Time to go to work...

Our office is next door to the mission office. We also have Family Services, the Bishop's Storehouse and Home Storage as well as the Peanut Butter Factory for the entire church in our building. Our church building is next door to us on the other side. We work from 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday thru Friday. We also work one evening a month training new Ward Employment Specialist. In our office are Elder Mathews who lives locally and handles the Klein Stake and reviews all resumes. His office is in the back part of our larger office. Then there is me and Sister Bray in the front part of the office. Our boss is Steve Stotts who is a native Texan and is an employee of the church. He is in our office half the time. The rest of the time he travels to "the Valley" which is the Rio Grande Valley, Austin and other places the church needs him to go to keep up the employment effort. Our manager is Alex Lamar. He is from Boliva and is also an employee. He has lived in Texas a long time. He handles much of our Spanish speaking clients. I have learned lots from Alex. So this is where I spend most of my time but I can slip out for necessary errands during the day so it's pretty nice. We have 6 computer stations for candidates to use for looking for work. Sometimes is can get pretty slow because there is many, many jobs in Houston so if people really want to get a job they can. I cover the Spring, Summerwood, the Woodlands and Houston West Stakes. Sister Bray covers 3 stakes and Elder and Sister Gaughan cover all the south Houston Stakes. More on them later.

Our front door                                                               

 Looking to the east is Family Services

 Bishop's Storehouse

 Looking down towards the Peanut Butter Factory - more of that to come

 Parking lot looking out our door

More of the parking lot looking west 

 My car - looking towards the church

 My desk area - really small

 Candidate computers in our office and looking at Alex's office

 More of the candidates computers and looking at the closed door of Steve's office which means he is out of town

My background picture on my computer - love this picture of Sophie

 My own little spot and bit of heaven from my family and special notes from Lena Rose

Home sweet temporary home.

Move in time! I could walk to work we are so close but there are not sidewalks and I don't care to get run down. We have 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a washer and dryer and pretty decent furniture. My bed is a double and I have a walk in closet. The kitchen is ittie bittie so only 1 person at a time in there. It's kind of a noisy spot right by the parking lot. My bedroom is right in front with the 3 windows so I get lots of the traffic noise. We have a lake, putty green, swimming pool, exercise room with 2 tread mills, stationary bike and work out/weight bench, built in gas BBQs set in brick islands and garbage picked up at our door 3 times a week! Can you believe that! And the sand volleyball court too. It's really a nice complex in a not so nice area. It reminds me of South Sac.

The front of our apartment with my bedroom in the frt with 3 windows.

The area between the buildings with a nice little arbor area.

The parking lot right next to our apartment. 

 My bedroom.

 Living room

 Rest of living room and dining room. The door at the far end is a storage closet.

Kitchen - very small. Sister Bray's room is thru the open door.

Road trip to Houston part 4!

I have arrived! Once again a nice drive down highway 45 thru Dallas and onto Houston. I stopped for lunch in a small town and then made it to Houston around 2:00pm. Another museum I wished I had stopped at was the Texas Prison Museum. Once again, maybe next time. I got a little lost trying to find the mission office because the freeways are so darn confusing. They have the freeway which is 4 lanes wide in each direction but then they have what are called feeder roads which run parallel to the freeways 3 to 4 lanes wide one way the same as the freeway direction they are next to. These feeder roads are on and off roads for the freeway. No actual freeway ramps like CA. Just these roads. There are business along the roads too but if you want to go to a business on the other side of the freeway you need to take the feeder road in the opposite direction and make a u turn under the freeway overpass and head back. Very confusing but I will get use to it. So here it is, the mission home and our office is right next door. Sister Bray, the sister I will be living with, came over and met me there. She took me back to our apartment and I settled in. I would have the next day off to take care of errands. There are lots of trees! Where there are no trees there are buildings. But there are still lots of trees and meadows. We are 1 mile from the office on a street with no sidewalks or bike lanes so very few people walk or ride bikes anywhere. It's like that most everywhere. All the streets are concrete too. There will a lot to get use to but I'm happy to be here and starting my mission!

Sister Kathy Bray from Payson Utah. She looked taller in her picture on gmail.

Road trip to Houston part 3!

This was going to be the best part of my trip. My plan was to drive from Salina to Norman, Oklahoma which was only about 4 hours away. I wanted to spend some time site seeing in Norman and visit OU of course. Again more oil wells and rolling hills and fields but more trees. Wichita had massive amounts of grain silos everywhere. They made the port in West Sac with its rice silos look punny. The silos are along the Arkansas river. The town looks like what you would expect for a midwest town. I continued down the highway making good time until I got to Edmonds above Oklahoma City. The traffic there was soooo bad. Finally made it to Norman. I drove over to OU and wow is it a big university. Lots of beautiful old brick buildings. But the school is so landlocked! The road around the university is mostly 2-3 lanes wide. I can't imagine what it looks like on game day with all the traffic. The stadium was the best! I also went to the book store and spent lots of money on things for my kids and me. There was so much to see, tree lined streets, old homes, and all the roads were concrete or all brick! Another typical midwest town but they did have a Panera so that was a little like home. I would have liked to explore more of the towns I went thru but not knowing them I didn't want to get lost or behind in my trip. The one stop I wished I had made was at the Oklahoma History Museum. Maybe next time and I hope there will be a next time.

Gas in Salina. This was amazing considering gas in West Sac was $3.99. As it turned out all the gas prices dropped over the next couple of months to the lowest in Houston being $2.65. But at the time this was unheard of.

Road trip to Houston part 2!

