Mission Update 3/30/2024

 We started off this week with a bang: 3 amazing devotionals/meetings to get us in Easter week mode. We had our morning mission devotional with a presentation of Easter week scriptures and art put together by the Church History Special Projects Zone. Then we had a Pathway Student Success Team meeting where we discussed a talk by Elder Bednar (In the Strength of the Lord). We had a great discussion on the enabling power of the Atonement and ways we may sometimes limit ourselves. Then, Monday evening we had a Zone Conference and dinner where President and Sister Holmes led a discussion that was started off with Elder McKonkie's final testimony. Many people shared the ways they have been blessed by relying on Christ. My favorite was Sister Holmes, at the end of the meeting, saying: I can never read my scriptures enough, pray enough etc. But, with Christ I can be enough. So perfectly said!

Tuesday, after a few interviews, we went to the Provo City Center Temple and for variety we entered on the basement level and did our picture in front of that door. We always manage to "hire" the best photographers for these pictures. A couple of times now we've caught some young men coming to the temple in a group and been able to hear all about their mission calls and where they are going. So fun!

The usual crew

Wednesday I had an interview where the student was telling me what he learned so far in Pathway (we always ask them for their favorite or best part of the Connect classes). He said he had always though that if he tried something and it was hard, that he was just not good at that and he should try something else. He learned in his classes that when something is hard, he can turn to Jesus Christ and ask for help. And that that help will come. He learned that he can do hard things, with Christ! 

On Wednesday we got to spend a few minutes with the incoming mission leaders who start in July. President and Sister Craven are wonderful and made us feel so loved. They will be great to work with!  It was great to spend a few minutes with them with just the four of us.  They know pretty much everything about us before we got there, so it was a fun conversation!

Thursday seemed to be the day for students to suddenly realize that the deadline is coming soon and they are stuck. So, we woke up to lots of message begging for help getting over whatever hurdle they had. So, I worked on those and Gary did interviews. We got several problems solved and some are in the process of being solved thanks to a few amazing Pathway employees who bend over backwards to help. 

Today we got to go to Jared's (Blaine and Deanna) birthday party and it was wonderful. He got light sabers so the world will now be a safer place, unless you get to close to him while he's swinging it around of courses. We plan to go to Logan and take Easter Dinner to my Dad tomorrow so that will be wonderful. Hopefully it won't snow!

The three year old

Next week we make the big move, spending about half the day at the North Office Building where the mission offices are. They've got a corner area and some closed off offices there for us so we can get out of our apartments and work around actual people. We'll see how they feel about us after a few days.  

The gardeners are working like crazy around Temple Square getting it as ready as it can be for conference next week!

We are absolutely loving our chance to study more about Christ with Easter coming this week.  It has been so good to be reminded of all that he has done for us!  Truly the Good News that is the gospel all centers around his atonement and resurrection so that we all can be resurrected and have a chance to return to our heavenly home again!  We love being missionaries and sharing this good news every day with these students around the world!

Mission Update 3/23/2024

 This has been a slow week for interviews but we got through a few each day. It turned out to be good thing when some health issues slowed me down for a few days. Gary has done wonderfully at handling pretty much everything and I am so grateful for all his support! Now, I'm doing much better (thank goodness for antibiotics!) and we'll hopefully have a more normal week ahead. 

Our Easter Lilly is looking about as droopy as our week has felt at times

The six Pathway missionaries met with the presidency and discussed the possibility of getting us out of our apartments and actually working around other missionaries which is pretty exciting. They just need to figure out the best space for us where we have at least a few closed off spaces for interviews as well as an area where we can all do the other work we need to do. We'll see what happens next!

We had the last class in our leadership seminar and it has been a great class. There are so many things we can still work on but it's been good to focus on a few each week. It's a great lead in to Easter and conference. Learning to lead like the Savior is applicable to so much more than being in leadership positions. We've also been reminded that learning is for eternity and all the things we learn about working in councils, acting under the spirit, aligning with the brethren etc. are things that will bless us forever. 

