A transfer this week; and slim pickins

Hello family!

So exciting news-- this Wednesday is transfers, and I'm going to be transferred! No news as to where, or if I'll be speaking spanish or english or what, but I guess I'll let you guys know next week exactly what happened =]

So this last week was alright. The work is moving along in Paper Mill. Karen Livingood (an English investigator I originally made contact with) is going to be baptized this Saturday. Which is super exciting, because she brings her husband every week, and her friend Brenda when she can, so they'll be able to do a good amount of recent convert work with her.

Zone conference went really well-- we went over two of the Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel: Revelation through Church Attendance, and Revelation through the Book of Mormon. Leadership council a couple weeks ago was the same-- we went through all 8 of the fundamentals. If you want to know more about that, you can ask the missionaries in GB1 ward--they'll know all about it.

Fatima is doing alright. Not a ton of progress recently--keep praying for her! As far as other Portuguese work is going, we're working hard to find new investigators-- we've got slim pickings right now. Although I guess I'll spend tomorrow saying "tchau" to anyone worth saying it to... =]

Tell Kelsey that her Geneve trip is super exciting (nothing new there though, I guess), and to keep saving the world!   (Kelsey is doing a 2 1/2 month internship with World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland this summer).

Hope everything is well at home! Love you guys!

Elder McGregor

Elder Pieper of the Seventy; Apostles are super cool; and a picture of yesterday's Priesthood

Hey everybody!

I'm glad to hear everything's going well at home. Super happy the new ward is great, and I guess it'll be fun to come home to the new ward.

We had a training on Friday with Elder Pieper of the seventy, which was fantastic. It'd be tough to summarize all of the things he spoke about, but it sufficeth to say it was about missionary work, and it'll change the way we work in respect to certain aspects of missionary work.

Things are moving along. It's been tough to meet with Fatima--she's been working a ton lately, and we've only been able to meet with her once a week. She also hasn't come to church for the last couple weeks. So I'm getting a little concerned about her, but as far as I can tell, she's still on her way to be baptized on the 6 of March.

Our friend who is the high councilman working with the Portuguese Group was here on business this past week.  We went to dinner and also asked him to take some CDs to E McGregor.
I'm glad Brother Baker was able to fill you in on what the work is like here. And I really appreciate the CDs--we were all getting tired of hearing the same stuff over and over =]

Elder Oak's address at Chapman* was really good to read. I'm constantly amazed at the Apostles and how super-cool they are. I remember seeing you guys watch General Conference on Saturdays and I was always like, "what's the big deal?" But I'm starting to get it now ;)

I hope everything's going great! I love you guys so much! Have a fantastic week!

Elder McGregor

*http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/article/elder-oaks-religious-freedom-Chapman-University

(We sent him a hard copy of this)

Elder McGregor is front row far right and his companion, Elder Emmett, is back row fifth from the left:

We also got this message and the picture above from our friend:

I thought I would pass along the report from my fellow High Councilor that manages the Portuguese Group with me – he’s the one that takes pictures.

“In Sunday School, there was a lot of participation from the members during class. Elder McGregor taught the class.  At the end he told about his personal experience. He was first called to serve in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  However, he was not fully prepared to be on a mission. Because of that, he was sent back home for 7 months.  At the end of 7 months at home, he was ready.  He was called to serve in Georgia.  To his surprise, the Lord had a plan for him.  He was able to serve in the Portuguese speaking area.  As a matter of fact, because of his ability to speak Portuguese very well, he is extremely useful for the area. President King told Elder McGregor that he was an answer to prayer. Telling his personal experience brought a very strong spirit to the room, especially to the Nogueira family.  They currently have a similar situation in their family.  Their son just came home from his mission in North Carolina for 6 months for a similar reason.  Tears were shed, and testimonies were shared.  Overall, it was a very sweet and touching Sunday School.

We had to set up a lot more chairs for priesthood meeting today.  A photo of the combined priesthood class is attached. The group is progressing well.  Attendance has been constant in the mid 30’s.”

I’ve attached the picture for you.  Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the Sunday School meeting due to a talk I had to give in one of our Spanish branches.

