A Thanksgiving Visit

Hi Y’all,

Here it is December and it is about 70 degrees, blue skies and we have pink camellias blooming in our back yard. In the summer I wondered why anyone would live here in Mississippi and now I know, it’s great in the winter. Everyone I saw today was in summer clothes and even a lot of shorts.

We have some beautiful red birds in our yard and every morning while we are on our walk, we hear lots of different bird sounds. We have seen several deer in our travels to out-of-the-way places, and we even had to swerve the car to miss three wild turkeys crossing the road… we almost caught our Thanksgiving dinner!

We had a new senior couple come into the mission the middle of November. They went down to Waveland, Mississippi where the eye of Hurricane Katrina went through. It is a very devastated area and many of the homes are still being repaired or are totally destroyed.


The ward has lost almost half of their members because they have left the area, and there are a lot of needs, both physical and emotional. The people were so excited to have this couple come into their ward. They remodeled a cute house for them, found furnishings (though they had few themselves), stocked their pantry, and even monogrammed towels and pillowcases for them.

We were at a stake leadership dinner on the Saturday night before the evening session of stake conference. The authority asked everyone in the room who were first generation members of the church to stand. Almost half those in the room stood. These were the leaders of the stake. We hope we are doing that kind of missionary work so that we can provide more leaders for future stakes.

Thanksgiving was GREAT this year. We had one clear week and Catherine, Matt, and David came to spend the week with us. We were in Shreveport LA. at a youth missionary conference on Saturday afternoon, November 18th. We raced back to Jackson for four hours just in time to pick them up at the airport by 9:00 pm. We returned to the house for a great nights rest. The next morning we went to church at the Jackson Branch. For sacrament meeting they had the primary program. There were 8 children participating, and they sang their songs to the accompaniment of a CD player. It was a great experience. Each family of children came up to the microphone with one of their parents and had a little part. One little girl couldn’t remember her part, and her mother was up there with her. Her mother leaned down to remind her little girl that she(her mother) couldn’t read and couldn’t help her. Her grandmother came up from the audience to help. No one was embarrassed but there was a wonderful feeling – everyone praying for everyone else.

After church, we got packed up and headed down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.



We were to be there for a 5:00 pm re-dedication of the Waveland Ward chapel. They have worked so hard to finally enjoy church in the chapel. They still don’t have heat because the town is still repairing the gas lines. They all come to church with coats on throughout the meetings in the winter time.

The Bishop talked about the devastation of Katrina August 29th ,2005.


He said this new building will help them weather the spiritual as well as the temporal storms of life. He said the building was damaged but not destroyed. It became a refuge and gathering place for everyone. It became a safe haven, a command post for an army of volunteers. MORMON HELPING HANDS is the name of the church members who came to help. There were 4678 man-hours volunteered from August 29th – September 1st. He said that everyone has trials, and that Katrina was a trial for them, but they learned to rely on each other.
They learned:
1. That they can get along
2. That they can be concerned for their neighbors
3. That they can do as they learned in Matthew 22:37

After the meeting we stayed at the Magnolia Plantation Inn in Gulfport.



It is a beautiful place with lots of rooms, sitting areas, peacocks, a pond with a fountain, and a beautiful full breakfast in the morning. We spent the day driving along the coast, taking pictures of the area and the devastation. We had a great time but we were tired when we got back home to Jackson. On Wednesday while everyone else was getting ready for Thanksgiving, we went to Vicksburg, about 45 minutes away and toured the Vicksburg National Military Park from the Civil War. It is a beautiful area, and it was a perfect day for it. We had 6 elders for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and then Catherine, Matt and David helped us with some projects we were doing for the missionaries.

Saturday we went to eat at the restaurant called Cock of the Walk. It is a very popular place with a beautiful setting on the large reservoir here in Jackson. The only two main courses on the menu are:
1. Fried Catfish Fillet
2. Down River Fried Chicken
If you don’t like either one you are out of luck. They have a pot-o-greens (collard greens), fried onion rings, fried dill pickles, skillet corn bread, hushpuppies (deep fried balls of corn bread), river fries, pickled onions and coleslaw. They serve everything on metal plates and the cups are old metal cups. It is fun to go there once but not very often.





It was sad to say good bye to the three of them on Sunday morning but we had a Zone Conference to finish planning and a missionary fireside to prepare.

On the 10th of December Parker and I went to the Collins Branch about an hour south of Jackson to speak in Church. We have some single senior sisters in the branch, and in the last two months the attendance at church has increased by about 20 because of their reactivation efforts. That day after church they had a “linger-longer” dinner and then a baptism. At the baptismal service, the branch choir sang – about the whole membership of the branch got up to sing. It was wonderful!

On the 14th we had all of the senior couples (8 couples) and the four single senior sisters gather here at the mission home for a two-day conference. We had a big dinner and Christmas Caroling and then a white elephant gift exchange. It was much more subdued than the Padbury’s, but fun Most of them stayed at the mission home and some in a motel close by. We had sourdough pancakes, bacon, eggs etc. the next day, and then we went to the branch building for 4 hours of seminar and training. We came back to the mission home for lunch and then they were off to their homes.

