So, we had the missionaries over for dinner

[Guest MormonGator]

We had the missionaries over for dinner today, which is not unusual. They come over once a month or so. It came out in conversation that one of them is from the same town in Utah that a good friend of mine is from. While they didn't know each other, they were from the same stake. That might happen in Utah or the west from time to time, but it doesn't happen much here. Has anyone else ever had that happen? Where missionaries know someone from an old ward or anything? It was so cool! 

Edited November 11, 2018 by MormonGator

[mirkwood]

My second area of my mission, a couple came up to me and asked if "Nanci" was my mom.  Turned out they had been in my ward in Indiana and attended my baptism.

 

[Guest MormonGator]

2 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

My second area of my mission, a couple came up to me and asked if "Nanci" was my mom.  Turned out they had been in my ward in Indiana and attended my baptism.

 

That tops my story! So cool!  

Elder Perkins called us @LadyGator and I up during a stake conference, just to tell the crowd our conversion story. When we got sealed in the temple we had a few people come up and tell us they were there-amazing! 

[zil]

I know this Gators fan who's living in the mission where one of my brothers served.

[mirkwood]

18 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

That tops my story! So cool!  
 

Yours is pretty cool too.

[Guest]

My nephew served his mission here in Houston.  He served in the Spanish ward in my same building.

[Vort]

1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

We had the missionaries over for dinner today, which is not unusual. They come over once a month or so. It came out in conversation that one of them is from the same town in Utah that a good friend of mine is from. While they didn't know each other, they were from the same stake. That might happen in Utah or the west from time to time, but it doesn't happen much here. Has anyone else ever had that happen? Where missionaries know someone from an old ward or anything? It was so cool! 

My oldest served in the Colorado Springs mission, where his AP was a guy named Aaron Fielding. My second son left six months before the oldest got home, and served in the Louisville mission, spending most of his mission in southern Indiana. There he met the Fielding family—including their oldest son Aaron, recently returned from his Colorado Springs mission. We ate dinner with the family when we went to tour the mission after my son got home. Warm, friendly, wonderful people. These days, Aaron is acting on some BYUtv sketch comedy some of you may have heard of. Studio Sea, or something like that.

[Guest MormonGator]

5 minutes ago, Vort said:

My oldest served in the Colorado Springs mission, where his AP was a guy named Aaron Fielding. My second son left six months before the oldest got home, and served in the Louisville mission, spending most of his mission in southern Indiana. There he met the Fielding family—including their oldest son Aaron, recently returned from his Colorado Springs mission. We ate dinner with the family when we went to tour the mission after my son got home. Warm, friendly, wonderful people. These days, Aaron is acting on some BYUtv sketch comedy some of you may have heard of. Studio Sea, or something like that.

That's awesome! 

[SilentOne]

33 minutes ago, Vort said:

These days, Aaron is acting on some BYUtv sketch comedy some of you may have heard of. Studio Sea, or something like that.

Somebody ought to see if there are any videos of this Studio Sea on the youtube.

[LadyGunnar]

We had a missionary that went to the same high school as my husband, was good friends with his cousin and my fil was his high school principal.   It was weird. 

 

The missionary that taught my parents, dated my mom's best friend when they were younger. Mom found it out later talking to her friend. 

[Iggy]

While eating dinner with the last set of Elder Missionaries that were assigned here, they mentioned a name that both Hubby and I knew from living in Arizona. Turns out the Elder they were talking about was in our Ward there in Arizona.

When our Elders went to a Zone meeting, they told Elder Russell about us. He knew we had moved out of Arizona, but didn't know where we had gone to. I *lurked* on his mothers FB page and found that he was freezing being in Eugene OR in the winter. So, I bought 6 pairs of wool socks, knit wool hat w/matching scarf and gloves, wrapped them up and had our Elder that was being transferred give the package to him.

His  mother sent me the nicest thank you letter. She was having a hard time finding WARM socks, hat and mittens for him there in seldom cold AZ.

[askandanswer]

We currently have serving in our ward a missionary from Seattle. His home town sounds like Forks, or Fawkes, or something like that. His name is Elder Lea'a Teeno. Is that name familiar to @Vort or @LiterateParakeet?

[askandanswer]

In February this year, my wife and I attended our mission reunion. We decided that while we were there, we would visit my son's close friend who was serving in that mission at that time. By a fortunate coincidence, the place where the reunion was being held just happened to be in his area. Additionally, the Mission Office was also in his area, just a few hundred meters away from where the reunion was being held. My wife was very well acquainted with the Mission President because her family and his family had grown up together in the same ward and he had been a counsellor to my BIL more than 30 years ago when my BIL was bishop. We took with us one of my former companions because my former companion had worked with the Mission President in the Presiding Bishops office in Manila before he was called to be a Mission President. Additionally, only a few months previously, the daughter of the Mission President, while in the last area of her mission had been living in the apartment right next door to my former companion. So we go to the Mission President's home and we learn that the Mission President's wife remembers that my current Stake President and former Home Teacher had been assigned to her Branch back in 1984. And then, when the APs drop in, we learn that one of them came from the same ward as the missionary who was my son's companion at the time.  It was amazing how many different connections there were between the people in that room! 

My son is serving in a branch that shares a boundary with my brother's ward. They see each other from time to time during Stake Conference and other meetings. Every now and then, such as when my son recently lost his wallet, we've been able to ask my brother to check on my son and help him out with a few things. 

Edited November 11, 2018 by askandanswer

[Fether]

14 hours ago, Vort said:

My second son left six months before the oldest got home, and served in the Louisville mission, spending most of his mission in southern Indiana. There he met the Fielding family—including their oldest son Aaron

That was my mission! The Fielding family was great, the father was a counselor in the mission presidency. I didn’t put Aaron and his father together as being family until you said it and now I totally see it xD

Now I’m curious as to your son’s name and whether I would have met him. I served 2014-16, when did he serve?