Email from Sister King and the February GRITS newsletter

Dear families of our great Georgia Atlanta North missionaries...

It's been a wonderful week!  We just completed a 2-day mission tour with Elder Paul Pieper from the First Quorum of Seventy and his wife, Lisa.  They spoke to half the mission on each of the two days they were here and taught us many incredible things to help lift the missionaries and the mission.  More about that in our next issue of the GRITS...and from your sons and daughters in their emails home on Monday.  We also have a great week ahead with 4 days of zone conferences.

Also new this week--7 visa waiters arrived, awaiting visas for Russia, Brazil, Columbia and Mexico (one of their visas already came through...yesterday!)  We love having them here--if even for a short time--joining the 4 still waiting for their visas to Brazil.  What a blessing they all are to this mission!

We also received word that our missionaries will have some involvement in the public tours for the newly-renovated Atlanta Temple.  We're still awaiting a schedule with details...but it will be an exciting time here and the members are all about inviting their friends to "come and see!"

If you received a copy of the Church News and saw that our replacements (to arrive by July 1st) were not listed...but are "to be announced"--don't worry!  There will be someone called to lead this mission come summer.  We would love to stay, but this is a 3-year calling...and we promise to exit gracefully :)    We are excited for those to follow, as they will be blessed with the best group of missionaries anywhere!

Best wishes to you all...and thank you for sharing your wonderful missionaries with us--they're amazing!

Love,

President & Sister King


And a reminder of some missionary rules:
Missionaries are only to send emails to their parents...and you are free to forward those on to other family members and friends.  The missionaries' "myldsmail.net" addresses are not to be shared.  Thanks so much for supporting your missionaries as they adhere to missionary guidelines...it will help them stay focused on their missions.

After dinner picture

The members take such good care of their missionaries there, don't they!  And I love that some send pictures...

"Thank you for sending your son to Georgia."

English and Portuguese, Normal marvelous; and Elders in aprons

This week in our emails to E McGregor we mentioned that
- it looks like the weather is great there, but is raining here (and that I've been riding my Vespa to my M/W class); 
- we most likely get to see Bro Baker this week, who will be here on business (my and Bryon's friend from school days who is now the high councilman over the work of growing the Portuguese group into a branch there in Georgia); 
- I've noticed he doesn't throw Portuguese words and phrases into his letters any more; 
- we cut down a tree that was too close to our house; 
- and we attended a funeral over the weekend for the little daughter of one of Bryon's high school buddies (it was lovely and very touching...)

Yeah, it's a really great day here in Atlanta. Super nice. Rain is nice though! Just throw on a coat and you're good ;) Although I guess I underestimate the power of nature against the vespa, haha.

Well, say hi to Bro. Baker for me. I guess if you need to get anything to me, you can just give it to him and he can give it to me on Sunday =] Easy peasy =]

Um, yeah... I speak a ton more English here than I did in Brazil. Everyone in Brazil knows Portuguese. The people in Georgia aren't that lucky... =]   So yeah, I switch back and forth between Portuguese and English much more easily than I used to. But it's really funny because the Brazilian members and investigators who speak English do throw in English phrases ALL the time. Especially the ones that don't translate very well like, "whatever." =]

Well good thing I cut all of those branches off the tree before you cut it down.... I guess it wasn't a total loss though--I built a lot of character doing it  ;)  ;)

This week went pretty well! Fatima didn't come to church yesterday, so we're probably going to have to bump back her baptismal date to next Sunday, but she's still on track from what I can tell. It's been a pretty standard week; nothing OVERLY marvelous happened. Just the normal marvelous stuff. Fatima is really our biggest focus right now. Once she gets baptized we'll start focusing much more on other investigators, but we're trying to spend a good amount of our time with her now to get her prepared for baptism. But she's doing quite well, as is Lucca.

So wow, that's something else with the Farreros.  I suppose they're doing ok, then?

Love!

Elder (Fent) McGregor

Dinner at the Mitchell family's home

l-r  Elders Herzog, McGregor, Smith, Mundt, Gneiting, and Emmett (T's companion)

"When we went and ate dinner with the Mitchells, we showed up and they said, 

"We have aprons for you so you don't spill on your suits!" 