We welcomed a new senior couple from New Mexico about three weeks ago. Their name is Hanchett and he is the older brother of Chuck Hanchett from the Rock Creek Ward. It will be great to have them here in the mission.

Everyone starts getting ready for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Lots of houses have wreaths hanging on every window, and they use spotlights on the fronts of their houses to highlight the wreaths. They use lights on their houses, but not as much as we do in Oregon. The bank signs all talk about Jesus and Christmas and one said “Jesus is coming; don’t miss it for the world”.

We had 9 elders leave on the 20th, and 6 great new elders arrived. The morning flight for the departing elders was canceled, and we barely got them through the security on a later flight in the afternoon before the arrivals came off their plane. One of the new elders has only been a member for 2 years. His parents are Jewish and are not thrilled with him joining the church. He has a very strong testimony and will be a great missionary.

We are just catching our breath before we leave on the 24th to travel down to the Gulf Coast for the beginning of a week of meetings traveling the mission. It will be strange spending Christmas Eve in a motel room, but we will be with some of the missionaries the next day for a Christmas celebration.

You are all so special to us and we will miss being involved with you this Christmas. We pray for you every day and we know the Lord is blessing all of us.

We love y’all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are.

Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa

Elder and Sister Lund's Visit

Hi Y”all,

The weather has been WONDERFUL!!!!! About 79 – 83 degrees. A slight breeze and very low humidity….Our morning walks have been great with clear blue skies.

We have had a wild few weeks since I wrote last. Elder Lund was stranded in the Dallas Airport Monday night the 11th and they didn’t get on the first plane into Jackson on the 12th so they didn’t arrive until 11:15 in the morning.
The Zone conference was to start at 8:00 that morning in Hattiesburg which is 2 hours away. We got a sack lunch for them before we picked them up and sprinted down to the conference. We arrived about 1:15 and so we had an abbreviated training. I didn’t even get to thank the ladies that fed the missionaries before we got there.
The Lund’s are great people. They just roll with the punches. He is a wonderful teacher and he had the missionaries really listening to everything he said. After the conference we took pictures and then we sprinted back to Jackson for a fireside at the stake center in Clinton. We had 2 1/2 hours to drive back and grab something to eat. Needless to say McDonalds drive-thru was about the only choice. What great sports they are, they said it sounded good. They have been in England for the last 3 years and they said they didn’t get any drive-thru there.

The fireside went really well. We had several investigators there. Sister Lund talked about her patriarchal blessing and how she and Elder Lund met. It was a great story. He went to Montana on his mission and she is from Montana – they met through his brother whom she was dating. Elder Lund talked about our relationship to our Heavenly Father. He reminded us that the first word of the Restoration was “Joseph”. Heavenly Father truly did know him and called him by name. He talked also, about he and his wife’s courtship and how her blessing (which mentioned her being a missionary) has come to pass.

We went back to the mission home for a short but good night’s rest. We were back at the Jackson stake center in Clinton, (1/2 hour away) at 8:00 am to start the zone conference. We were there until 3:30. We left to drive 4 ½ hours to Shreveport for our conference the next day. We had a great time in the car visiting with them. We even stopped in Vicksburg for a short visit to the visitor’s center. There is a movie about the battle of Vicksburg in the civil war. It’s a beautiful park and lots of interesting information about the Confederate Army. On the way, sister Lund and I had Parker stop several times to take pictures. Such as, the Mississippi River, Cotton fields, Mississippi and Louisiana welcome signs, water towers etc. It was fun to have someone else besides me wanting to hop out to catch that “Kodak Moment” or even, take the picture out of a moving car.

Our conference was great in Shreveport. The Lund’s were very complimentary about our missionaries. We took lots of pictures and then we had to drop the Lund’s off at the airport about 4:15. After our 5 hour trip back to Jackson, we were glad to sleep in our own bed. The Lund’s still had two more missions to visit until they could go home.


While we were gone to a Stake Conference the weekend before the Lund’s came, we had a sister named Debbie Moore get baptized in the Jackson Branch. She had cancer and the missionaries had a hard time baptizing her because she had no strength in her legs. This last week she died. She lived not quite two weeks after her baptism. What a great blessing on both counts.

This last week was our hectic week again. Zone Leader’s Council on Tuesday, Departures on Tuesday night and Wed. morning, and Arrivals on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning.. We had two elders go home. Both of them were in the office. Parker’s assistant Elder Cahoon from Bountiful and our Media secretary Elder Merrill from Snowflake AZ. They have only been gone a week and we miss them a lot. They really are like family.

We had three new Elders come. They are all OUTSTANDING. One is on scholarship for aerospace Engineering, one is on scholarship for architecture and the other Elder is a great people-person – lots of personality!!!!!

We went to the baptism the other night of Terry Hitt. He is engaged to a new convert (They met on the internet). They are now in Salt Lake for Conference and then they are going to do baptisms at the Temple. At his baptism, he said that the day had been hectic, and he hadn’t been able to spend the day praying before his baptism like he wanted. He’ll be a great member!!!!!

