Visit to Fort Worth & SMU campus

The Clip of the Recorder Society of Dallas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIJHKO3BEJ8

Another exciting week at the Employment Resource Center in Dallas Tx We have two new sister missionaries fresh from the MTC and ready to embark in the service. Sister Grouch and Sister Wolfley.
Sister Nelson played with the Dallas Recorder Society at Highland Park


Tuesday Sister Nelson and I attended a luncheon put on by Catholic Charities dealing with how to help Ex-felons get back into the Job market. It was held at the Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth. So it went like this: The Catholics invited the Mormons to the Baptist Church to discuss how we can better assist all God's children.

The Campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas is beautiful.

This is located in the Highland Park area where Sister Nelson met the Dallas Recorder Society.

It seemed to very a very friendly atmosphere here at SMU

Sister Nelson in front of the Music Hall

The Recorder Society didn't need a guitar player

Jack n Gaye

May 9th 2010

9 May 2010

Happy Mother’s Day
We hope that all mothers everywhere have had a good day. What a blessing our mothers have been in our lives. The sacrifice and support of our good mothers is more than we could put into words. What a blessing they have been in our lives.

Six months ago this day we entered the MTC in Provo as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What a blessing and rewarding experience this has been in our lives. The greatest sacrifice is that we are separated from our family and loved ones. However, we have received so many blessings and opportunities for being in the full time service of the Lord.

We often hear about proselyting missionaries going out and finding that person/s that they were sent to teach the gospel – the ‘I’ll find you my friend’ moments. We see and experience those same kinds of moments here as people come into the Center and there is one of the missionaries serving there that seem to have just the right background and experience to help that person.
This week Elder Nelson took a phone call from a man who owns a furniture company in Canada and has 8 stores here in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. He is from a city that Elder Nelson recognizes that one of the Adam’ girls married a young man from there. This young man’s father and the company owner serve on the High Council together. Because of this connection he feels like he trust Elder Nelson to help him find someone to do some audit work for him. 2. A young family man has been in the Center receiving help for the past month or two. This day he accepts a ward assignment to come to the Center and do some volunteer service. These two people are able to speak on the phone together and this young man is able to find some work for next week – something temporary but may work into more permanent work if it all goes well. Elder Nelson has been able to be an instrument in the Lord’s hand in bringing these two people together, each is served and blessed.
We see so many examples of this weekly, if not daily, where the Lord, through a series of many events blesses the lives of His children.
We learn so much from every person that we associate with and help. As the days go by and our experiences increase, we are able to share more with the next person what we have learned from the previous experiences and all are blessed. The things that we teach and say are empowered by the experiences of others that confirm the principles that we teach.
I’m afraid the economy is not very nice to those people in their 50’s and 60’s (our age group). Often they are being the first ones to be laid off in the company cut backs. They often got a job when they were young, moved up the ladder of experience and responsibility, oft times without an education degree. Now in this economy, to return back into the work force that values a degree and youth is very challenging to say the least. Oft times their only option may be to look at some type of self-employment venture.
I worked with a man this week in that category. He is a master plumber, because of my conversations with Bruce I could relate to many of the things he was saying about the current economic situation in this industry. He has not been active for many years in the church but feels such a good spiritual, uplifting feeling when he comes into the center, a feeling he gets when he goes to church. He shared his testimony and the desire he feels to return to activity.
I met with another doctor this week. What a delightful man, willing to go through the regular steps that we basically offer to all. Humble and happy, open to ideas and suggestions. I was able to share contact information from the other doctor, maybe together they can share ideas and help each other.
Many of the volunteers who come in are also job seekers. Some we know already and some are new to us. This week they have helped us as we try to reorganize the materials for the youth conference ‘Game of Life.’
Jack worked with a man who works for piano companies selling pianos. He is over a region that covers 11 states. He is concerned about his job and looking at other options because for the past 3 years the sale of pianos has been reduced by 50% each year. It was interesting to visit with him and see how the economy is influencing that area also. He knows a lot about many kinds of pianos. Unfortunately I was busy with someone else and couldn’t pick his brain for very long.
Several weeks ago the sister missionaries had given out one of the Center’s cards to someone they had met briefly. A kind black friend of the church in his early 60’s. He has been looking and looking for some kind of work and nothing has worked out for him. He had tried all that he could think of, explored all the options he could think of and nothing had come of it. As he was going thru his wallet he noticed our card and decided it was time to see what we might have to offer. He has been trying to get day labor jobs, but there are so many seeking that kind of work that there are not enough jobs to go around each day. He has been living in shelters to survive. His money and options are quickly running out. We discussed jobs and places that he could apply for. I suggested he talk with people at his church – he is a Baptist – but he says he hasn’t been in a long time and doesn’t know where a church is. I told him I knew of a good church he could go to. Elder Nelson helped him write a resume and find a few jobs to apply for. He even found a job to could call on while he was there at the Center. We told him he was welcome to come in anytime and use our phones and computers for his job search. We also offer to fix some lunch from the store house for people when they come in under these circumstances.
During the moments that we are not busy with candidates who have walked through the door, we are busy making contacts by a phone call or an email to people who have signed on to the new ldsjobs.org website. Letting them know about the services that we offer, the resources the web site offers, the people in their ward & stakes that can help them etc. etc.
Jack continues to work with companies and I work with job postings.
We are still trying to help Ward and Stake Specialists, Bishops, Stake Presidents, Clerks learn about the site and how to register and get their leaders assigned to assist. It’s proving to be very tricky. The MLS has to be absolutely correct or it doesn’t happen. For the Stake President who doesn’t know how to read email it is being a challenge for him and those trying to assist him. The next step will be to call headquarters in Salt Lake and have them ‘turn the switch’ for him. If you forget your user name and password you can recover them, BUT you have to go to your email to pick up the information.
The new Sr Sister has been feeling well enough to come into the Center this week. Sister Wolfley comes with a background in small business ownership and will be a great help to those in this area. They take an hour or more for lunch, leave the Center and go to their apartment. We are just going –wow, what a difference. When we came we didn’t have that luxury and so we’ve just kept with our routine. We were so busy seeing 25-30 people a day that there was hardly time to breath, let alone leave. There were always several you were working with at a time and more coming in the door as one left. It is very nice to have that kind pressure relieved as there are not quite so many coming in each day and we have more people available to help. Three sets of missionaries is the most that the Center has ever gotten. With this we are each now assigned 2 stakes to work with rather 4 stakes (or 8 stakes per companionship). That is also more manageable. So good things are happening.
Jack found another great adventure for out last P-day. Going out to Fredericksburg was a delight. We traveled on a back rural road and their was field after field of beautiful wildflowers to enjoy. The town of Fredericksburg was settled by Germans in about the 1830-1840 time period. We saw many things that reminded us of our Waymire heritage. We found out that there were even some Waymires (probably spelled differently) who were a part of the original German settlers.
We appreciate your love and support. Your prayers in our behalf bless us and sustain us. We are truly grateful for our firm foundation of family and friends. We have so many, many blessings in our lives. It is a wonderful experience to be in the full time service of the Lord. We are having so many great experiences and meeting so many wonderful people.
We appreciate it when you have a few minutes to share with us the things that are going on in your lives and the things you are doing. It’s so good to hear from home. Missionaries seem to like that.
May the good Lord continue to bless you all and watch over you.
As many Texans would say, ‘Have a blessed day,’
Our Love,
Grandpa & Grandma, Mom & Dad, Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson



