President and Sister Merritt - California San Diego Mission Blog

It is amazing that, as I sit to begin writing this post, it is already Christmas Eve. The mission home is graced with the presence of my mother, my youngest sister, our second daughter Natalie and her family and, our eldest daughter Carissa, whose flight home was unfortunately delayed. (After numerous delays and cancelations over this terrible travel weekend, Carissa whose original travel plans had her home for Christmas, finally arrived home to the delight of her family on Monday morning - having spent Christmas Day traveling.) Having an age span of 86 to 2 years made for a magical Christmas! Not only was it nice having family in town for Christmas, but also we found Christmas in the mission field to be amazingly fulfilling and fast-paced. This last transfer has been a whirlwind of activity. Here is a bit about some of our busy-ness.  "And mine angels [shall be] round about you, to bear you up."  - (Doctrine & Covenants 84:88) "I'm going down . . . " those ...

 We are still experiencing mission firsts and imagine that will not come to an end until we have completed our mission. Although there is a six week cycle, very much driven by transfers of missionaries in and out of the mission, each six week cycle is different. Yesterday 21 missionaries departed for either home or to their originally assigned destination. On that same day we received 26 new missionaries, whom we will train tomorrow morning - no better way to spend a Thanksgiving Day!  Last month, with the bathrooms finally completed, we had a mission first when four elders spent a couple nights at the mission home to facilitate training. We took the opportunity to take these missionaries on a morning jog up to Mount Helix by way of the "secret" path. On our way back down the mountain, an acquaintance asked if these four companion runners were our children. I explained that they were some of the missionaries we work with. After chatting a bit, as I ran to catch up with Norm a...

We will open this post with a bit of humor. One of our office missionaries has this quote on her desk.  "Don't bother walking a mile in my shoes, that would be boring.                                Spend 30 seconds in my head, that'll freak you right out." We simply have to laugh and nod our heads - it seems particularly fitting to be applied to mission leaders! We love this work and this chapter and would have it no other way. Here is a little bit about some of the things that keep us busy here on the mission. Each week we have two zoom devotionals with all our missionaries. The Zone Leaders rotate the responsibility of leading the Devotional and sharing messages and President and I always have something to add at the end. Recently we focused on the Christlike attribute of charity - one element of this being patience. After all "charity suffereth long . . . and is not easily provoked."    ...

  In the middle of August we said goodbye to our airbnb, doormat and all, and are now living in the mission home. We have bits and pieces of our home life sprinkled about the furnished home such that we feel very comfortable and at home here. I (Armenay) saw a plaque in a store, pictured below, that reflects our sentiment, it reads:  HAPPINESS SERVED DAILY While I do feel the sentiment is true, I believe our scripture above makes it ring truer . . . Placing our trust in the Lord does bring happiness. This is something our missionaries are learning daily and we are grateful. Since our last post, Norm has recovered from Covid and celebrated a birthday. We actually moved into the mission home on his birthday, it took us a few days to rid ourselves of all the boxes and we still have some places in need of a thorough sorting and second level organizing. We are allowing ourselves to be patient with that process as our days are so filled with tasks that need attention.  To date ...

  Hello Friends, What a wonderful experience we are having in sunny San Diego! We have never been busier in our work together but feel it a blessing and privilege to be engaged in this work. We suddenly have 165 additional "children", young people 18-21 years of age who have dedicated themselves for this period of their lives to serve others and teach about Christ.  The door mat in front of our Airbnb rental reads "It's always happy hour here". This is an unusual doormat to find gracing the home of a mission President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints given that we abstain from alcoholic beverages. But we have decided to see "happy hour" within the context of God's plan of happiness, which includes the good news of the gospel that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can return to live with God. We rejoice in this message that we share as missionaries and are grateful to feel his happiness in our lives each day. So it's tru...

It is because of our trust in the Lord, that we accepted a call to leave our home and spend the next three years of our life serving as mission leaders in the California San Diego Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In this post I hope to capture some of the happenings that occurred in the last two months of our preparations for our mission to San Diego. After considering a variety of options we determined to drive from New Jersey to San Diego in order to visit friends and family along the way. We scheduled movers to come collect those belongings that we would take to San Diego the last week of May, so that effort would be concluded prior to the arrival of our children and grandchildren for one last hurrah before we departed. In mid May we received a call from facilities management informing us they were behind schedule remodeling the mission home bathrooms and that we would be unable to move into the mission home when we arrived. Not to worry - we knew we could...