I went out with the sisters to teach a couple of lessons last Wednesday. I loved it but was surely nervous. I don’t know if I helped them very much – I need more experience or confidence or something!!!!!

We received a note from a couple in Louisiana the other day. They wanted us to know how great the two missionaries were who came to dinner at their home. They said that they gave them a spiritual message that was just what they needed to hear. They said that the missionaries had no way of knowing that unless they came with the Spirit. What a wonderful note to receive. We have really been working with the Elders on having the Spirit with them so they can bless the lives of the members.

There is one wonderful Southern custom I am having a hard time getting use to. The Elders stand at the back of the chairs until all the women in the room have been helped into their seats and then they sit. They do not start eating until I start. I am not used to eating first. I am usually in the kitchen until the last person is served---but not here!!!! I have to have everything ready before we start serving…The Elders are GREAT at helping. They always help finish up anything such as water, butter the rolls etc. They clean up all the dishes and put them in the dishwasher and wash the rest. Some moms and dads have really taught them well!!!!!! Just like our grandsons.

We love all of you and pray for you each day. Thank y’all for fasting with us for Catherine and Matt. We felt the Unity and know it will make a difference!
Way to go Becca!!!! What an accomplishment!!!!

Congratulations Olivia---you’re a Big Girl now:-)

After Conference we are off to Hattiesburg for the night and then we drive to Gulfport early Monday morning. I will try to take some more pictures while Dad is in some meetings I don’t go to. We will be gone all week long, but you can get in touch with us on our cell phones.

We love y”all – I’m starting to get used to saying this now. Thanks for the wonderful support and help!!!

Love,
Mom and Dad

Jackson Branch Testimonies

Hi Everyone,

It’s getting a little cooler. The last few days it has felt like Portland,in the mid 80”s and rather low humidity. The “natives” say it is a teaser and won’t last but we will take what we can get.

We hadn’t planned to be home tonight. We were to have picked up Elder Gerald Lund at the airport and then drive down to Hattiesburg to our zone conference, but his plane was delayed in Dallas because of a thunderstorm (they actually had to close the airport). He will not be arriving in Jackson until early in the morning. We have a busy four days planned with him and his wife visiting all the zones for training. What a great experience! That will be in the next email.

We attended the last testimony meeting on Sept. 3rd in the little Jackson Branch. We love going there because they have a great spirit and we meet such interesting people.

The first testimony was by Katherine. She is a single mother with four children from about 6-12. She has not been coming lately. Her aunt that lives with her, has been trying to discourage her about being a member of “that white church”. (a lot of the black members experience this). She said she had had a hard week but she started reading her scriptures again and the Spirit told her that she needed to go back to church. The Saturday before Fast Meeting, she composed a song about her feelings of wanting to live in heaven with Heavenly Father and so she sang the song for her testimony. It was a wonderful beginning to the meeting.

The next was Sister White. She has been a member since she was young. She is in college working on her third degree. Her husband was next. They had just gotten back from Arizona where they spent a week visiting the senior couple that helped his family become members. He said that his whole family was active and they always had family home evening and prayer. Then when his two brothers got older, the family home evenings got less and less and then the prayers got less and less. He is now the only active member in his family of 6 children… He credits this couple from Arizona with helping him stay active and go on a mission. He is so grateful for his temple marriage and for their little girl.

Sister Walker (she was ba ptized this last Sat.) bore her testimony next. She is Katherine’s mother and has been taking the missionary discussions for the last several months. She talked about how Satan pulls at you when he knows that you are getting close to the church and about how hard it is to stay strong but how much she wants to be baptized.

A young man about 18 (I don’t know his name) says he tries to get his friends to come to church with him but they always have hangovers on Sunday mornings…what a waste he says.

Your Dad received a phone call from the church operator a couple of weeks ago. There was a man on the other end from the Gulf Coast who had tried to find the church on Sunday but there was no one there. He wanted to know about church. He said he had been given a Book of Mormon on the street down there about 3 years ago and he started to read it. Then Katrina hit and now after reading the Book of Mormon he knows the teachings in it are true and he wants to be baptized. (The building he went to is being rebuilt since the hurricane and it will be dedicated in a month or so.) Dad called the missionaries in that area and he committed to baptism the 23rd of this month. The harvest is truly the Lord’s. The missionary that gave him the Book of Mormon will never know the effect of his obedience.

The Lord is truly looking out for the missionaries. We have had at least two incidents in the last few days.

First, we had an elder break out with a terrible rash on his face and then progressed to his arms etc. I had him take Benadryl and get some gel for it. (He is about 6 hours away from here so there is no way I could see him). He went out to meet with an investigator who was being baptized on Saturday. This investigator had to have an interview with the mission president, who then called and asked a counselor in the stake presidency who lives closest to them (a one hour drive) to do it. This counselor just happened to be a physician, and when he met with the missionaries, he was able to give this elder a prescription for poison oak. The next day, the elder was much better and didn’t have to go another night before getting some help. The question is “Were did he get the poison oak?”---no one knows.