Jack n Gaye

Fredricksburg -Johnson City Texas

A trip to Fredricksburg Texas to visit German roots. Fredericksburg is also home to a unique form of residential architecture called "Sunday Houses, which were built by the early German settlers as weekend homes. Because a large majority of the county population lived in outlying areas, the settlers would use these homes while in town for the weekend; and attend church services. The form of these houses often consisted of several rooms downstairs, with an upstairs sleeping loft that was accessed by an outside staircase. Of course you must sample the German food

My Texas advisor Dr. Moses told me to visit LBJ in Johnson City Tx. Here is his boyhood home. Our tour guide could name where all the Presidents were buried. There is not many folks that know where Woodrow Wilson is buried. He did!

As we toured the German homes in Fredricksburg, Sister Nelson loved the furnishings especially this old desk. There were Waymires in this town!

Old Spinning Wheels, and beautiful quilts on display.

And other very important building, including the Library.

The bunkhouse

The Fredricksburg museum is where we found out about the Lyman Wight colony near here.

These fences look just like the ones on Boulder Mountain

This old feller didn't know anything about the Zodiac Colony

We came across this tree in Comanche Tx. A settler hid behind it during a Indian battle and latter wouldn't let the developers cut it down. It is now protected!

The spring-fed Llano River offers some of the best fishing in the area. Lake Buchanan, which offers a portion of the eastern border of Llano County, was built in 1938 as a hydro-generating project covering 23,000 acres in the scenic Texas Hill Country.

From Comanche Texas to Llano Tx the Roadsides were totally covered with wild flowers.

Both sides of the road and the fields as far as you could see.

We just can't believe there is such a place.

The Flowers and butterflies are free, they charge tolls to use the roads.

Texas even has its very own Colorado River.

We saved the Trip on into Austin for another P-day adventure. We had squeezed all we could into our Thursday adventure day!