Next leg of my trip was driving to Salina, Kansas. The drive was very peaceful. The land was rolling hills, corn and hay fields and small towns. The weather was perfect with big puffy clouds at times, some windy areas but what was surprising was the oil drilling rigs that are called nodding donkeys in the middle of the corn and hay fields. I didn't know they pumped oil that far north. I listened to a book on CD all the way from Utah to Denver and another one from Denver to Salina. The town was just that, not a very large town but it is the home of Kansas State University. The hotel I stayed out was very nice and comfortable and they were very hospitable. I love driving and seeing our country.

Road trip to Houston part 1!

I left Provo on Saturday morning after once again packing my stuff and getting it back in my car. My plan was to drive down highway 15 past Nephi and catch 70 down there but my GPS took me another way which worked out pretty well. It was a nice drive thru canyons and hills and plenty of farm land and amazing mountains, hills and valleys. There were plateaus and and rock formations and what looked like and ancient lake bed because there was sand dunes and water marks up on the high cliffs. I stopped in Grand Junction, Colorado for lunch then pushed on to Denver, my plan for the evening stop. I passed these incredible rock formations that looked like giant elephant feet coming off one of the plateaus. There were several of them and I wish I had taken a picture but I just didn't think fast enough. Oh well, here is a picture of one of the plateaus I passed. I also went thru all these beautiful forested mountains in Vale where there is tons of skiing in the winter. It was very beautiful. Denver, however, was a disappointment. I thought it would be this beautiful city tucked away in a tree surrounded valley with mountains and such. But it is NOT! It's just a plain old ugly city. Good nites sleep then onto Kansas in the morning.

Grand Junction Colorado

Along Highway 70 near Grand Junction

On the way to Denver Colorado

Denver, Colorado

Other fun times at the MTC

Aside from classes and eating I had other great moments at the temple. I walked from the MTC to the temple grounds (all up hill going) and spent my first Monday evening enjoying the beauty there. The weather was so perfect the whole time I was there and the sky so clear. I also wanted to hike the "Y" but ran out of time. Each morning I was able to walk on the treadmill in the housing complex I was staying in. I wasn't the only one. Most of our group was in pretty good shape. We had to take 2 group pictures to get us all in. Another evening I went to the Provo temple. I had told Sister Halley, who is a temple worker there and who use to live in our ward, that I would be there and I did get to give her a big hug and visit with her. On Thursday the Brashers, who served in our Sac temple as counselor and asst. matron, arrived a the MTC. They were heading on a mission to Finland to be member support for the YSA branch in the town they would be serving. It was so wonderful to see them. I knew they were coming and told everyone about them. They are wonderful and amazing people and have taught me many great things thru the years. They invited me on Friday nite to go to the Mt Timpanogus temple to do family sealings with Brother Brasher's brother and sisters and their spouses. It was so great to be there with them all. They are a very special family and they allowed me to do some of my family names along with theirs. Afterwards we went to dinner at this great BBQ restaurant. I learned Brother Brasher has a very incredible family who all work with many of the apostles and leaders of the church. Testimony strengthen considerably listening to them speak of our leaders.

Provo Temple

 First half of our group.

I'm in right of center is this picture next to Sister Misner. Second half of our group.

Mt Timpanogus Temple

Me with Brother and Sister Brasher.

Good times and training

I really enjoyed my time at the MTC. I met some really great people. The Johnston's from eastern Oregon, Adrian, were farmers so we spent many good times talking about that. They gave me an Idaho Spud candy bar to remind me of them. They had already served a couple of missions and were on their 3rd. I meat 2 sisters from Puerto Rico so I told them all about Amber and showed them her picture. they both agreed very emphatically that she was PR. There were 3 other sets of sister missionaries who would be companions in the mission field. I didn't have a companion per say but I did have a sister that was in my class. Sister Misner was being sent to Sacramento of all places to serve in the employment office there. She had served a mission when she was young to Italy and was now serving again after the death of her husband. She was a very interesting sister and I learned lots from her.
The best part was the members of my district. There was the Strattons who were from California and heading to Romania as member leadership support. There was the Slades who were from Utah and heading to Japan also as MLS. The Harpers were going to Samoa to help the leaders learn how to use the church computer programs or something like that. The Harpers were friends with Edler Ohsiek's family in Boise, Idaho. Small world. Sister Harper took a picture of us and sent it to the Ohieks. It is a new calling. We had 2 great teachers, Brother Lee and Brother Smith both RMs and married and attending BYU. All our classes were great! We did role playing teaching lessons to each other and to volunteers who pretended to be investigating the church. Here is a picture of all us and a lesson plan we came up with.

From Brother and Sister Johnston, Adrian, Oregon

 Back row is the Harpers Brother Smith Brother Stratton and the Slades.
Sitting is me, Sister Stratton and Sister Misner.

This is Brother Lee. We were his last class because he got a job as a piano accompanist.

On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 11:47 AM, Tim Harper <timo.harper@gmail.com> wrote:

We are children of a loving Heavenly Father who loves us so much that He sent his son to die for us, and created a way through Christ’s atonement we can return to Him.

The Gospel blesses families by teaching us how to be happy here and how to be together forever.

Because Heavenly Father loves us so much, he has given us prophets that guide us from the beginning of time and even today.

God sent his only begotten Son to save us from the sins of the world.

The death of Christ and his apostles meant there was no one with priesthood authority to maintain pure and correct doctrine; therefore well-meaning people began to teach principles based on their reasoning rather than revelation.

Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ was lost to the world a restoration of that Gospel had to be and was restored by a modern prophet, Joseph Smith.

The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ that goes hand in hand with the Old Testament and the New Testament to teach us that Jesus Christ is our Savior.

If you want to know whether this is true, you can pray, ask our Heavenly Father, and He will tell you the answer through the Holy Ghost.

--
Thanks,

Tim Harper
Harper Consulting LLC
208-378-4938