Here's a quick Mom-Post sharing a few pictures and memories. Kimberly will appreciate having these in her blog when she gets back. As of this week, ALRM got a new mission president:
Arkansas Little Rock Mission
Karen and Norman E. Hansen
Norman Edward Hansen, 57, and Karen Keysor Hansen, five children, Chehalis Ward, Centralia Washington Stake: Arkansas Little Rock Mission, succeeding President Taniela B. Wakolo and Sister Anita H. Wakolo. Brother Hansen serves as a Scoutmaster and is a former stake president, bishop, high councilor, stake mission president, and missionary in the Arkansas Little Rock Mission. Area field manager, Darigold. Born in Rupert, Idaho, to Vernon Anderson Hansen and Emma Josephine Baker Hansen.
Sister Hansen is a former stake and ward Primary president, ward Relief Society president, ward Young Women presidency counselor, stake public affairs committee member, achievement day leader, and Cub Scout leader. Born in Glendale, California, to James Brian Keysor and Rachel Patricia Keysor Wait.
Arkansas Little Rock Mission Office
Arkansas Little Rock Mission Home
Inside the Mission Home
Goodbye to Pres & Sis Wakolo! Thank you, and MUCH LOVE!
But thankfully, because of his April call to the Seventy, he will be in Utah regularly! Kimberly will be able to see them much more often than otherwise!
Elder Taniela Biu Wakolo has dedicated every day of his life since his baptism in March 1994 to serving the Lord.
Born in 1967 on the small island of Lomaloma, Lau, Fiji, to Taniela Vosa and Temalesi Buadromo Wakolo, Elder Wakolo was the youngest of six children. “I was raised in a very humble home, but we were rich in terms of the love we had for each other,” he said.
At age 12, Elder Wakolo left his parents’ home to attend boarding school with more than 500 young men, ages 12 to 19. “That was great training ground for me,” he said. “It is where I learned self-discipline.”
He dated Anita Herberta Moimoi, a recent convert, for more than a year. They married on August 22, 1987, in Suva, Fiji.
Conversion didn’t come overnight for Elder Wakolo, and over the first eight years of the couple’s marriage, he met with many missionaries. “I completed the [missionary] discussions four times in eight years,” he said. “I have 24 missionaries.”
It was a simple question from one of those missionaries about the name of the Church that changed his mind about baptism. “The Church needs to be named after its owner,” he said. “That was it for me.”
Elder Wakolo and his wife were sealed in the Nuku‘alofa Tonga Temple in 1995. They are the parents of two children.
Service opportunities quickly followed his baptism. Two weeks after his baptism, he was called to the ward Young Men presidency and to co-teach seminary with his wife. After less than a year, he accepted the call to serve as branch president. He later served as counselor in a stake presidency, stake president, and Area Seventy. At the time of his call as a General Authority Seventy, he was presiding over the Arkansas Little Rock Mission.
Elder Wakolo studied management and public administration and earned a master’s degree in management. Most recently, he was the manager at the Church’s Fiji Service Center.
We got our 45 minute Mothers' Day Skype session with our missionary yesterday - it was AWESOME! She has matured so very much, and is so very happy. It was beautiful to see, and lovely to talk together. And to think, we'll be together in 2 1/2 months!
And I got the most beautiful Mothers' Day card from her in the mail the day before, and it includes a "bouquet of Arkansas flowers" - real dried flowers attached artistically to the lovely card! That took some planning too!
We got this in the mail over the weekend (I'm showing you just the top):
So there you have it, August 1st! Part of me is very excited, but part of me doesn't want this to end, for her or for us! She's SO all in, so committed, and doing such a great job. It's been SUCH a blessing reading all of her letters every week, praying for her multiple times a day, and feeling the missionary spirit all over again. It's so distinctive, so real. But all good things must come to an end, and then there are more good things to come... BTW, what I'm most excited about for the calling of her mission president to the Seventy is that instead of him returning to Fiji for her to never see again, he'll have to come to SLC for General Conference now and then, and she will get to see him again! In the many years since I got home, I've seen only one of my mission presidents, (I had three!) maybe twice? It does look like she'll have a new mission president for the last month of her mission...a challenging experience for, but it will probably be great too. I know, you already saw this one, but I can't help it, they're so cute!