Second, we had an elder have a seizure while they were checking his blood in a medical center. The area doctor thought he should see a neurologist. He is in a small town in rural Mississippi. We thought we might have to transfer him up to Jackson for some tests. When we told him we needed to find him a neurologist and that we might have to come to Jackson – he said,” I know a neurologist, we tracted him out last week and we are teaching him and his family tonight. I checked, and he is approved by the church and so we will be able to have him treated where he is.

We were in Monroe, Lousiana this last weekend for stake conference. The visiting authority was Elder May of the Seventy. We had a great two days – I even got through my 2 talks. They do not have a full-sized stake center so they have a big Conference Center built across the parking lot that is the size of a huge cultural hall. It has the high council room and stake president’s office, a seminary room and several other areas.

Thanks for the phone visits, Andrea, Hayley, Andrew, Becca and Olivia. We missed you, Parker.

Elder Anderson and Exploring the Mission

Hi everyone,

It has been a while since we have written. We love talking with you on the phone as often as we can but I hope to tell you more in the email.
Our last few weeks have been very busy and full, and somewhat demanding. I have tried to write things down as they have happened in my journal and I’ll try to make sure to tell you most of it.


Monday August 14th was Zone Leaders Council. We had all the zone leaders come into the mission home for a conference at 2:00 on the Monday afternoon for meetings. We had a dinner at the home, (Hawaiian Haystacks), had a fireside, and then all 21 stayed overnight. That night after the meetings, I was finishing up the potato salad and many of them were around the kitchen snitching. It ended up, that several had big bowls or salad before they went to be….It’s a good thing I made lots.
We had a big breakfast the next morning, with pancakes, bacon and eggs, juice etc. We then all left for the chapel about ½ hour away for meetings and training and lunch.(sloppy Joes, homemade potato salad, vegetables, chips and cheese cake). After lunch, we picked up all the departing elders and sisters (11 of them) there at that building, and brought them back to the mission home for interviews and dinner and a departing fireside. While we were at the meeting house in the morning, the office couple came to the house and took all the sheets and towels I didn’t get washed before leaving for the meetings, to a Laundromat to get them all clean. I was a little weary of cooking but I’m not through yet!

The next morning (Wed.) after breakfast, we took the departing missionaries to the airport. I cried as if they were our own children…mainly because one of them was one of our first assistants – Elder Jones from Orange County Calif. He has only been a member of the church for three years but is so schooled in the Gospel if puts us to shame. He is playing baseball right now for UVSC. He called to say he was doing fine but it was really weird to be home. We rushed back to the mission home after they all left, to square away the upstairs bedrooms and baths and fix dinner for the new elders coming (only 3). Off we went to the airport again to greet them…Elder Adams from Shelly Idaho, Elder Brown from Black Diamond Washington and Elder Shurtz from Canada. They are three great young men and they will add so much to the mission. I took a picture of them when they came off the plane and they loved having that memory. When Elder Shurtz came out of the airport and breathed the hot moist air, he about died .

We took them back to the mission home and oriented them as to what they could expect. We fed them a roast beef dinner (stringy of course), had a fireside, told them who their new trainer would be and where they were going. We then sent them off to bed. They had been up since 2:00 am at the MTC, so of course they were very tired.

They were all up early the next morning and the assistants came to help with a hearty breakfast. After taking pictures in front of the mission home and loading their luggage in the trailer off they went. I’m glad we will see them all every three weeks, at least. Now the fleet elder and referral elder and the assistants take 3 days traveling between Mississippi and Louisiana transferring the missionaries. It is a very stressful time until all are in their new places and the van and trailer are back here at the mission home. And of course, Dad and I went out to dinner….I wasn’t cooking another meal!!!!!!!

The son of the stake president here in Jackson was just called to the Portland Oregon Mission. A lot of the Missionaries that grow up here in the South go to one of the Utah missions so his family is very excited he will be going to the Northwest.

It is great to go into a store around here and when you are leaving they will say, “Have a blessed day”. Don’t you just love that? I hope I can have that part of my vocabulary…Same as “Y’all”.

We had two days to clean up the house and organize ourselves before Elder Anderson of the Seventy came to stay with us on the 19th. He and Parker (the President) had meetings with all the stake presidents in the mission on Sunday. I went to the Jackson Branch and played the piano in R.S. (I had been practicing all week). Can you believe it? I should have listened to my mom….she said that piano was more important than dancing because when you get older you might not be able to dance, but you can always play the piano. I’m not so sure I can either at this point in my life. I don’t think playing is the word for what I did…probably try is the better term. The teacher didn’t show up in R.S that same day, and because I was the only one that had read the lesson, I ended up teaching it. It’s amazing what you can do when you have too . Luckily there weren’t many gospel scholars present. Many of the sisters are trying hard just to learn the basics.

That afternoon after Parker took Elder Anderson to the airport, we packed and took off to stay the night in Hattiesburg MS (2 hours away). We have Zone Development meetings all this week which means we travel to all the zones for training and interviews, and we needed to get part way down the coast because we start early in the morning. After a great and much needed sleep, we started to drive the 1 ½ hours more south…Dad had some work to do so I drove…Needless to say, I got lost because I missed an exit and we ended up getting down on the Mississippi coast late. That’s what he gets for making me drive.

