the sister looked like.  I showed her the lady outside the door at the fountain.  I'm not sure where it went from there, but it was a sweet moment for us to share.