Craigs in Cauayan

Last Thursday morning at 4AM almost all missionaries in Cauayan Mission were awake.  Most were too excited to sleep and wanted to be ready on time.  Sister Craig and I managed to sleep in until 5AM.  Typically missionaries are up at 6:30 but this day was an exception.  A man esteemed by members of the Church as a prophet, seer and revelator, Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, would meet with the entire Cauayan Mission at 8AM in Cauayan.  With over 16 million Members of the Church in almost 200 countries across the world, this would be a rare treat indeed.  Few if any of our young missionaries had ever met a member of the Quorum of the Twelve before.  Their excitement was contagious.  Elder and Sister Renland made a 10 day trip to the Philippines and our mission was fortunate enough to be chosen to be one of the missions he would visit.  The sheer volume of travel and work that the Apostles and other General Authorities of the Church undertake is amazing to say the

Milestone: a stone serving as a milepost; a significant point of development. I love the milestones on the highways in the United States.  They particularly help on a long trip in the middle of nowhere, helping to keep our sanity as the roads go on, seemingly forever.  It is good to know were are making progress on the trip, especially when there are no other visible markers.  The ones I seem to watch the most closely are the last 40 miles in Montana, approaching Alberta once again.  One of my favorite songs is "Alberta Bound" by Paul Brandt.  That song gets listened to on full blast many times over as we reach the 40 mile mark. We reached a few milestones this week. We had our final round of zone conferences.  We prepared for our trainings as we usually do, and hoped to make the time spent at Zone Conference meaningful for the missionaries.  We feel a strong need to quickly prepare all these new missionaries to lead out quickly.  We trained on the basics, focussing on Doctri