After our meeting, we toured the gulf area where Katrina hit….It is amazing to see McDonald signs without buildings or an Olive Garden sign with just a slab of concrete where the building used to be. Beautiful old houses are gone and trees uprooted. Even the casinos are destroyed. These people have been through so much! Since it is on the one year anniversary of Katrina, we hear so much about the experience again

We drove back to Hattiesburg to spend the night and then the next day were 7 hours of meetings and interviews. It is fun to visit with the missionaries and hear their testimonies. There is a new Baptist church that has been built not far from the stake center there in Hattiesburg. It has a swimming pool, bowling alley, tennis courts and basketball courts in it…It is huge!!!!
One of our single senior sisters drove back to Jackson with us because she was going home the next day. She stayed overnight with us…We took her to the airport at 4:30 am the next morning so she could catch her flight….needless to say we were pretty tired, but we had two zone development meetings that day so we couldn’t let down…Dad had to interview about 36 missionaries. We hurried home, packed again and drove the 3 hours to Monroe Louisiana so we could start meetings the next day.

We woke up to a huge thunder storm. I was raining harder than I think I can remember. There was very loud thunder and lots of lightning…It rained most of the day. Everyone was glad to see it because they said it had been a dry summer. It took until 3:30 to finish with the conference, and then we drove another 100 miles to Shreveport for the meetings to begin the next day… We went out to dinner with the stake president there, Pres. Merrill and his wife. They took us to a local eatery where we had cat fish, frog legs, piles of steamed shrimp, okra and sweet potatoes as well as coleslaw and hush puppies. The frog legs were better than the first time I had them. (I and the boys in the neighborhood, went to the pond and caught frogs. The boys killed them and cut off their legs and I cooked them in the fry pan…They weren’t very good like that. I didn’t know that you should bread them and then fry them…I’ll know better next time!). They had wonderful cinnamon rolls at Kelley’s, where we ate,– in fact, that was my dessert. The Merrill’s are great and dedicated people. She has been teaching early morning seminary in her living room every morning for 29 years.

We have been having some problems in this area of the mission because it is so far away from Jackson, and so we were there an extra long time… Dad needed to solve some problems.

That evening we went to dinner with the Lukes (Dad’s counselor and wife). We went to a little bistro owned by some Italian friends of theirs and we had pizza. We hadn’t had pizza since way before we left Oregon so it was great.

The next morning Parker had some meetings with some missionaries and I stayed in the motel room to work on my talk. At 2:00 Parker had to be at the stake center about 20 minutes away. I dropped him off and then I had to kill 3 hours while he was in meetings….so what did I do but go shopping!
I got some stitchery items so that I have something to do while I wait for your interviews etc. Next one who has a baby gets it.

At 5:00 I was back at the stake center for dinner….and what did they feed us? – PIZZA. We love pizza and can’t complain. It’s just funny it happened two days in a row.

Elder Christofferson and Elder Posey of the Seventy were here for the conference. The meeting was going great until Elder Christofferson
got up to give his talk. He said,” We haven’t had a female representative speak this evening so”… and turned to look at me, “ Sister Fuhriman I’m giving you 30 seconds to prepare”. You all know how I LOVE to give talks, especially on the spur of the moment!!!!!
When I got up I said, “I thought I was to speak tomorrow” and he laughed and said, “that too”. I seemed to get through it…your Dad thought it was funny.

At 8:30pm after the meeting, we left for Texarkana which is an 1 ½ hour drive northwest. We stayed in the Courtyard Marriott that night and had the first session of stake conference there. Dad and I both had to speak. Right after the meeting, they had a sack lunch for us and then we drove back to Shreveport for the second session (another 1 ½ hours.)
After our meetings in Louisiana we had to drive about 4 1/2 hours to get back home late that Sunday night. Monday and Tuesday of this week we have been trying to catch up…You can see why no email for a while.

They gave us a bookmark at the stake conference. It comes from a quote of Ezra Taft Benson. “When obedience ceased to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.” I got one for all of you…In fact, I got one for each of the missionaries too.

Some of these wards here have great history. One of the wards is named Red Star. It is out in nowhere and the story is that the name came from the Texaco Star on the sign of the gas station in town. That ward is also on Mormon Trail Drive.

Our office couple is from Idaho Falls. He used to work for NASA and was one of the engineers during the moon flights and walk. She is a quilter so we have some things in common. They are wonderful and calm people – we have learned a lot from them….They only arrived a month before we came.

We had our office staff meeting on Tues. the 29th. After the meeting we took the missionaries to the local lunch place – Hamils…It is an old building where everyone eats on a long table or there are some individual tables in another room or outside. It is a buffet (which the missionaries love). We had all sorts of salads, (corn, cucumber, potato, green, coleslaw and lots of others)….Fried chicken, barbequed beef and pork, beans and rice etc. The desserts were great…peach cobbler, banana pudding and bread pudding. We ended up eating outside because there were so many people there…We were on redwood picnic tables under a patio cover…sometimes swatting flies but the food was great…needless to say, I didn’t cook dinner that night.