FYI - we won't be getting an email from Kimberly this week. We got an email from one of her companions saying that it had been a crazy week, and that Sister Beckstrand will email when she can. Then not an hour later, I got a phone call from the mission president saying that she was in the ER. She has been sick for a few days, finally becoming dehydrated enough that she had to be admitted. I just got word this morning that she has been diagnosed with infectious gastroenteritis. They will be giving her IV antibiotics and plan to keep her in the hospital for a couple more days.
We sent her on this mission, knowing that there's lots of bad out there. I remember people saying, "Aren't you glad she's stateside, and not in one of the more dangerous missions out there?" Frankly, we decided not to worry either way, because we were turning her care over to God - it's ultimately in His hands anyway, including at home or on a mission, and we know that He takes care of His missionaries. Both Kimberly's dad and I served missions, and experienced this. On my mission in the Philippines, I was attacked by a burgler, and ended up hospitalized, needing hand surgery but I still knew that God had protected me from much worse, and I was okay. I tangibly felt that protection many times during those 18 months, and that has carried over to my faith that He will watch over my/ALL missionaries, even all my children where ever they are and whatever they are doing. He loves them more than I do, they are more His than mine. We know that she'll be okay, whatever God wants that to mean. From her diagnosis, it sounds like she'll be back to work in a very little time, fully recovered, God willing. I am grateful for this age of instant communication - that we know now - unlike my parents who didn't know anything until weeks afterward! ...I think...then again, it's in His hands anyway! Trials are a part of mission life, an integral part of mortal life really, the part that helps us come to know Him when we turn to Him in the midst of the depths, and that is worth any cost.
One advantage, with their companionship a trio, it's easy for them to find a member to come be with Sister Beckstrand while the other two continue with the appointments they already had, and the work goes on in spite of this setback.
Another advantage, I got to talk to her mission president, who went on and on about what a great missionary she is, and how much she is growing. He is a wonderful, spiritual man!
Another blessing was that Dad & Mom received BEAUTIFUL personal Fathers' Day and birthday greetings in the mailbox earlier this week, and we can read these over and over while we wait for her next email communication!
We sent her a list of questions to be prepared for. Here's the email I sent her, and some of the discussion we had with her about the questions on Skype.
~~
A few questions we have come up with for today's call...I'm sending them
to you now in case you want to think about some of the answers before
then. Can't wait!
Do you do all your cooking or do you ever eat with the members? How often.... (Regularly, nearly everyday eat at the members'.) Do
you eat traditional "southern"foods? Like jambalaya or hominy or grits
or chitlins or catfish? (Some, but since there are so many Utah natives here for the dentist school, many of the members serve what we are used to.) You're really eating potatoes too?! (Discovered that it's mainly baked potatoes I don't like.) What are some of the unusual things you have eaten and how are you handling it?
How often do you meet with the ward mission leader? How closely do you work with ward and stake leaders? (We work with them A LOT. At least weekly, but usually more.) How often do you get referrals, from locals, from far away? Have you had any obvious results from The Book of Mormon Musical experience? (So far we have only heard of one story...) What is your study time like now? How long? What do you study? How do you decide what to study? (Having Sister Havran with us now, we have added an hour of language training (ASL) to the routine which includes personal study, companionship study, language study and planning.) What is your daily schedule like? How does transportation affect planning? (There are three cars for four companionships, hence every fourth week is "Walk-Week," and that week takes a lot of extra planning and counting on members to help them get further places. On an average day, how many people do you talk to for the first time?