Edited November 11, 2018 by Fether

[Fether]

I was sitting in a district meeting one day and we were doing a quick GTK you meeting where we said where we were from. One sister got up and said “Greeley Colorado”. I lived the first 10 years of my life in Greeley Colorado. I approached her after the meeting and asked where at. Long story short, we were in the same Sunday school class and I definitely remembered her.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Fether

[Vort]

9 hours ago, askandanswer said:

We currently have serving in our ward a missionary from Seattle. His home town sounds like Forks, or Fawkes, or something like that. His name is Elder Lea'a Teeno. Is that name familiar to @Vort or @LiterateParakeet?

Forks is a little town out on the western edge of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, best known (no kidding) for being the setting of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books about sparkly vampires. It's about 200 miles (in Australia, that's 320 °C) from where I live, a bit over 3½ hours by car. Don't know anyone there, but I almost went to Church there once when my wife took us to Sequim* for an anniversary. I suggested we go to Forks for Church (my wife had enjoyed the Twilight books), and we had planned to, but in the end she decided we'd go someplace closer instead.

*I dare you to pronounce "Sequim". Go ahead. Try.

Really. Say it out loud right now, while you're reading this.

Done?

Good job! You got it wrong. It's pronounced /skwim/. One syllable.

There's your Random Sunday Factoid.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

It's about 200 miles (in Australia, that's 320 °C)

Hmmm...

[Just_A_Guy]

2 hours ago, Vort said:

Forks is a little town out on the western edge of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, best known (no kidding) for being the setting of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books about sparkly vampires. It's about 200 miles (in Australia, that's 320 °C) from where I live, a bit over 3½ hours by car. Don't know anyone there, but I almost went to Church there once when my wife took us to Sequim* for an anniversary. I suggested we go to Forks for Church (my wife had enjoyed the Twilight books), and we had planned to, but in the end she decided we'd go someplace closer instead.

*I dare you to pronounce "Sequim". Go ahead. Try.

Really. Say it out loud right now, while you're reading this.

Done?

Good job! You got it wrong. It's pronounced /skwim/. One syllable.

There's your Random Sunday Factoid.

Kinda like the Utahans who pronounce the town of “Hurricane” as “Her-Kin”.

[Fether]

14 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Kinda like the Utahans who pronounce the town of “Hurricane” as “Her-Kin”.

Or Tooele “Too-Willa”

[Vort]

29 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Hmmm...

♬ Someone noticed... ♫

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Vort said:

♬ Someone noticed... ♫

My brother-in-law decided that he'd make up a unit of conversion.  Everything is 7 zorkmas. 

How fast did he run the marathon?        7 zorkmas.
How long is a marathon?                         7 zorkmas.
How much can a human lift?                   7 zorkmas.
How far from the earth to the sun?         7 zorkmas.

Very handy unit of measure, that.

[zil]

54 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

My brother-in-law decided that he'd make up a unit of conversion.  Everything is 7 zorkmas. 

How fast did he run the marathon?        7 zorkmas.
How long is a marathon?                         7 zorkmas.
How much can a human lift?                   7 zorkmas.
How far from the earth to the sun?         7 zorkmas.

Very handy unit of measure, that.

Handy, but makes for boring formulas.  The 7 had all kinds of odd potential, but not if everything is 7.  I had a blog post on my website (before it crashed) all about balance - amidst my examples demonstrating how balance was a hard thing to accomplish was Hebrew National hot dogs - you get 7 per package.  But buns come 8 per package.  Maybe you can eat enough hot dogs to balance that out, but not me - one package of hot dogs every 2 years is about all I can handle. 56 would make me puke.

This reminds me that I need to fire up the old server and transfer all those old articles to my current server.  Maybe tomorrow.

[pam]

13 hours ago, askandanswer said:

We currently have serving in our ward a missionary from Seattle. His home town sounds like Forks, or Fawkes, or something like that. His name is Elder Lea'a Teeno. Is that name familiar to @Vort or @LiterateParakeet?

Obviously you know nothing of the Cullens.  They are a pretty famous or infamous (depending on how you look at it) family that lives in Forks.     

[Jane_Doe]

Mateo was man from Lima Peru, worked really hard at school and got his dream scholarship to go to graduate school in the United States.  So Mateo kissed his wife and young children good-bye, and set off across the seas.  While in Wyoming, he was lonely and suffering from culture-shock and language troubles.  A man named Jones, who was able to reach out to him-- because Jones served an LDS mission in Lima and could really understand him.  Jones shared the Gospel with Mateo, and two years later Mateo returned to Lima with three things 1) a degree, 2) a cd, and 3) the Gospel.  His wife and children happily embraced the Gospel, are baptized, and sealed in the newly dedicated Lima Temple.

Fast-foward 40 years-- Mateo changed the course of his family's life: they were able to break out of the cycle of poverty, and Mateo Jr was able to even move permanently to the States for a job-- Utah even, as the children and now grandchildren love the Gospel so much.   One of Mateo's grandchildren is an RM, going to BYU, and dating my sister.  She asked me "hey, it's a long shot, but do you know a guy by the name of Jones?"    To which I answered "Yes, I know my former bishop."  

So I've arranged a meeting: for Thanksgiving week, Mateo's grandson is coming to my town, to meet and thank Jones for the impact he had on Mateo's life and the generations to come.  

[askandanswer]

29 minutes ago, pam said:

Obviously you know nothing of the Cullens.  They are a pretty famous or infamous (depending on how you look at it) family that lives in Forks.     

Who are the Cullens?