The missionaries are bringing over a man and his fiancée to the mission home tonight for dinner and then to teach them a lesson. It is really great to see how the missionaries interact with the investigators and teach…I definitely have a lot to learn!

Dad couldn’t believe how long this email has become, but I keep remembering things I want to tell you.

We love y’all!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNIFER! I remember so well the Sunday you were born!!!!!!!

Mom and Dad

Museum and Lukes

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your cute cards and letters and e-mails. We are really doing okay, and we are glad you are all there to lend encouragement….It’s sort of a turn-around since it seems like only yesterday we were doing the same for you. David, we hope you made it home okay. Jen and family hope you are having a fun time at the lake. Catherine and Matt, you are finally home for a while and Diana and Brett, your camping experience with Cameron reminds us of Jennifer’s first camping night :)

Mom has a new “pink” cellphone . My new number is 601-862-7591. It doesn’t have my great ring but maybe when one of you comes you can help me with that.

What a two weeks this has been. We have been home about three nights in the last ten and have had 21 seniors here at the mission home for a conference this last weekend.

On the 28th we drove to West Monroe, LA to speak at a missionary fireside. We had dinner before the meeting in the home of the ward mission leader. He is young returned missionary that was here on his mission. He met his wife here and after he returned home, he came back, they dated and were married.



They have two little children and it was fun to be around them. The little boy is three and when you ask him a question he responds with “yes ma’am”. All of the missionaries are courteous in that way…Parker says he feels like he is still in the service because they all say “yes sir”.

The next day, we went into Monroe to the Biedenharn Museum and Gardens. It is the beautiful old home and gardens owned by Joseph A. Biedenharn, the first bottler of Coca-Cola. It is a beautiful setting by the river and a tree-lined road. He has a whole room of coke memorabilia and they have an old coke machine that you can get a coke for 5 cents…..I got you one, Chuck. Our tour guide asked us a lot of questions. She was from Atlanta, and the mission office was above where she worked. She said they were always the nicest people, and she was very nice to us…so glad others made a good impression on her. It made her want to visit with us.

The Museum also contained a large collection of bibles that Biedenharn’s daughter, Emy-Lou, had collected, including some very rare Gutenberg pages. We were not able to see the collection because they had had a fire last April that damaged a great deal of them. The fire was arson caused. The gardens were beautiful and it was a great break from the stress of the last few days.





We drove on to Shreveport, LA for church the next day. We had to speak in two ward Sacrament meetings on Sunday. In the investigator class in the Shreveport First ward, there was a whole room full of new converts and investigators, we met some great people. One man and his family had just joined the Church and they are planning on going to the temple next year. Another was an older black sister – grandmother- type. She told about her experience to try to quit smoking. It took her desire to go to the temple before she could “kick the habit”. We find a lot of investigators here have that problem.

After the first Sacrament Meeting an Elder Gardner introduced himself to us. Logan Wilkes was his first companion, and he credits Logan for helping him have a successful mission. We had a wonderful visit with him – his younger brother was just called to the Baltic Mission to speak Lithuanian.

After Church, we went to the home of Parker’s counselor, David and Karen Luke, for dinner and a missionary discussion.





The missionaries were teaching two of their daughter’s friends. He is one of the best member missionaries we have met. They have people in their home all the time so the missionaries can teach them. They are a beautiful family. His wife plays the harp, as well as piano and sings. They have a son on a mission in Guatemala and three daughters – 17, 14 and 10.
They are not ashamed of the Gospel and many of their friends have joined the Church. As they eat their meals, they read the Book of Mormon and discuss it. It was a very uplifting day and one we will not easily forget. It certainly made us want to live better. This family could live almost anywhere they wanted, but they choose to live here where they can be of service to the Lord doing missionary work.

We got back to the motel that evening quite late but in plenty of time to receive our nightly phone calls from the missionaries but grateful for the day and the wonderful people we had met.

The next day was our first Zone Conference which was in Shreveport (we have three days of conferences). It was fun to see the missionaries, see the hoods of their cars up for inspection and the smile and greetings we received.



The conference seemed to go well…Parker’s assistants are terrific teachers. We learn so much from them, and I know the missionaries do also. The spirit is always so strong when they teach. What would we do without Elder Jones from Orange county (a member of the church for only 1 year before he came out on his mission) and Elder Cahoon from Bountiful?



I know they will be taking over a mission like ours some day…they could even do it now! 


We drove back to Jackson, a 4 hour drive, so we could get to the airport to meet Sis. Pancheri. She is 76 years old, and this is her second mission. She was in London just a short time ago. She is so fun…We stopped to get something to eat and visit, and then took her to the mission home for the night. We had to leave early the next morning for another zone conference so the office couple took her down to the Mississippi Coast where she will be serving.



After Zone Conference, in Clinton ( ½ hour away), we packed up and drove to Hattiesburg, MS. for our conference the next day (3 hours away). There are some huge Baptist and Methodist churches in this town. The Temple Baptist Church covers, at least, 25 acres.