Jack n Gaye

May 2nd 2010 Dallas Texas

2 May 2010

Dear Family and friends,
Another week has passed so quickly. We hear of many of our family and friends who are going through great difficulties, our love and prayers are with you. It seems like things come in bunches so often.
As we were getting home from church today the other full time Sister missionary was just arriving. We were able to meet her and welcome her to Dallas and help unload her car for her. She seems like a great lady, and comes with Oregon license plates.
That makes 8 people in the Center full time – our two managers and 3 sets of missionaries. Of those 8 people only 2 are men. Jack is definitely a minority in this situation. Once you consider P-days and days off there won’t be very many days when we are all there together. We do have some service missionaries that come in to help several days a week. With this added staffing one of the goals is to have us spend more time out of the Center. For Jack that may mean visiting businesses and making contacts with businesses. For me that means visiting & learning about available resources, meeting people and learning what their institution offers. This will help with the Development Specialist program. Of course it also means that Jack will go out with me too. Others will be focusing on small business development and education and training programs. It will give us an opportunity to get a little more specialized instead of trying to cover everything. I think it will work out great.
At the Center Jack will continue to work with the employers and help them as they sign on their companies. I will continue to work with the job listings. We have several sources that send us job openings through the email, others that call in with a job listing etc. I make the determination if those jobs will be placed on the large data base, which can be seen globally, or the Stake Job listings which can only be seen by people in this region.
The larger jobs, that pay well, are managers, CEO’s, CFO’s, high tech, a lot of educational requirements or companies that we get frequent listings with often go on the large data base. Especially if I think someone may be willing to relocate for that job. (Everyone here (Dallas area) is very worried about relocation fees, not so much now in this economy but in previous years companies would hire you then pay for your expenses to move. Now everyone groans a bit because companies are not willing to pay relocation fees. I just think to myself, what’s the big deal, a little muscle and a horse trailer and you’re good to go!)
The jobs requiring less specialized skills we put on the Stake job list or what we call the ‘Hot Jobs’. These jobs are typed up on a word document, we print them out so people coming into the center can look through them. We also have copies made to hand out to people coming into the store house on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
There are also some jobs that come in that a person may want us to recommend a person or two for them without publishing the job anywhere. Then I try to let the other staff members know so they can recommend people they may be working with. Last week we had someone who was actually in St. George that I was emailing back and forth information to him about different candidates, then sending him resumes about the ones he was interested in. Also notifying candidates for a heads up on a call they may receive about a job.
Nathan comes in on Monday and Wednesday afternoons and he then types the information in the computer for the large data base jobs. Sister Page comes in on Tuesday mornings and types up the Hot Jobs list.
I keep track of these jobs coming in and assign them as needed. After the Hot Jobs are typed up by Sister Page, I then send them out on an email to all of the 15 Stake Employment Specialists. I usually have to send them out twice, half the time I forget the attachment or something….. but I try to use a little humor along the way and have fun with a few of them who respond back.
So the first 3 days of the week quite a bit of my time is spent taking care of this. I always try to get the Hot Jobs out before I leave on Wednesday, since Thursday is our P-day. If you wait too long, they are no longer hot jobs but would become ‘cold’ jobs. 
The last week or two I have tried to practice up on my sign language a little more. When Nathan comes in we are always at a computer so I have gotten a bit lazy and just used the computer to correspond back and forth with him. I’m afraid the vocabulary we use in the Center is quite different than the vocabulary I used in Primary songs. So I have him give me several words a week and then I try to practice them and then review them with him the next time he is in. He is a patient, kind teacher.
The new revision that was made last week has caused a lot of problems with the Ward and Stake Employment Specialists. Most of them no longer have the specialist role for one reason or another. Much of our work this week has been figuring out the why’s and the ‘how to’s’ to get them up and running again. There are many steps that have to be absolutely correct when the Ward or Stake clerk is putting their information into the MLS. If this is not correct, then they are not given the role until it is in properly. Also now the Bishop or Stake President may need to be signed in and registered on the site and mark them to have that role. I’m afraid Julie P has gotten a few more gray hairs over this the past week. Of the 6 SES we have responsibility for, one of them is up and running again.
The formal letter to the Bishops was mailed this past week and they should have gotten that in their snail mail on Friday. So now the new web site is ‘official’. We are keeping a watch out to see that Wards and Stakes are up and running with these changes. We can contact and visit but we really can’t do anything unless they invite us to help them.
It does open some doors for us however. Last week we tried and tried to make connection with one of the SES but never received any kind of response. However, a few days later when he lost his SES rites on the web site he was ready to talk.
We are here as a resource to the Wards and Stakes, it’s up to them if they want to use us.
I was visiting with one Bishop on the phone as an employer. A great man, very patient and kind. As we visited (before I turned him over to Jack) I was explaining to him about the new role of the Bishops on the new web site. He said he had seen an email from the Center and that he would pass it on to his Ward Employment Specialist (WES). I then explained that the Ward Clerk would need to take some action too, so he said he would pass it on to him too. It was a little harder to get him to understand that he has to take action also by signing on, or his leaders won’t be able to use the site. Lots of changes! But it keeps things exciting and interesting. What a great opportunity to be on the ground floor of these new programs.
On the lds.org website there is an article about it. They quote some of the managers, including ours, Julie P. There is also a sound bite that you can listen to them.


