President Pugh: Farewell from this Life's Mission

President Marvin L. Pugh

April 3, 1912 ~ August 25, 2010

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Utah to pay my respects to a great man in my life. My mission president. President Pugh was my first mission president when I arrived in the Ireland Dublin Mission in August 1979. President and Sister Pugh were remarkable individuals and I know I didn't realize just how fortunate I was to have such loving, caring, spiritual individuals in my life. The funeral was attended by many, many missionaries and Irish members. It was an incredible tribute to a great man 30 years later. I traveled a long way to be there, but there were many that traveled much further.

President Pugh was kind and caring, but make no mistake; he did expect you to work hard and to be obedient. One comment that I heard in one of the sermons at the funeral was that covenants made led to a life of commitments kept.
President and Sister Pugh had one daughter Kay Lynne and she died when she was 21. The Lord had promised the Pugh's many children and grand children. They considered all 300+ of us to be a fulfillment of that promise. All of the missionaries along with their spouses. children and grandchildren were listed in the program as their family.
A request from President was that at his funeral, his missionaries would sing the Ireland Dublin Mission Song (written by President Spencer W. Kimball), and then recite D & C 4. This was VERY EMOTIONAL for me. The two first lines are "I Love the Ireland Mission" and "I Love the Irish People". No truer words could be spoken. I feel so blessed to have been called to serve there and to serve the people I did with the people I served.
The above flowers are the arrangement that we as missionaries provided.

Some of the missionaries that were at the gravesite. Incredible individuals.
Afterward we had a "reunion" at President's house. Above: Bradley Cox, Scott Adams, Sidney Zeller Pitt, John Mellor
Vickie Bradley Meyers, Melody Oakley Andrews and Myself.

Susan Knighton Mutchler, Melody Oakley Andrews, Cynthia Covey Haller and myself.

As you can see there aren't a lot of sisters there, but considering the percentage of sisters in our mission, there were quite a few...:) I had the opportunity of serving with Susan and Melody, but was never privileged to serve with Cynthia.

Me and Jeff Curran. Jeff was my first District Leader. I have so much respect for him! He is truly a great man.

Although I have no pictures to show, Aisling spent the day with me. She was a GREAT chauffer, girl Friday etc. I loved being able to share a little bit of such a special part of my life with her.

This group Terry DeFreese, Shawn Murphy, Gary Skillen and Nick Mills were a singing group called the Mormon Aires. They sang nightly in a performance in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin with one of their productions and were guests on the Late Late Show with Gay Byrne. They came together for President's funeral. They sang the first verse of "O' Danny Boy" and then the second verse was one they had written as a tribute to president. I am trying to put the recording of this and the recording of I Love the Ireland Mission on my blog, but have been having problems doing so. (Note: apparently it decided to make it on somehow.... so it is below. Keep scrolling)

Really I guess it can all be summed up like this:

I Love the Lord.

I Loved Serving the Lord in Ireland.

I am so grateful for the blessings I received and continue to receive from serving.