Our latest update

What’s new with us? In November we accepted a mission call to serve as the North America Southwest Area Medical Advisors. We get to live at home, but it’s considered a full-time mission for 2 years. We usually only wear our name tags at church, though. We went to Salt Lake for 4 days of training. Our area covers the 18 missions from Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Our stewardship is for the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the approximate 3000 missionaries serving in this Area. For missions in North America, we are fortunate to have good medical facilities and providers to serve the needs of the missionaries. Mike’s primary responsibility is to assure that each mission has its own cadre of medical consultants and when they aren’t readily available or unable to answer the questions of the mission presidents, they call Mike. My primary role is to serve as an assistant to Mike and I also prepare a monthly report for Elder Costa, who is the member of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy over the North America Southwest Area. In most missions the Mission President’s wife is the person that deals with missionary health. You might enjoy a letter we got from one of them:
“Here’s a listing of the medical issues we have faced the past 10 days. (President has an even longer list of "other" issues!) It isn't always this intense, but it has been lately! Thanks for the support of you and your husband, as well as our local doctor and all of the people at Missionary Medical! The list:
Abnormal blood sugar (2), Serious warts needing more help (2), Blood in stool, Asthma (5)
Bike wreck, hurting wrist, Stomach flu (7), Complications from gall bladder surgery recovery, necessitating a trip to ER, Pulled hamstring, Diagnosis of a need for brain surgery, requiring an early release, Need to change ADD medications (2), Throbbing head pain (only when doing pushups), Cold, sore throat (3), Pink eye, Bulimia, Ruptured ovarian cyst (trip to ER), Severe sinus infection, Eczema, Stomach pains, Bad back pain, Pneumonia, Celiac Disease diagnosis, Food allergies, Jaundice ?, Bleeding lump on abdomen (some kind of cyst?), Toothache/cavities, Depression (2), PT needed for dog bite injury 2 months ago. Most of these situations involved numerous phone calls, back and forth to the missionaries, as well as to Missionary Medical for approval to see a doctor, and/or to parents, & doctors. And President had to call the missionary department and Stake Presidents for some. Whew! How could I, untrained in medicine, begin to handle this without the help of the Holy Ghost? I pray constantly to know what to do. And He answers!”
Isn’t that a sweet letter? I’m telling you – those mission presidents and their wives deal with all kinds of things. We saw that on our mission to the Philippines and we concluded the call to preside over a mission has to be one of the most challenging calls there is. Can you imagine being the ‘parent’ and spiritual leader to 150-200 19-23 year olds???? So anything we can do to lighten the load of these Mission Presidents and their wives, we are more than happy to do. Ralph and Marti are also Area Medical Advisors, but they will have a very different experience in the Ukraine, Baltic States, Bulgaria, and Armenia. Bless them!

We have started a major face lift on our 26 year old home. We have removed all wall paper and painted 2 bedrooms and we have made our piano room into a TV room. Our great big room is in stall mode for now. We have plans to remodel the kitchen with new cabinets, re-do bathrooms, dress up the fireplace, redesign the kitchen island and move the stove/oven to it, then we will get all new flooring for the upstairs. We are also seriously considering moving the stairs to where the piano used to sit. Big plans. We may even do a back yard redesign. We find work getting in the way of our shopping to choose what we like. Mike works in Sierra Vista 3 days a week and I work at Benson ER about 2 days/week. We are staying busy and out of trouble – I think.

All our kids are doing well. Rebecca had their 6th, a girl, (Kate) in June, Louise had a 5th boy (Caleb) in September, and in March we’ll get 2 more grandbabies. Janette’s having a boy and Christina a girl. That brings our total to 19. Our family brings us much joy and fulfillment and we feel so lucky to have them all in Arizona. We enjoy our associations with family and extended family and pray for everyone’s wellbeing as we all try to show our raisins and hold to the rod.

Love, Mike and Susan