And the aprons with the critters on them went first. I got stuck with a solid pattern =]"

more back and forth:

Did we send you a copy of the "Men of the Tabernacle Choir" CD?

nope! Oh, and if you're sending things, could you send a Jenny Oaks Baker CD? I think another elder may have accidentally palmed it on the way out of Paper Mill...

Yes, I will send both.

And I'll just send what (little - ahem) news we got from you today on to your friend.

Little news, true. But that's really about it. Kind of an uneventful week. We're trying to find new investigators. 

So as unexciting as it is, now you know =]

Things are going great; PICTURES!; and too bad the Falcons didn't make it to the Super Bowl...

HELLOOOOOOOOO =]

How's everybody? Things are going great here. This last week we set a baptismal date for Fatima (February 20), so we're super excited about that. Lucca was confirmed yesterday and he's doing great.

The photos I've attached are kinda fun. A picture of Lucca and Fatima and Rafael (the little boy):

Lucca was baptized Sunday, 30 January

Isabella's (the recent convert) boyfriend Dale was in the army and assembles guns. So he showed a couple to us:

and then a picture of me holding one of the Brazilian member's bird. Woohoo!

Well, I'm glad things are going well in the new ward! Yeah, it'll be interesting to come home to a new ward for my "homecoming." By the way, did I ever get a new plaque? Or is it the same Brazil one? If so, could we get a new one for the GANM mission?   Yes, his plaque for the Georgia Atlanta North Mission is hanging in the church building.

Sounds like you're having lots of fun in your classes, Mom. Yeah, it's funny to think I'll probably never have the fear of public speaking. No way. Not after all the stuff you go through on a mission =]

Dad, I'd appreciate the script from the radio show. That's super cool. Good old Elder Oaks. He's a super boss.   

Bryon send Trent an excerpt from a speech Dallin Oaks gave at Chapman University on 2/4/11.  Here's a link to the entire speech:  

http://beta-newsroom.lds.org/article/elder-oaks-religious-freedom-Chapman-University

I'm just still disappointed that the Falcons didn't do well at all in the playoffs. Just imagine if they'd gone to the super bowl-- everyone in Atlanta would be SUPER happy for the next week. The English Elders would probably have a bit of an easier time when all the people are happy. But I was totally rooting for the Packers. It's been forever since they've won. And I remember cheering for them when I was a midget. Woot.

Well, shoot me any questions you guys have! Love you all!

Elder (Fent) McGreogr

Open House and Rededication Dates Announced for the Atlanta Georgia Temple

28 January 2011 — SALT LAKE CITY

News Release

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced open house and rededication dates for the recently renovated Atlanta Georgia Temple.
The temple was closed 1 July 2009 for renovation. Among the changes was the addition of large windows in the celestial room, adding more natural light, and art glass windows in other parts of the temple.

The public is invited to visit the temple during an open house from Saturday, 9 April 2011, until Saturday, 23 April 2011, excluding Sundays. The temple will be formally rededicated on Sunday, 1 May 2011 in two sessions. Both of the rededicatory sessions will be broadcast to congregations of the Church within the temple district.

In conjunction with the rededication of the temple, there will also be a cultural celebration featuring music and dance on Saturday, 30 April 2011.

The Atlanta Georgia Temple was originally dedicated 1 June 1983 by President Gordon B. Hinckley, then a counselor in the First Presidency. He rededicated the temple baptistry in 1997 as president of the Church. The temple serves more than 50,000 Latter-day Saints living in and around Georgia.

The temple is located 25 miles northeast of the Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.
Latter-day Saint temples differ from the Church’s meetinghouses or chapels where members meet for Sunday worship services. Temples are considered “houses of the Lord” where Christ's teachings are reaffirmed through marriage, baptism and other ordinances that unite families for eternity. In the temple, Church members learn more about the purpose of life and strengthen their commitment to serve Jesus Christ and those around them.

Formal temple work will commence in the temple Tuesday, 3 May 2011.