Greetings from the California Riverside Mission

Greetings from the California Riverside Mission

May we offer some Christmas Gift Suggestions?

Christmas letters from family & friends

PHOTOS of family and friends

Approved Missionary Music

Ties, garments, shirts, shoes, socks, nylons, belts, athletic shoes & apparel

General Conference talks on CD

Candy, Treats, Beef Jerky & other food favorites

New Scripture Covers (if needed by your missionary)

Christmas Packages need to arrive no later than December 12, 2009 to the Mission Office at:

3233 Arlington Ave. STE 107

Riverside, CA 92506

Please label "OPEN BEFORE" or Christmas or "DO NOT OPEN"

Merry Christmas & Thank You!

The Announcement you just read recently arrived from Cody's mission president, along with the attached letter:

Which Reads:

Dear Parents and Families our California Riverside Missionaries,

With the holidays nearly upon us, we want to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful Christmas holiday! How much we love each one of your sons and daughters! It is such a privilege to serve with them. We want you to know that each missionary will spent Thanksgiving and Christmas day in the home of a family that loves them!

Each week, our missionaries are full of excietment and anticipation as they wait to receive your emails and letters! (Some of you send both!) These weekly communications are so meaningful. They are especially looking forward to talking with you on Christmas Day! We thank you for all that you do to love and support them!

Things are going very well here in the mission! We are so grateful to our Heavenly Father for the many new members that have recently come into the Church! The Lord continues to pour out His Spirit and prepare many to tlisten to the messag eof the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On November 20th & 21st we will have our annual "Mission Tour" visit from Elder and Sister Kenneth Johnson of the First Quorom of the Seventy. They are from England but live in the Salt Lake City area with Elder Johnson's current assignment. Each of the missionaries will have the opportunity to personally meet and be trained by them. This is always a special privilege!

We send our love to each of you and wish you the most joyous Thanksgiving and Christmas!

With Love,

President Melvyn and Sister Linda Reeves

Cupcake Soup & Other Halloween Horrors

Oh look, it's an unused parade float. I can't decide if that's supposed to be for Halloween or Cinderella.

One of the great perks of having an older sister who served a mission, is that I do excellent care packages. For Halloween I made each Cody and his companion a goody bag, which contained an expected amount of candy and games, but also useful stuff like sticky notes, pens, pencils & erasers. But the most important part of the package was the cupcakes. The pumpkin spice cupcakes I made and then frosted with cream cheese icing & rolled in orange sugar to make them look like pumpkins. Then I carefully placed them in the container, decorated with candy & held in place with more candy.
Unfortunately what Cody recieved was cupcake soup. Apparently it got really hot somewhere in transit and all of the icing melted off. This kind of makes me want to cry. I worked hard on these!

I guess he still ate at least one though.

I don't know if he was just trying to make me feel better, but he said the cupcakes tasted good. (Although they kind of look like what I regurgitated during my run today. I know, T.M.I.)

Well I guess you can't go wrong with PEZ. At least it won't melt.

In addition to candy and fun little toys, they each got a Halloween tie in their goody bags.

Cody wrote home that they got into a war with the sticky hands last week, smacking each other in the back of the head. Well, that's why I bought them.

Oh fun, they got to carve pumpkins! I'll bet Cody loved that. Now I'm anxious to see if he can con his companion into hiding Easter eggs for him next year.

I swear I sent way more candy than this! They must have eaten a lot of it already!

At least they looked festive in their ties!

WOW! Already?!?!?!?

So today I got another memory card full of pictures from Cody. He's getting better at this picture taking thing. Instead of posting all 108 photos that were on the card, I went through and selected some and I'll be doing more than one post to get them all. As usual, Cody provided no descriptions or explanations, so I liberally interjected my own thoughts and interpretations.

Ah District Meeting. That's about all I have to say about that.

And this looks to me like a typical Zone Conference.

At least they put up signs in California. In Europe you never knew when you might be acosted with nudity.

Ah how sweet! A missionary walking off into the sunset!

