Mission update 12/16/23

 We have had a wonderful week full of fun new people to meet in our interviews, lots of Christmas music,  and visiting family.

City Creek Mall giving machines, Santa hangs out here and choirs stop and sing. It's such a fun place

Another midday Tabernacle concert, we love that our middle of the day is generally free

We made it to Music and the Spoken Word before church on Sunday and loved it. We would love to go every Sunday but then we found out that our ward will change to 9:00 am so there goes that idea. But, we can go tomorrow so that will be great. We also had a mission gathering on Sunday where the incoming missionaries introduce themselves and the outgoing missionaries bear their testimonies, say goodbye and everyone cries. It was great to not be the new ones this month!

On Monday our mission choir did their Christmas concert and it was amazingly better than we had sounded before which really helps when you're dealing with a whole lot of old people singing. We also had a few solo numbers and it was all together a wonderful, spiritual evening. 

The registration deadline for next semester's Pathway classes is getting close and so the stress level of the students we interviewed and messaged this week was rising. We only deal with the one part of their process but because we have talked to them and been helpful and nice, they tend to contact us when they run into problems with other parts of the process like straightening out their paperwork for enrollment. We keep leading them to the next step but toss in some confusion with English and it takes a while and lots of patience on their part. 

We were able to attend a student gathering in Nevada (virtually of course) and loved getting to see the student who led the gathering do such a good job. She got everyone involved and had learned (through Pathway) how to put together a beautiful power point presentation that added to the lesson. 

Jeremy (our oldest son) came to visit for a couple days this week so he could spend some time with Grandpa. It was great to see him and fun to have another visitor (my sister came the week before). Grandpa (my Dad) is doing great. As far as we can tell, hospice seems to be just what he needed. He's eating more and so much more alert and with it when we talk to him. For however long it lasts, we're enjoying it!

My Dad and me, he's pretty amazing

Wednesday night we went to one of the Tabernacle concerts and ran into my best friend from high school. We haven't seen each other in 30 years and it was amazing! She and her husband have been involved with Pathway in one way or another for years so it was fun to let her know that we're following in their footsteps. 

We graduated from Robert E Lee High School in Alabama several years ago...

This next week we have a few things scheduled but hopefully we'll also have time to actually get Christmas cards out and maybe even do Christmas baking.