Happy Easter!
We have had a beautiful Easter week. We started off with our choir Easter program and a message from Daniel Rona for our Monday devotional. The choir songs went quite well, the messages were great and the slide show that Elder Baldwin put together was so good! Elder Rona talked about Easter and Passover from his perspective of being a Jewish member of our church. It was fascinating and he is a very engaging speaker. We found out in church today that the youth in our stake got to hear from him this week as well, I'm sure he gets very busy this time of year.
On Wednesday we got to sing again for the Service Mission Devotional for services missionaries worldwide. Then that evening we sang again for a zone Easter dinner for one of the Church History Library zones. That along with two musical numbers in two different wards today plus singing with the primary made Easter feel very much like Christmas--very busy! It was all wonderful and we are quite exhausted.
Friday we got to the Ogden Temple with the Smiths and it was lovely. There is nothing better than the peace of the temple to help get yourself calmed down and charged up again. We had some great Italian food after and it was so good to spend time with Elder and Sister Smith where we weren't in the middle of zone, choir or Pathway issues.
The background at the Ogden Temple is amazing!
We ran into our neighbor from North Logan who saw us from across the street and came over
Temple Square is showing off as usual for spring and we are loving it.
Our Easter Sunday was wonderful and we got to enjoy two ward's programs. In our ward we got to sing with the Primary kids (mostly teachers with only about half a dozen kids there) and play a duet. Then, in a retirement branch in our stake, we got to play a duet. The highlight of that meeting was a man in his 80s or older who sang "Were You There?". It was just amazing to feel the spirit in that song. We had Easter dinner and Maria and Gordon's and it was fun and tasty. We got to take a tour of all the things blooming in their yard. They're loving being surprised by all the bulbs and flower that come up in the spring.
Amazing Blossoms in Hooper!
In between all that we fit in as many interviews as we could but we are starting to get just a bit overwhelmed as the new semester starts in a couple weeks. Good thing this week is less busy!
From Gary: Our mission has done a challenge over the past few weeks to read the entire Book of Mormon by Easter and mark all of the passages that refer to the "Doctrine of Christ." It was a great journey to read the whole book quickly and focus on how much this one subject is talked about. We were looking for any instance of the words Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, Keeping the Commandments, and Enduring to the End. There were very few chapters in the whole book that did not mention any of those ideas! It was very enlightening!
We have loved the added focus on Easter each year. We have felt more direction to increase our knowledge and celebrate more the purpose of Easter and the Atonement of Christ. We have felt the power of this message and feel great joy when we declare He is Risen!
Have a marvelous week!
We love you all!
Elder and Sister Pack
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