Week 2

Until October 30, when Brigham goes home, there are six missionaries in our family.  Siblings Brigham and Camille (he in Vancouver, WA and she in Riverside, CA, Spanish speaking), their cousins Asher (in Manilla, Philippines) and Sam in Tacoma, WA, and us.  We're so proud of our current missionaries and of their four siblings/cousins who previously served. Pretty exciting to be a missionary family.

Monday morning we met the other two "coordinating missionaries" in our area--the Nygrens serve in Shreveport, LA (though they are in the Dallas Texas Mission), about two hours northwest of us, and the Blackburns serve in Ruston, LA, about two hours northeast of us. We met because we traveled together in a rented van to Navarre Beach, FL for the Southeast Area Seminaries and Institute (S & I) area coordinators convention.  More about that later.

On the way, we stopped in New Orleans for the night.  We had dinner at a restaurant in the French Quarter, then wandered around for a while.  While doing so, the sky opened and we had a royal downpour, so we were quite soggy.  The next day we went to the National World War II Museum.  It was absolutely fabulous.  We stayed for four hours and just saw a little over half of it.  It is well worth visiting.  Then we went to the river front and had beignet (those wonderful French doughnuts) at Cafe du Monde before heading on to Florida.

Kerrs, Blackburns, Nygrens in the French Quarter, then by the Mississippi

Drenched, standing by cool lamp

US Flying Tiger, used in China; German bunker from Normandy

In front of transport plane used in WWII

We arrived in Navarre Beach (a little east of Pensacola) about 8:30 Tuesday night.  The next morning the meeting began.  There were about 35 S & I coordinators and their wives from the SE region--Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina.  These were paid employees, and then the three couple missionaries.  For 2 1/2 days we were spiritually fed and enriched.  Think of your very best institute or religion teacher, then picture 14 teachers that effective presenting (sometimes in small groups, sometimes in larger lecture format) topics such as choosing joy, deep learning of the Doctrine of Christ, the Plan of Salvation, the Abrahamic Covenant, ministering, woundedness and healing, collective faith, and much more.  The scriptures and teachings of modern prophets were interwoven beautifully in every discussion. 

Perhaps in future posts I'll share some insights gained, but since we all just had a spiritual feast at General Conference, I won't contribute to overload here.  (Though I have to admit to feeling a little of that myself.)  Because we had 7 1/2 wonderful days at the MTC, followed by just a week here in Alexandria, then went to Florida and back to General Conference, our batteries better be charged.  Now we just have to really buckle down and figure out how we need to carry out our responsibilities.  It's a good thing we know we can rely on the Lord to help us in that rather daunting task.

Navarre Beach is a beautiful and less crowded Florida Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. 
 Elder Kerr and his new friend on the pier

On the drive to and from Florida, we went through acres and acres of sugar cane in Louisiana, and miles of the Gulf of Mexico as well as lots of swampy salt marshes in Mississippi and Florida. 

The weather here is in the 90's and humidity varies from 50-95%.  When we come out of the air conditioned grocery store, our glasses fog up!  It should go down to the high 70's most of next week. As you can see below, the cloud formations here can be pretty amazing.  We took this as we came away from the post office on Saturday evening.

All cloud, no smoke