We have had a wonderful start to the Christmas season this week and downtown Salt Lake is a fun place to be this time of year even with all the construction on Temple Square. We got to attend two of the daily lunch time concerts at the Tabernacle and hope to go to many more over the rest of the month. The first one we went to was a Jr. High School bell choir. It was amazing! We loved watching how intent the kids were on their parts and how hard they had worked to learn those parts. The other performance was a choir of Temple Square missionaries and it was beautiful. My favorite was a soprano soloist singing "Jerusalem". So gorgeous and clear!
We did also get lots of interviews done and continue to be so impressed with these students and their desire to learn and improve their lives. I got to interview one lady who has 4 year old twins and those two children were so adorable! Another lady talked about how going to Pathway Connect classes (the classes they take before starting their degree or certificate program) taught her that marriage is something to be honored and treasured. From that, she had made the decision to try and work on the relationship with her husband so that they could keep their family intact. She loved the concept of eternal families.
We had a monthly Pathway meeting for the whole group of Pathway employees and missionaries and it was great to hear about the goals moving forward and President Ashton's (Pathway Worldwide President) vision for the future. It is so exciting to do our small corner of such an amazing program.
On Thursday night we went to Savior of the World here and loved it. Years ago our stake in Layton put it on and Gary and four of our boys got to be in it. I loved it then, especially the song "Come Lord Jesus Come". When that song started on Thursday I was immediately overcome with emotion and if we go see it again there will definitely be more kleenex involved!
Last night we had a great evening with Gary's Hong Kong mission president and another Hong Kong missionary and his wife. Gary has been blessed to have President Mitchell around for so many years and he continues to be an influence in our lives. Such an amazing man!
We enjoyed one of the best benefits of serving in Salt Lake this morning: proximity to grandchildren. We got to see Thalia (Tyler's daughter) in her dance recital and it was fun. She did great of course!
We are no longer the newbies in the mission. A new set of missionaries arrived yesterday and we are now the veterans. Or something like that. We still have so much to learn but still feel like we are doing good work and making a difference in people's lives.
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