We had a senior couples mission conference on July 25th and 26th. It was great to get together, learn about our callings, and feel the Spirit together. There are six senior couples in our mission. They are all very capable and very much extraordinary. All of them deal with living in a country where they don’t understand the language. One couple arrived on July 24th just one day before the conference. They are the Samples who are assigned to military relations for the US military bases around Poland. He served in the Army, was in Special Forces, and was an Army Ranger. He retired at age 45 and has been traveling the world with his wife since then. They were never able to have children. When they heard a talk in conference on senior missionary work from Elder Rasband, they decided to serve a mission.
The Parsons are from the Washington DC area. He told me he was the Chief Financial Officer for Marriott Corporation for 8 years. He knows the Marriott Family well. He is full of life and really fun to be around. He is a natural organizer. Sister Parsons is a little quieter. She is a real saint. They serve in Katowice with Elder Parsons being the branch president. In the photo below, they are the two closest to the camera.
The McKinnons are the next couple back from the camera on the right. He was a management consultant before he retired. He strikes you as an accountant when you meet him and that is his (and their) main area of focus in the mission. He is an assistant area auditor and covers Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. He has come to Gdańsk twice to help me understand the branch financial system.
President and Sister Roney are the couple across from the McKinnon’s. He is our mission president and she is our mission leader too. He is difficult to categorize. He has a fun-loving streak like you’d find in a youth conference director but with a straight shooting discipline that makes you think of a stake president. He owns several Information Technology companies in the Washington DC area. He loves history and he began in the nation’s capital as an intern to Utah’s Representative Chris Cannon. Sister Roney’s heart is big enough to capture us and all her missionaries. Make no mistake, she is a sharp cookie and there isn’t much that excapes her. The missionaries have the utmost respect and love for the Roney’s.
The Daniels are the next couple to the right, just before us. They are career educators from Payson and are related to Matt Hone, in our Henefer Ward at home. I feel the Lord made no mistake when He assigned them to serve our young single adults in Poland. They are so much fun to be around. He is also the branch president in Łódź.
The Jackson’s are the couple sitting across from us. He owned several swimming pool and low income housing construction businesses in the Los Angeles area. They too are very sharp with a fun loving teasing streak that endears them to all of us. They unofficially serve as our senior missionary liasons to the Roneys since they are based in Warsaw. They oversee all the humanitarian projects for the church in Poland.
We traveled to the top of a mountain via tram, then several of us walked down a trail to the bottom. It was a cool rainy cloudy day.
