Oct 13

October 13, 2006

Our day started with a quick trip up the road, which is beginning to feel as familiar as the road to Idaho Falls. We had the opportunity to meet President and Sister Buttars and the rest of the missionaries in the zone, as it was interview time. We also had training by President Buttars, Sister Buttars, and the assistants to the president. We were impressed with their enthusiasm and spirit. President Buttars reported on the mission presidents’ training he recently received from Elders Eyring and Didier. He also reviewed the mission statistics. The mission goal for this year is 1000 baptisms and they are well in line for achieving that goal, with 770 baptisms to date. Some things of note:
• Before the stock market crash a few years ago, the first presidency said one day that the market seemed too high. Elder Eyring is over the finances of the church and he took that to mean he should sell all the stock the church owned, which was a substantial amount. He did so, and they avoided the losses in the stock market that most everyone else experienced. One day people from Tokyo called the church and wanted to know the formula they had used to figure out that the market would crash. Pres Eyring explained that it’s quite a simple formula: listen to the prophet.
• Elder Eyring works most closely with Pres Hinckley of any of the Apostles because he works with the finances and is therefore in Salt Lake most of the time. So he told them a little about Pres Hinckley. He said he is weak but still active and alert. He has only missed 2 days of work since his operation for colon cancer. Pretty amazing for a 96-year-old man. He also never gets drowsy in meetings.

Then we had our interview. We were impressed, although “interview” is an odd term to use for this experience. We expected to be asked about our work, or relationship, or something. However, the “interview” consisted of sitting quietly, saying nothing, while President Buttars talked, and talked, and talked. It was more of a lesson, than an interview, albeit an extremely interesting lesson. He talked a lot about responding to anti-Mormon comments and questions. Apparently there are some pretty anti anti-Mormons in the area. His knowledge of the scriptures was unbelievable…almost like that of Ed Pinegar when we listened to him in the MTC.

After the interviews we had lunch, went grocery shopping, got a small footstool to compliment the lovely new chair (pictures coming later) and returned to Dishchii Bikoh (Apache for Cibicue). We are now engaged in individual study (meaning Robert is reading his scriptures and Linda is playing on the computer).