Jack always seems to plan some great P-day’s for us. He is always talking to people and reading etc. This week Charlie gave us some options that we quickly accepted. He and Jack went out to White Rock Lake and went kayaking, they only went for little trip because the wind was quite strong. But they both seemed the day out. Charlie suggested that I could go with them OR stay at his home and play his organ and harpsichord. – I had a very enjoyable day of music. He has a beautiful sounding organ and really enjoyed his style of music that he has on hand. It was fun to have some time to play the harpsichord, what a fun instrument. They were gone 3 or 4 hours, everyone seemed happy with how they spent the morning. We had some sandwiches and then jack settled down with a good book while Charlie and I played recorder and harpsichord music. Very fun.
A previous sister missionary visited the Center this week. She lives in Utah but has a son that lives here in Texas. She teaches Suzuki violin and is quite involved with the workshops and camps. She knows Kristi & Jill’s teachers in Las Vegas when they were young girls – Mary Straubb and Shakeh Ghaukousian. We had a fun visit.
I worked with a young man who has a doctorate in music theory and composition and is needing a better job. It was interesting talking to him also.
Yesterday we helped with the Colleyville Youth Conference. Jack has done a write up and pictures on the blog about it. This is really a great activity. They are a lot of work however. We began set up at 10:00 am – the game started at 1:00. There were about 250 youth that participated so it was a very busy intense day. We left the building about 8:30 after cleaning up. Julie P. took us out to dinner afterwards, which was very nice of her to do. We slept well last night. We were 2 tired ‘kids.’
As we have volunteers come into the Center and help, sometimes we have them make follow up phone calls to people we have worked with. By doing this we have discovered 108 people this month who have been hired – hooray! We add a note telling about the conversation, the new job etc. This goes into the system with our name automatically attached to it. When Nathan posts jobs, he has to do it under my name. One of the missionaries commented, ‘but what if they don’t really do it right, then it looks like we have not done it right.’ Which of course is absolutely true. All we can do is give good instructions and then let them do the best they can.
This has given me reason to ponder our relationship with our Savior. Certainly as missionaries we wear the name tag with His name on it. But in reality when we are baptized and as we renew our covenants each week when we take the sacrament, we ‘take His name upon us.’ He puts his trust in us that we will use his name honorably, and when we don’t, he may be disappointed but he allows us to repent and try, try again.
Just as I hope that those who are doing work under my name are doing a good job, I hope that I am doing a ‘good job’ for our Savior and Redeemer – today as a missionary but always as a member of His Church.
Sometimes when I don’t get something right, I tease Julie P. and ask if I’m going to get fired. But she can’t fire me – only let me try again. I remind her that I believe in repentance and will try to get it right next time.
What a wonderful, beautiful plan our Father in Heaven has designed for us.
We are so grateful for our many wonderful blessings. Jack & I appreciate this time to learn, grow, work and serve together. What a wonderful family we have been blessed with and many wonderful friends. We appreciate your love and support so very much. I can’t comprehend doing this without your love and prayers in our behalf. You too are in our prayers each day.
May God be with you till we meet again and always,
Dad & Mom, Grandpa & Grandma
Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson
Jack n Gaye

The Game of Life - Youth Conference

The Colleyville Stake Center location of Game of Life Sat May 1st 2010 Elder & Sister Nelson Ambassadors of good will, One angel and one devil. Remember opposition in all things is necessary to move forward

These three Sister are my immediate supervisors. Sister Donna, Julie, and Gaye.

You begin life about age 16, faced with some huge decisions determined by the roll of the dice in this game. Sometimes it starts as a real big bummer.

This brother made a great siren sound as he took the kids to jail who didn't have car insurance or landed on a court date.

Sister Nelson and Donna talking over the Plan!

Sister Poole instructing the volunteers selling the cars. You must have a Car

Cars become a real expense in this game of life. (You Think!)

There are some blessing cards along the path if you pay your tithing and stuff.

Life size squares after you roll the dice.

Setting up the University

Sister Nelson getting the Bank set up. She is a good one for that!

Sister Julie Poole starts by sorting the blessing cards.

It take 60 volunteers to pull this off. The wrap up session includes a slide show that is put together during the 5 hour game. The stake President gave a very good take at this as well. Ah life, Ain't it a trip!

Jack n Gaye