On the drive back, we stopped at a fish house, and had our first fried dill pickles (they may be our last).  Our grandson, Parker would love them!



Thursday, we just had time to regroup because Friday started our Senior Conference.



All the senior couples and singles came into Jackson in the afternoon on Friday. We had dinner here at the mission home and a fun evening of “getting to know you”. We have some great people serving here… Elder Bush, A WW II hero written about in SAINTS AT WAR; a sister that will have been on her mission longer that she has been a member of the church, a couple that have been to the Mississippi Jackson mission twice, a couple that were in Samoa for two missions, and several others that have been on other missions before coming here. One couple has 12 children and two of them have 10 children. We even have a couple whose grandson is also in this mission.

The next morning for breakfast, Brother Peterson made his famous Sourdough pancakes (with some Oregon blueberries thrown in).


After breakfast, we all went to the Branch building for instruction and discussions for about 3 ½ hours. About 12:30 we went back to the mission home for lunch. We have some wonderful seniors that are making a great difference and we are so grateful for them…one of our favorite couples goes home (to Bend, Oregon) next month and we are sad about that.

Sunday, at the Jackson branch, two of the New Orleans Saints Football players were in church. They practice here in Jackson and so they come to the branch to church when they are in town.

I had a great experience the other day. I received a phone call at the mission home from a woman. She said she was in a terrible situation, in a drug-infested apartment complex, and she needed help to get out. I thought, “oh no, someone wanting financial assistance”. I told her that we have no money here and that we can’t help her except I can send two missionaries to teach her the Gospel of Jesus Christ if that is what she wanted. She thought for a moment and then she said, ” Yes, I would like that”. I thought, “This is too easy”. I got her name and address and phone number and called the office elders who have that area. They went to see her that night with the office couple. Her baptism is set for the end of the month. She was at church of Sunday, and she is coming for dinner tomorrow night with the elders….The elders call her “my referral”.

We went to the baptism Thursday night of Margaret Hill. Her son, and sisters and grandchildren are all members. Every time they would have a church book in the house she would throw it out. She didn’t want anything to do with the church. She went through a lot of sets of missionaries, until Elder Mudrow challenged her to read the Book of Mormon and pray….Now, she joins the whole family as a member.

It is starting to get easier for me to understand the Mississippi accent. A lady called here for the former mission presidents’ wife. Sister Blake had purchased a baby blanket at the cat and flea festival and wanted to check the address. She was telling me all about the festival and what a great thing it was to go. It wasn’t until we were in Meridian and they were raving about the Canton Flea Festival held the second Thursday in October and the second Thursday in April that I realized the lady had been telling me about the Canton (a town about 1 hour away) Flea Festival, not Cat and Flea Festival. I guess the whole town is flooded with thousands of shoppers who start gathering at midnight the night before. Parker and I stopped at Canton on one of our long drives through Mississippi. It is like going back into the 50’s when you look down their main street. I loved the town because outside the old city hall there was a banner hanging which said, “God Bless America and God Bless Our Little Town”. How could anyone not like a town like that? 

Hope all is going well there. I told the elders last week, that Mississippi was one of the coolest places in the USA. The eastern states and California were much hotter. It brought a smile to their faces.

Life is good and the missionaries are AWESOME!!!!!

We love you all,

Mom and Dad

Meridian and the Petes

Hi everyone,

This has been a very interesting week, or week and a half. We have spent several days planning the next zone conference, sending an invitation letter out to the single sisters and couples for a conference we are having here at the house in a couple of weeks, and designing some baptismal invitations for the missionaries to have. It has been really hot and quite humid and we have been grateful to be inside most of the time. Our electricity has gone off twice now and when the air-conditioning goes off for more that two hours, our house gets hot….

Saturday afternoon, we traveled down to Meridian Mississippi, about 2 hours northeast of Jackson. We were invited to come down to dinner with the missionaries at Bro. and Sis. Pete’s home. They invited us to stay overnight and speak at the Meridian Ward on Sunday. It started to rain about an hour out of Jackson and boy did it rain hard!!!! When we left Jackson it was 97 degrees. When we arrived in Meridian after the rain the temperature was 74 degrees. The people here love the rain because they haven’t had any for a while. We get lots of thunder and lightening when it rains.

The drive down was beautiful! Meridian is a timber town, and there are stacks of pine logs piled up at mills along the way. We got lost going to the Pete’s home, and we wandered out in the country for a while. The homes we found were huge, beautiful mostly brick homes on at least 5 or 10 acres each. Many of them had white fences around their green lawns with horse stables and their own ponds. I almost didn’t want to leave.

Bro. Pete is a very interesting person. He is from Louisiana and a true Cajun. He is retired military, fire chief and fisherman. He owned a home on land down on the Louisiana coast that was totally destroyed by Katrina. He owns a fishing boat but was able to get it up the river before the hurricane and was able to save it. He gave us some “red fish” to bring home and cook – He even typed out the recipe so we would know how to cook it correctly. He was a strong Catholic before joining the church, but while in the military a couple shared the Gospel with him. He is very active and helps the Elders a lot….the couple that shared the Gospel with him are totally inactive and so are all of their children but one son.



