Grandma & Grandpa Idaho: Beautiful Fall Colors

Dear Family and Friends,
This past week has been so wonderful. We have been traveling to Zone Training Meetings and we have been traveling for P-Day activities. Mom and I are still trying to spread the Gospel ourselves as well as help the young missionaries be able to do what they do. Our missionaries are baptizing around 20 new converts per month. Not bad considering this is the Bible Belt. People like to say that this is the Buckle of the Bible Belt! The work goes forward better in the more humble areas as you would expect. We continue to OYM--open you mouth.
We went to two different Zone Training Meetings this past week. We have four to go this coming week. I go to each meeting to be available for the young missionaries to come in one-by-one to ask medical questions and take care of their issues. I get a chance to visit with each missionary about once a month plus they can call me anytime. Most of the things I can handle over the phone but I sometimes have to send them in to an office or urgent care center. We have some members of the Church that are physicians who help me out a lot.
This past Friday was a very busy day--we traveled to Hendersonville, NC and Brevard, NC to help Elder Cleghorn (auto coordinator) get some new license plates delivered for plates that were to expire. We can't have our missionaries driving around on expired plates. We left North Carolina and drove up to Virginia (the northernmost part of our mission). We checked in to a hotel in Bristol, VA. just off Interstate 81. This was our Senior Couples Activity weekend. Cecile and I are in charge of mission morale for the Seniors (kind of like being the APs for the Seniors). We had planned this activity. We met in Abingdon, VA at the Martha Washington Inn for dinner. This place was built in about 1827 as a private mansion for the Preston family. It was later turned into the Martha Washington Women's College and then later a Hospital during the Civil War. It has been restored and is now a Hotel and Restaurant. I am attaching a photo of our group there. It is such a beautiful place. It is amazing that it is still standing and in such good shape.
We went back to our hotel for a good night's rest before we tackled the Virginia Creeper Bike Trail on Saturday. This is a very well-known bike trail on the bed of an old railroad. We went to a small town called Damascus, VA where we took a shuttle with our bicycles to the top of Whitetop Mountain. We took the 17 mile ride from the top back down to the shuttle/bike shop in Damascus. What a beautiful ride. Most of the ride was downhill or flat. Even us old folks were able to ride that distance. The colors are fantastic in the Appalachians. This was the Blue Ridge area. We are thankful for God's wonderful creations and beauties.
Mom and I wanted to share a quote that went along with our lesson today at Church. It is from Nelson Mandela:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
We love you all and pray for you each day. We hope that you will have a wonderful week.
Love Grandpa and Grandma Christensen, the Tennessee Missionaries.