We had some doctor's appointments in Logan on Thursday so we got to spend some time with my Dad as well. It was interesting because while we were there we pretty much figured he was about done. Then, later that day, our son and daughter in law were there and he was down eating dinner and having a good time. It sure is a good thing we're not in charge of when it's time for people to be finished because I have no idea how to tell! Anyway, my Dad is mostly content and enjoys both spending time with his friends and being alone.

Saturday was grandchildren day. We started off at Owen's (Tyler and Marie) piano recital where he did very well on both pieces. Then we drove up to Logan to see Kung Fu Panda 4 with the Logan bunch. Very silly and lots of fun.  The best part of the movie was walking into the theater and having a two year old grandson run up to Gary yelling "Grandpa" and then give him the tightest hug ever. 

This next week is looking busy and we go into to Easter which is great. We've got so many great scriptures to study this week including the Come Follow Me of course and also the Easter Week study plan on gospel library. Now if we could just get our Easter Lilly to get the message and perk up a bloom. Living in an apartment without direct natural light makes having houseplants tricky.

Green is showing up!

Despite the snow out the window, it's going to be a beautiful Easter Week!  We are loving the Easter videos that are being posted daily by our prophets and apostles!  Take a look here: https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders/2024/03/18/video-testimonies-savior-easter-2024-apostles-first-presidency/  Happy Easter! 

Mission Update 3/16/2024

 Happy almost St. Patrick's Day!  We bought our corned beef and cabbage and are ready!  Then with the leftover corned beef we are planning on doing Reuben sandwiches later!  :)

We started off the week with our first time in Primary in our ward here. We got to sit with the kids and help them make lilies after they watched the Friend to Friend broadcast. Tomorrow we're in charge of the nursery lesson after we sit with the older kids during singing time. Apparently our job is primary rovers which is great!

On Monday evening our mission choir did an Easter program and amazingly enough, it went quite well. We are really enjoying the choir even through a bunch of old people singing is a bit tricky. But, the music is beautiful and we love spending time with the other missionaries every week. 

Tuesday we went to the Mount Timpanogos Temple and I love that it is so much like the Bountiful Temple. It made me feel immediately comfortable and at home. I love going to new temples but the more familiar ones bring a peace that is beautiful. 

Spring is coming!

Gary got to teach our leadership seminar on Wednesday and did a great job. We only have one more week of this class and are really going to miss the time we spend with other missionaries learning to lead as Christ leads. 

Making the grounds beautiful for conference (and it was snowing that day)

One of the interviews this week started off with our usual questions of "how did you learn about Pathway?" Usually the answer is that they heard about it from a friend, a member, or on the internet. This particular girl said "I heard about it from my Young Woman leader." So much for that interview! Instead of asking her the questions we gave her instructions to connect her membership record number to her account.  She then gets to meet with her Stake President instead of us!  In the interviews we actually were able to do we heard things like: I just love learning and can't wait to learn more. I learned to stand up for myself and I learned that it's okay to feel uncomfortable when learning new things.  We heard from several this week who are working with their Bishops and missionaries and preparing for baptism!

We met Craig and Marian Decker for dinner this week. Gary and Craig were in a bishopric together back when we lived in West Jordan and we love them so much! It was great to catch up with them and their family.

We are looking forward to Easter and General conference and are excited to be where we are at this beautiful time of year!

 

Mission Update 3/9/2024

 March has been doing it's normal thing this week and we just take a wild guess at what outerwear to put on before we leave the apartment. But, every time we're on Temple Square we see new flowers popping up and it is so exciting!

On Sunday we got asked to teach primary in our ward here, we'll find out more this week but despite the fact that our ward has the largest primary in the stake, it is not more than a handful of kids. But, we get to sing primary songs every Sunday now and life is good! We also met a man in our ward who was in Hong Kong on his mission right before Gary got there so that was fun.  He also let us know that he had been in an apartment with Gary's brother David when he was in Hong Kong!  We also found out he plays the piano, so we asked him to accompany us for our Easter violin/viola duet!

