All the way Sergeant

From Elder Mauerman's Journal: Today as we entered the gate at Fort Bragg I handed my ID card to the MP and said good evening specialist (because that was his rank). He checked my ID as usual and then looked at my missionary name tag and said “thank you for preaching the gospel, all the way sergeant”.

When we were required to do pushups in jump school we would come to attention at the end and shout “airborne all the way”. That’s kind of the air borne motto meaning we will go all the way because we are air borne. Since Fort Bragg is an air borne base nearly everyone who passes through those gates is air borne so the MP’s often say “all the way”. The first time I went on base nearly a month ago when the MP said that to me it really made my day, because I hadn’t heard that since jump school. I wonder if he is a member since he seemed to recognized my missionary tag?  We hope to find out.

Merry Christmas to All

We have had a wonderful season sharing the message of Jesus Christ and His Gospel with members and new acquaintances. We wish everyone a Wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year.  We are very blessed to be serving our mission at this time.

Good Week

We made a Christmas Stocking for each companionship (13) in our Zone and passed them out at Zone Meeting. We included a Christmas experience from our past and bore our testimony at the end of the message. You should have heard the Ahhhhhhh and see the smiles on their faces when I walked in with the box of stockings.  They were all very kind and thanked us a ton.  It was fun to see them so happy. These young missionaries really work hard and hold amazing meetings. Their faith is evident and they build each other up all the time...both the Elders and Sisters.

We have a FHE type appointment set up for several families the next week and a half. We will be giving a Christmas message and have things for the young children to do. Some of the families are without dad...since he is deployed and some just want us to come because they are away from extended family for Christmas.  We have already been out this past week meeting new young couples in the area and offering help for anything they may need.  Some expressed interest in our next Resiliency class... starting after the New Year.

We are also volunteering at the Bishop's Storehouse once every other week.  They do it a bit differently here as no Bishop's Storehouse is near by. A truck arrives with previously ordered food for two Stakes. The volunteers set up the food on tables so it looks like a grocery store. The people who made their orders before hand come in and walk around with a cart like they are in a grocery store and get the things they ordered. Then we help them bag it etc. and they go home with what they needed. Just like clock work and everyone is happy.

Now we are off to the Ward Christmas Party. One tonight and one tomorrow night.
Merry Christmas to All.

                                                        Hi I'm Jenny    I'm a Mormon

Today was P-day. After doing laundry and cleaning the apartment. I baked 9 loves of Banana Bread and attached a print out of my I'm a Mormon cards with my picture on them and a Christmas card. Then we went around our apartment complex and met people and gave them the bread and a Merry Christmas wish. The last loaf was a spiritual experience.  When we knocked on the door we were invited in by Mary. She told us her husband died this morning after being in the hospital for a month and she was home having some quiet time. We visited for a few minutes and offered her some comfort. Then she allowed us to pray with her before we left. She also told us we could come back again.  We will be going back.

It is raining pretty hard tonight so we are home planning our next Resiliency Training lesson. Keith is printing out our handouts as I type.  We have 7 sisters that we are teaching.  They are learning the skills they need to carry on while their husbands are deployed and helping themselves and their children stay focused on the gospel and sharing gospel topics their husbands when then can with. Most of them are pretty strong but they enjoy meeting with each other and learning the things others are doing to cope with their husbands being gone and taking care of their children all alone etc.  They have been enjoying the lessons and say they appreciate them.

We hung up a map of the Fort Bragg base on our kitchen wall so that we can find the houses of those who need our help and also those that are less active.  The base is huge so we need a map to find everyone.  The tan colored spots on the map represent different housing areas. Each area has hundreds of apartments.  It is a job finding everyone. That is just the base, not the town of Fayetteville where we also need to find people or the Cameron Ward area where we are going on Sunday : )

Today was Stake Conference and Elders Quentin L. Cook and Seventy Alvin Meredith were here.  They sustained a new Stake Presidency and gave wonderful, amazing talks that we loved.  The saints stared arriving by 7:00 AM and it didn't start until 10:00.  Since we were ready we went at 7:45 and barely got a seat in the Chapel.  We are still trying to learn everything... way around the town and Fort Bragg...it is the biggest military fort in the world if what Keith saw on google is correct. I think someone said over 10,000 people work or on the base.  Most or our direction came at the MTC Military Relations Training.  There really isn't a lot of guidance when we get here.  They expect that we have enough church and life experience under our belts to just get going.  Luckily the couple we are replacing were still here and have helped us this past week.  But we will be on our own as of Wednesday.  Of course we go to Ward Councils and other meetings but we just choose what, where and how to serve. The first several days felt strange because we didn't do much but go to meetings and YSA FHE, one Night RS Meeting and YSA Institute, and one Resiliency class training.  Well I guess that sounds busy and it was, but it wasn't like finding someone new to work with.  Yesterday we did do some phone calling and texting trying to find someone or to invite to Stake Conference.  We got one response. Which made us feel good but we don't know if the Sister showed or not because we didn't even know what she looked like and it was too crowded.  Another mother called to say her daughter had been transferred to a base in Hawaii.  So I guess we found out a few things we can report to our Bishop. 

We have had some fun using lots of name associations to try to remember street names and people.  It is helping and making us laugh. There are street names of a couple of g

randkids, people with same name of rhyming names to our ward at home, and a song or two that we use to remember someone's name. Tomorrow we will be trying to find about 8 people on the ward list who no one knows.  Since they didn't answer their phones or texts we will try their addresses. That's 8 in one ward but another ward has about 50 names that the RS pres doesn't know.  And that is just 2 wards. There's 4 wards and 3 branches and the area of the Stake is HUGE.  So far we have only met the 2 Bishops and one Branch President.  Now two of the bishops in the stake were sustained into the new Stake Presidency and the Branch President we met is moving.  LOTS TO DO 

We are here

We are here.  We had no internet hook up until today Nov 18th, but we got here on Thursday night. Elder and Sister Wilcox (our trainers so to speak) were at our apartment to meet us as we drove into the parking lot of our apartment complex.  They we so great. They had a little dinner ready for us and helped us unload the car. In 10 minutes we had everything out of the car... no "Elders Quorum move" necessary : )  but it was sure nice to have their help.  We got the apt. pretty well set up before Friday, and Saturday we did a little food shopping and drove around a bit trying to learn the lay out of the city.  It is CRAZY. 

We spent 8 hours in Church yesterday.  Visited 2 Ward Council Meetings, two Sacrament mtgs, one correlation meeting, 1 1/2 Sunday school lessons, 1 RS meeting and a genealogy Fireside.  Today we sat in on the 1st Resiliency Training lesson given by Elder & Sister Wilcox. They will give one more lesson and then we will be taking over because they are leaving. There is an entire Military ward and two other wards with several military members in them all meeting in the Stake Center. But there's about 3 other wards that have military members with no Senior Missionaries so we will have to see if we can help them out too. We will be working with less active members and doing many other things... much to learn.  We are happy and doing great.  Next post has a version of our trip across the country: