Elder Stevenson, Elder Gong, Bishop Davies

April 14,15th Visit

Elder Stevenson, Elder Gong, and Bishop Davies came to meetings with government officials on Friday, April 13th. On Saturday they spoke to the missionaries. It was wonderful. On Sunday they each went to a different special Stake Conference, and Elder Stevenson came to ours!

Arlington National Cemetery - Part 3

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was very somber and for the first time at any of the sites we have been to, the crowd was silent and totally respectful. Very beautiful.

 

The Arboretum

We toured with the sister missionaries in the afternoon. 

Arlington National Cementery - Part 2

The Funeral Procession

A funeral procession was just getting ready to proceed. The flag is still on the casket. Then they took it off, so I am not sure if they were coming or going. The cemetery does 26-30 funerals a day. If you are a high ranking officer you get a funeral with horses. The saddled horse being led by a soldier has riding boots on each side of the horse turned backwards. It indicates the deceased was in a branch of the military that uses horses and it is a sign of respect to turn the boots backwards.  The soldiers were
very nice and willing to talk to us.

 

Arlington National Cemetary - Part 1

Monday, May 2, 2018

Elder and Sister Miles take the missionaries to Arlington for a tour before they go home. Elder Miles, a retired school teacher has written a beautiful script for the tour.

The Arlington House - Robert E. Lee's home  before

the Civil War.  When the war broke out the Union

Army confiscated it for the war effort

The Kennedy family graves -  the eternal flame

The cemetery has hundreds of memorials throughout the

cemetery. Below are some of them.

April 2018 departures

We did not go to the March departure dinner, so a shout out to Sister Yancey and Elder Omdahl who were great missionaries.  We did make go to the April departure dinner. Such wonderful missionaries who will be greatly missed.

Sisters Adams, Noyes, Haskett, and Lattaro

Elder Stolk - love this young man

Elder and Sister Vogel, President and Sister Johnson,

Elder Jarrard and Sister Karren

We will miss this couple so much!  We tried and made a 

pretty good dent eating our way through Maryland together.

Their assignment was to find and set up community service

opportunities for missionaries. They were here a year and

left with thirty service venues set up that will hopefully

get missionaries out of "ward labor pools". We love

Sister Karren and Elder Jarrad.

I can't say enough about Elder and Sister Miles.

They deserve their own page. They were MLS and

Housing Coordinators. They served two years and

in that time opened almost 70 new apartments, closed

around 35. That meant a mountain of moving, cleaning,

and moving, and cleaning. They were the hardest working

people and we loved them. They were funny, diligent,

obedient, and just the best people you would ever meet.