Monday evening we had a mission devotional where Sister Porter (General Primary President) spoke. We just think she is so wonderful! She spoke of the fruits of missionary service and led a discussion. It was so fun to hear from our fellow missionaries about the blessings they have received from serving a mission. You really don't see any unhappy faces among the senior missionaries. We just all feel so blessed! Sister Porter also shared an experience that her husband (Elder Bruce Porter) had as a graduate student. He was rushing across campus to get to the church where he was supposed to teach a primary class (back when primary was mid week) and he was feeling pretty stressed about all the studying he needed to do. He got a very clear impression when he walked in that this primary class was the most important class happening in the city at that time! Beautiful!

We got to go to the Payson Temple this week and loved it. We've been wanting to go there ever since it opened and it is wonderful. We have always loved getting to Payson on our drives down south because it means we are finally through the Wasatch front traffic! The Temple is such a beautiful exclamation point to that trip.

We had many interviews this week as always and had some fun highlights. One girl told us that the best thing she learned In Pathway Connect was how to correct thinking errors. She learned that she does not have to just sink into depression and she can get out of it. Another woman told us how excited she was to start to learn to code in Python. She is beyond excited to learn more about computer programming! We see miracles every week with these calls that we make!  These students are so eager to learn and so grateful for the gospel learning that is included with Pathway!

We got a visit from our daughter in law Emily (Kendall) this week when she came up to do some recording. She is so fun and we loved spending some time with her. Now she is happily back with Kendall and their adorable kids but we're so glad that she needed to come up here for the recording studio!

Yesterday we met Gordon and Maria in Ogden at a Hot Pot restaurant and it was so fun. We had a great time with them and got to hear about the great things they are doing with the Ogden Tech college, their latest projects and life in general.

Our biggest news with the Pathway work is that our new clerical support person is amazing and so quick to learn. We're quite happily passing on spreadsheets, research and organizing to her. As the numbers of students pick up this will be a huge blessing!

Mission Update 3/2/2024

 It has been a week of many great things, some frustrating things and weather that can't make up it's mind.  After a busy weekend, we got up early for the Monday mission devotional and were off and running, more or less. Both of us are still feeling the effects of a cold that is mostly gone but has left us with coughs that apparently want to last forever. Most of the days this week have ended with us crashing into bed exhausted so that's not a bad thing.

We have days where all the interviews go well, the internet gods are smiling down on us and life is great. Then there are the other days where the connections are horrible, the weather in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, wherever is messing with everything or they are having a random power shedding (they shut down power because the grid is not good enough to handle the needs). On those days, we throw the schedule out the window and just hope that at some point we can get enough connection for a 10 minute interview. We've been trying to get one woman interviewed for a month and a half. We finally got it done this week!

We did our Zone's devotional on Thursday and it was great to share some of our wonderful experiences with the rest of the zone. We had to make sure and not talk it up too much or they'd all demand a trade in assignments. We really do have the best job in the mission.

Friday we went to the Brigham City Temple. It is one of my favorites because my parents got to help out with the open house when it was built. We followed that up with lunch at Maddox to celebrate getting 1000 interviews done. It was a beautiful day.

Packs, Johnsons and Smiths in the wind

Nice and full after Maddox food

Rootstech has been going on this week and we got to go to some of it. Gary has been several times back when he worked for Family Search but I had never been before other than watching a few virtual things. It was quite fun and I couldn't believe how many people were there. I especially loved the theme of Remember and the video of President Ballard's story.  We were reminded of how important it is to find out more stories of our families and share them with our children and grandchildren!  In honor of Rootstech, we hope anyone reading this blog will spend a few minutes this week sharing a story with your family!

With Luanna Merrill from our North Logan Ward at Roots Tech

Native American Hoop Dancing

We've had days of 60 degrees, a day of high wind and now snow. We'll see what the rest of March brings but so far we're a little confused. Thank goodness our work doesn't involve being outside all the time like the Temple Square missionaries!

Windy day!