His wife, Carol, was a Southern Baptist. She was an alcoholic, smoked and said she would never be a Mormon. Now she is a great member, plays the piano every Sunday, teaches R.S. lessons,(which she also said she wouldn’t do) and works in the Temple every other week (2 hour car trip each way).
They are a great couple who taught us to play Skip Bo. What a fun night we had with them.

The next morning we left for Church at 8:00. We had to get there early so Sis. Pete could practice with the missionaries, who were singing during Sacrament Meeting. We met many of the ward members. Sis. Carrie Webster was one of them. She said she was the second black person to join the church in the area. She said none of her family is interested in the Church, but she is a very faithful member. I met two sisters that are the ward quilters, and they invited me to their quilt group – I reminded them I wasn’t here to quilt, but it was thoughtful of them to include me.

The speaker who spoke before us, was a young Muslim man, named Mohammad. He is in the Navy, stationed at the Navy Base there in Meridian. He is from Morocco. He came here to the USA - 7 years ago to work at Disney World. A girl with whom he worked invited him to church and then asked if the elders could come to visit him. He said he expected two seniors to come to his home; instead, there were two young missionaries at his door. He only saw the missionaries once. He wouldn’t meet with them again because he was a Muslim and they were Christian. He went to California and several places after that and then in Chicago, he met a group of LDS youth and joined the church. He went to BYU and married an LDS girl – she is a Kimball.



He said after he joined the church he was scared to tell his parents. He said he prayed and fasted, and when he told them they said, ” We have raised you Muslim but we have also raised you to trust in your choices.” His mother didn’t talk for a long time and then said,” If that is what you want”. After he took his wife and baby back to Morocco for a visit, all of his cousins want to marry “Mormon Girls”.

He talked about the good impressions we can all make on others, and that we need to invite others to church and open our mouths. He hopes someday our churches will be filled with Muslims in Iraq, Iran and all over the Middle East where our brave men and women are fighting, that we will look down in the audiences and see lots of Mohammads and others with Arabic names. He bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and the goodness it can bring into our lives.

It was one of the most inspiring testimonies I have heard. I didn’t want him to stop. It wasn’t easy giving my talk after him. I just love to give talks anyway, you know

After the meetings, they had a “Linger Longer” just because we were there, so they could get to know us. It was great!!! They had tables set up in their small cultural hall and the food was wonderful. Everyone stayed to eat. Sis. Pete brought a turkey and there was fried chicken and stir-fry beef and broccoli. I really liked the purple hulled peas (I think that is what they are). Everyone serves sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. They bake them and then cut them in half. Dad was more adventuring with his food selection and the desserts were great – lots of pies ( berry, sweet potato and cream) chocolate cookies and brownies and great cakes. We all sat around and visited and ate – The people there are as the elders say, “AWESOME”.

Today (Monday the 24th), Sister Peggy Reed arrived. She is the first missionary to come out since we inherited the mission. She is a widow from Spokane. She has already served another mission to Australia and is ready to do missionary work again. She is the mother of 10 children and she has over 50 grandchildren. One of her daughters has 12 children. She is very inspiring to talk to and will be a great addition to our other sisters.

We love you all. Your pictures are all over the kitchen and family room area. Everyone tells us how great you all look….cute grandchildren etc. David sent us all the things off the refrigerator, and so we have them up on ours here. Our big family picture fits perfectly over the mantle in the family room…We get to look at you every time we walk through to the bedroom.
We have been taking more pictures and hope to get them up on the computer so you can see them….We are trying to get electronically advanced

Love to you all!

The Adventure Begins...

Hi Jeanette and Chuck-

We have been thinking about you.

We are adjusting well – except, I can’t get used to calling him President, and he wants me to tell you that “We are still alive”.

We thought we would send a short e-mail. This is the first time we have had the internet, so we could communicate. We hope to have it available at the home in about a week.

Mississippi is very green and beautiful. There is a lot of real estate around the homes with large green lawns.

The people are friendly and they certainly look hard at our badges everywhere we go.

Our Mission home is beautiful. It is bigger that our home in Oregon, but very similar. It has dark wood instead of white on the inside but the outside
Is a colonial with brick facing as ours is.



We have 140 missionaries, and we have spent the last three days traveling to visit those in one half of the mission ( Louisiana and Texarkana). We will spend next Monday thru Wednesday traveling down the Mississippi coast to meet the rest of them. We have had a humbling experience these last few days. We have great dedicated missionaries, and we couldn’t do anything without our assistants and office help.



We will be attending our first baptism tonight, and tomorrow we will be going to the Jackson Inner-city branch (mostly black) where the missionaries love to attend because of the strong spirit there.

It is warm and humid, but certainly not as bad as we had expected. When we say that, everyone smiles and says to wait until August J.

We are happy here. We miss you all but we know there is a reason we are here…Just being around the missionaries makes us feel younger!!! Or older if we try to keep up with themJ

Love from the south,
The Fuhrimans