I'm guessing these are some of the Samoans who feed them now and then.

Well, if you can judge by his planner, they're keeping busy alright. (Hey my brothers-in-law, remember when your missionary planner was just a cardstock sheet you had to fill out each week to keep track of numbers & stuff. This thing looks a whole lot nicer! Of course maybe I'm just jealous because it's so full. I still have some of my plan sheets that show 10 hour days of nothing but tracting. Yeah.)

So are these the 29 Palms that gave the city it's name?

Well that's one way to park in the shade.

Oh maybe the town got it's name from the Inn.

"Oh wait, fix the hair, we're getting photos taken!"

So Long Elder Potter (Not Harry)...

...Hello Elder Jackson!

I take it they were chill-axing with the ZL's that day...

Don't know what this dude is doing.

According to his last letter, this is Elder Whimpy, the Zone Leader. He's either doing an air guitar or trying to strangle something.

I'm guessing this is P-Day at the Library

Do you suppose this could be the old guy they live with?

Well this is pretty cool!

I take it, this was a pretty windy day...

Wow! Looks like he's actually going to get to ride is bike!

Not sure what he's scrubbing, or why it was photo worthy, but oh well.

Wow! They sure didn't have those for transportation in my mission. Must be a California thing!

Will we still love him if he comes home fat?

For those worried about Cody getting fed, don't. He sent a copy of last month's Dinner Appointment Calendar. The crossed out week was the week the Samoan's had them and to hear him tell it, they feed the missionaries better than anyone.

So freaking spoiled!

Pictures 10/26

So in his letter to me this week, Cody included a few hard copies of photos. Anyway, enjoy.

New Pictures

So here are the pictures and letter I got from Cody last week. There were so many I put them in a slide show. Enjoy! (PS The slide show is super long! Cody had over a hundred pictures on that card!)



Dear Cali,



Thanks for your letters and encouragement it is much appreciated. All is well here. I am sending some pictures now, so just to give you background on them, they start the day I leave the MTC and go into the mission field. There are lots of scenery pictures of Riverside, Yucca Valley and Twenty Nine Palms and just about any other place in between I felt like taking. And lots of pictures of my district, which consists of Elder Whipey and Peadon (the zone leaders), Elder Potter (the district leader), and myself, Elder Giles and Elder Schmidt. And some pictures of my zone. That's about it...I bought a jump rope and a stretch band this morning so I should get better work outs now since I don't have a gym in my garage like the zone leaders do. As a matter of fact, I don't even have a garage. Well anyway...I love you and I'm glad all is well.



Sincerely Your Missionary,

Elder Cunningham

Cody's Letter Dated 10/12

So last week I got a letter in the mail from Cody. In that letter was his memory card full of pictures. However, due to computer complications this past week I haven't been able to download the photos yet. So for now, you'll just have to make due with the contents of the letter and I'll post the pictures very soon!


Dear Cali,

I just found out that I can't check my email today because it is a holiday and the library is closed. So feel free to email any of this letter to the family, if you would please. All is well here in Twenty Nine Palms and at the end of the week I will have been out for one transfer. The time here has flown, it feels like I just got off the plane which compared to what's ahead I really kind of did just get off the plane and am just getting started. I had the privilege of going to a triple baptism. The other two companionships in our district had baptisms on the same day. There were three of them one right after the other and by the time the 3rd one came around my heart was so full it was awesome. As for me and Elder Potter we have been so fortunate God has truly led us at every turn and the Spirit has moved us to where we need to be. At the moment we have 6 what I feel to be pretty firm investigators and 1 or 2 others that are not quite as firm. But thanks be our Father in Heaven for leading us to them and for giving us the power to teach. I see His Hand in this wok at every moment, without Him we would truly be nothing. It is the Samoans weeks to feed us again so all is well on the food end. And the ward members here help us so much and give us ideas of who to teach all the time. We actually got the opportunity to teach Elder's Quorom last week about missionary work and the Restoration. So we're hoping to get some referals out of that, so we will see. well I love you all and wish you the best.
Elder Cunningham