Cooper, Kerry & Jamee

Dear Family and Friends, This week turned out to be busy and very eventful.  We had zone conference on Tuesday in Clarksburg, WV at their stake center.  We had good instruction from our Mission President and his wife, the Assistants, our zone leaders and the sister zone leaders.  We really like our Mission President and his wife.  President Lindahl is very tender-hearted.  He knows how to chastise without making you fill like you were chastised.  Sister Lindahl really has a soft spot for the sisters.  She gave us some training on how to use family history work to help us do missionary work. We love being around the young missionaries.  Their enthusiasm and testimonies are contagious. President Lindahl and I talked briefly about how training these great young men and women is the Lord's university.  And Mom really liked the Subway sandwiches we had for lunch.  And to top it all off she got to go up and have all the missionaries sing happy...

The snow and cold, mostly cold, you have been having in Utah and Idaho has caught up to us. We had a sleet storm come through on Tuesday which made the roads a little hazardous.  We got a few things done early and then hunkered down in our apartment for the rest of the day. We had snow off and on Thursday and Friday and then it turned cold. The cold here is humid so it seems colder that what we are used to.  The good news is that it is supposed to warm up and be nice through Thanksgiving. Friday we traveled to Masontown, about and hour west of us, for our District Counsel meeting.  I think we have mentioned before how much we enjoy our meetings with the elders.  The elders in Masontown are both from Utah. Elder Jensen is from Richfield and Elder Turner is from Layton.  Elder Turner is a greenie and we can tell he is going to be a good missionary.  Those two elders had a baptism last Saturday which was exciting.  The baptisms in this district are few an...

Hi family and friends. Another week under our belts. We got our first snow storm last night and today.  It wasn't a lot but it's cold enough that it is sticking.  The locals say this is a just warm up. It could be worse, we could get the weather Utah and Idaho have received. I'm going to start this letter by telling you a story we were told by a new member last night.  She had been taught the lessons but wasn't joining the church because she thought her Baptist baptism was sufficient and she didn't see the need to attend church meetings.  The elders challenged her to pray about it and invited her to watch general conference with them.  She agreed to do that and came to watch conference hoping to receive an answer to her prayers. She said during conference one of the women leaders talked about how important it is to be baptized and be a part of the Church.  Then President Nelson talked about how important it was to be attending church meetings to take the Sa...

Dear Family and Friends, Another beautiful week here in Oakland.  It was nice and sunny and warm for most of the week. The leaves have pretty much all fallen and the trees look really bare.  They have an interesting way of cleaning up the fallen leaves.  Most home owners have leaf blowers and they blow all of the leaves down to the curb.  The city has big vacuum trucks that drive down the road sucking up the leaves on the curb.  They manage to keep it pretty clean. We started our volunteer work at the hospital this week.  We are working at the front desk. We meet people at the front lobby and ask how can help them.  We have them scanned to get their temperatures, ask them if they have had any Covid symptoms or had contact with the Covid virus, then put a visitor sticker on them and get them into one of the registration offices to get them checked in. After just one day we have already met all kinds of nice, interesting people.  We met a true hillb...