Aug 3 07

August 3, 2007

Interviews turned out to be a pleasant surprise, to put it mildly. President Craig is the absolute, exact oppostive of Pres Buttars. He’s very low-key. Pres Buttars always did a training session to begin interviews, but Pres Craig said he doesn’t want to train because he wants to spend more time getting to know the missionaries. It was a little frightening at the beginning of the interview, because we quickly realized he expected us to say something. Being the quiet, withdrawn people we are, we had great difficulty finding something to tell him…at least for the first 10 seconds. Then it was like opening a floodgate. He asked for our opinions, and, well, you all know what a mistake that can be.

Robert is in the throes of deepest repentance right now. When he called President last week and told him about our experience with Isaac and Harrilyn he felt the president was indifferent and not interested. Today President Craig told us he has thought about that incident every day since our phone call. He said he pictures that door and what it must have been like when Isaac was kicking it. Guess you just can’t judge people from telephone calls unless you get to know them better. We thoroughly enjoyed our interview with him and came away encouraged and uplifted like we’ve never been before after a mission meeting.

After we left the interview we had lunch, then picked up some rolls for the birthday dinner. We got home around 2:00. Maxine was already at the church and she and I went right to work. We made 7 pans of lasagna. She also made a salad and cooked some green beans. The dinner turned out very well. She was really excited that she was able to serve lasagna.

The birthday dinner was great even though the monsoons continued with a vengeance tonight. Just about the time the dinner was scheduled to start it just poured rain. We had some flooding again, but not as much as last week. There was a huge thunderstorm, and the gully next to the church was filled with water.

While we were in the midst of dinner preparations Elder Rogers called. Seems the AP who is in town with Pres Craig wanted to see Cibecue, so they arrived about 6:00 and will be spending the night. They have an Elder Hillyard with them. He’s from Idaho Falls and has only been out about 2 months. Elder Brown, the AP, is related to the Brownings from St. Anthony. Dr. Soule was his great-grandfather, and his mother is related to George Browning, who I think is Jerry Browning’s brother.