How
does your system of goals and reporting work? What is it called? (Dad's
was Standards of Excellence - SOEs.) What is easiest? Most difficult? (She showed us their planning program on her IPad, and how long their contact list is - HUGE, including contacts from previous companionships. She said that they hardly have time to follow up with former investigators though, because the new ones are so ready so quickly.) How often do you talk to your mission president? The DLs? The Zone Leaders? What are the STLs role in the mission?
What have you learned from Sister Herschi? What
are you learning from Sister Havran? (We don't know anything about her
yet, where she is from, how long she's been out...are you all doing ASL
work with her there too?) (She's from Oregon - Salem? - and has been out longer than either of the others, I think...can't remember exactly what was said. We did get to say hello to both of them, and Sister Herschi told us that she goes to BYU, so we will definitely be able to meet her someday.) How often do you teach? What is it like? (Several times a week, and lots of visiting opportunities.) Describe the best & most unusual. What is difficult? Dad has more questions about teaching...he'll ask later
You often comment that you have many people you are working with who "are so ready for baptism". Why do you think that is? (We touched on that a lot earlier in the conversation.) Are there/have you had any situations where you wish you could counsel with your parents?
Uncle Dan-What us the biggest difference between the people of Mississippi and Utah? (That the people in the South talk so openly about religion and especially about Jesus Christ. She LOVES that, and encouraged all of us here at home not to be embarrassed to bring Him and the Gospel up in everyday conversations. AWESOME advice.) Isaac-Are more people there taller or shorter than you? (Similar...) Talk to you SOON! Love, Mom
45 minutes went very quickly, and it was lovely to be able to talk "in person" with her again!!
This is NOT Kimberly's letter for the week, but a post by her mom.
Posted by Richard Floyd on the Arkansas Little Rock Mission Moms FB page, together with several beautiful photo collages:
"...in the spirit of President Ezra Taft Benson's challenge some
years back to "flood the earth" with The Book of Mormon, the
missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of the
Arkansas Little Rock Mission did just that in Memphis this past week!
Over 2,000 copies of The Book of Mormon were shared with attendees of
the Book of Mormon musical, as well as others passing by the Orpheum
Theatre (March 15-20). Thanks go to some 230 members who shared copies
of their written testimonies which were
duplicated and inserted in every copy of the 2,000 books. Over 6,000
pass-a-long cards were also distributed! Sixty-four missionaries serving
in the two Memphis zones participated in this grand endeavor, with an
average of 14 to 20 assisting at each of the eight shows for
approximately 5 hours for each one. Heartfelt appreciation for each of
the eight wards who provided meals for the missionaries!
Many tender spiritual moments were experienced by the missionaries as
they shared their testimonies of The Book of Mormon, the Savior and His
Church restored! The response from most of the theatre patrons was
simply amazing! May we all pray that those who have received or will
order a copy of The Book of Mormon will follow the invitation found in
Moroni 10:4-5 and will seek to know for themselves the truthfulness of
this sacred volume of scripture!"
I found our missionary in this collage EIGHT times - can you find them all?
I'm so grateful she got to be part of that marvelous experience. The missionaries did a lot of
singing of hymns, which was a powerful testimony to many attendees. Missions are the greatest!
~~~~
Then I got a couple of texts on Thursday evening while I was at a school production, and not recognizing the phone number, I didn't take it until intermission. Then this is what I found!
Kimberly and Blake quilting. :) [LB]
Me: This is WONDERFUL! Is this from a member of my daughter's ward? Thank you!!!
Her: Yes. I'm the self designated Ward Mom for all the missionaries. LOL. Your Very Welcome. [LB]
Me: Again, thank you for mothering our girls! I'm so glad that you shared. I'm crying right now, during the intermission of a school play (the one my daughter wanted to see.) I don't cry over her often. She LOVES quilting.
Her: Awe, she's tearing up, with a smile on her face. They had to leave. :)
Me: :) Bye Kimber! Big sigh!! I'd heard of this happening, especially stateside, but whew.
