Thanksgiving week 11/25

 This has been a strange week for missionary stuff with Thanksgiving but we've had a great week. We got several interviews done early in the week and even did some today (Saturday) along with some great family time in between. What we did not do well was take pictures. We will repent!

Our week started off with the Primary program in our ward here. It was wonderful with all the beautiful primary songs, adorable children, an impromptu prayer by a 4 year old instead of the part he'd been given, a piano duet that only slightly fell apart, and a few run away children. We loved it and needed kleenex by the end with the beautiful, pure testimonies. There is just nothing better than the primary program for teaching the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Monday morning we had our weekly mission devotional and President and Sister Holmes gave a great message on the Doctrine of Christ. It is such a basic principle and yet so huge. I think I could study the Doctrine of Christ for a long time and still be learning new things. I love that about the gospel.

The men in the choir sang at the devotional and it was beautiful. Gary is front and center 

On Wednesday we had a meeting to discuss handling growth in Pathway and we had the meeting at Maddox in Brigham. It was pretty tough, we actually had to eat lunch there and even forced ourselves to have some of those amazing rolls with raspberry butter. Our lives are just so hard. The meeting was great and we're excited to watch Pathway grow and be able to help even more students worldwide.

After the meeting we headed to Logan for Thanksgiving since we were already halfway there. We got to spend some time with Richard and Daria and it was so fun to see how they've made the house their own with new pictures on the wall and, of course, toys all over to keep three kids happy. It's great to have the house lived in while we're gone. 

Catching up with Richard

We spent the night at Gary's brother Dave's house (it was a bit crowded at ours) and had fun catching up with what they're doing on their mission. Our missions are so completely different and yet both wonderful.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with Blaine and Deanna and they did such a great job hosting it. It's fun being the guests instead of hosting and we loved spending time at their place. After a visit to my Dad, we headed back home Thursday evening.

Hanging out with grandson, Jared, after Thanksgiving dinner. He was so happy to see us!

Friday we tried to get a couple of interview lined up but sometimes communication across the world doesn't work as well as we want it to so we settled for doing lots of scheduling of interviews for the next day instead and then met Gary's sister and family for breakfast instead. After that we spent a few hours with Maria and Gordon on a tour of Eastern European food market south of Salt Lake. It was great fun, as it always is with those two.

Breakfast on a snowy Black Friday

Now we're back to working hard again. We got several interviews done this morning (Africa) and have a few more this evening (Pacific Isles). One call this morning couldn't go through because apparently it was raining too hard in Rwanda for the internet to work. Other times calls don't go through because the power randomly just gets shut off for several hours. I feel so blessed to live where we do!

We did some decorating and now are in full Christmas mode, mostly. It's strange to not have all our usual decorations but also fun to do something new. It will be an interesting Christmas season this year. 

We're hoping to learn more this week and meet many more wonderful people from around the world. Also, we are going to actually wear coats and stay warm now that winter has decided to show up.