It has a been a great week leading up to Christmas. We have continued to go to the midday Tabernacle concerts, enjoy the lights all around Temple Square (even on the cranes working at the Temple project) and have loved reading yet again about Christ's birth. It is just the best time of year!
Saturday evening, Blaine and family came to see the lights and we loved having them here. We had a scare for a bit when their two year old wandered off on his own to explore the very crowded food court. Fortunately he was found fairly quickly (seemed much longer than it was) and spent the next little while telling us all about his adventure.
Sunday we went to Music and the Spoken Word before church and since it was right after the annual Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, it was extra wonderful. We loved it and are very sad that starting in January our ward switches to an earlier time so we won't be able to attend the live version.
The registration deadline for Pathway students was this week so it was days full of interviews of course but also messages and email from anxious students wanting to know the status of their application. Lots of the students having issues are members of the church who mistakenly end up on our list, which is only non members. Some of them try to convince us that they can just go ahead and register as a non member and then fix the paperwork later. We keep telling them how it just can't work that way but they keep asking. They are all just so ready to start their education that they don't want to wait!
Both Gary and I had interviews this week with former members of the church who are working to come back. It was inspiring to hear their testimonies as they work to regain their faith or repent and come back to full fellowship. Such great people!
We had a couple of beautiful devotionals this week, one for the whole mission and the other for our zone. The mission devotional speaker works in the church history department and it was fascinating to hear about all they are doing with the Joseph Smith Papers, the Saints books and so many other projects. The Zone devotional speaker was a counselor in our mission presidency and he is just such a deeply spiritual and humble man that it was wonderful.
We were able to actually meet the fifth member of our Chaplain group, Elder Rowe who is a service missionary and does a few interviews each week. We had dinner with him and his wife and it was so good to get to know them. They both serve in so many ways and have a wealth of life experiences. I am so impressed by all the full time and service missionaries I meet!
Yesterday we got to hang around City Creek again, this time with Tyler and family. The high point of the visit for them was the escalators and they rode up and down them while they waited for us to show up. I think they were rather disappointed that we weren't later in coming :)
We finished the week with a session at the Draper Temple and it was beautiful. Such a great way to prepare for Christmas weekend!
We hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful Christmas full of love and family time.
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