Teach All Nations

Dear Family and Loved Ones,

Wow!  The time goes very quickly in the mission.  The missionaries are very used to measuring time in transfers (six weeks).  We still think in weeks and months but are starting to get the hang of it.  This is our second transfer, which means missionaries are coming and going and moving around in the mission.  Tonight we will have a special dinner for three amazing Elders and one incredible sister - tomorrow we say good bye at the airport to our departing missionaries and then welcome in four new missionaries (two Elders and two Sisters).  We will have a chance to get to know our new missionaries, train and feed them and then send them out with their trainers to get to work!  The trainers (companions to the new missionaries) are prayerfully and carefully selected.  These first months are so critical in helping the new missionaries adjust to mission life and work.  In six weeks we will start the process all over again.  It is hard to see the mature, experienced missionaries leave, Ben and Mari are especially sad to see one of their favorite missionaries going home.  They are so wonderful but we know that others will now step up and have opportunities to grow and become leaders in our mission.

Ben and Mari started school this week and are doing GREAT!  They are reminded by their teachers every day that the are no longer little Junior High students but are now big High School students and that they should expect homework every night in almost every class - Yikes! They are meeting friends and will start early morning seminary next Monday at 6:30 a.m. The Church where they meet for seminary is about 15 minutes away so we will be leaving the house at 6:10 a.m.  :)

Saturday Ben, Mari and I went to look for some new school clothes.  We passed the mall we were looking for and had to backtrack, we found ourselves in "Little India".  Little India is about four blocks of restaurants, stores and housing where most of the residents are of Indian decent.  We felt like we were no longer in the USA.  It was amazing to see everyone in their beautiful, colorful clothing.  We soon arrived at the mall and had another international experience as we passed people of MANY different ethnic backgrounds, Indian, Asian, Hispanic, Black, Polynesian . . . So many different languages could be heard.  As we saw their beautiful faces I realized that they were each a child of God, our brothers and sisters.

President Monson said, "To reach, to teach, to touch the precious souls whom our Father has prepared for His message is a monumental task. Think of the magnitude of the Savior’s instruction to His Apostles: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:19–20)."  

In Long Beach we are truly seeing the nations come to us to be taught the gospel. In the mission office we have rows of the Book of Mormon in different languages (at least 30).  Our mission secretary, Sister Blake says that the missionaries have needed nearly every language that we have available for them!  One of our Elders leaving tomorrow speaks five languages and he has used them all to share the gospel.

Recently I was in the mission office when the phone rang, everyone had just left for lunch so I thought I should answer the phone.  The call was from a father who's son will soon be arriving in our mission.  He had questions about bikes.  We visited about Long Beach and I told him it is the best mission in the Church.  He then mentioned that his son had been told in his patriarchal blessing that he would serve a foreign mission, they were surprised with his call to Long Beach.  I was able to share with him that his son will have an international mission and will meet and teach people from many nations. I told him that Elder Clayton had said that one of the ways that the gospel will be taught to all nations is that they will come to us.  I'm glad that I "happened" to be in the office at that moment (the one and only time I have answered the phone) so I could help him know that the Lord called his son to the right mission.

We also had a sweet experience yesterday when a brother from our ward blessed his granddaughter (she was so BEAUTIFUL in her blessing dress).  The Bishop told him to give the blessing in the language he felt most comfortable with, He is a Tongan brother.  The blessing was given in Tongan, we didn't understand a word but we felt the Spirit and the great love of a grandfather for his precious grandbaby.

We continue to see miracles and the Lord's hand in His work!

Love,
The Long Beach Buberts