Mission News- 11/30/08

What a wonderful surprise!  We love the tree ornaments.  As you can see, our little tree is full, but beautiful.  Thanks to all of you, it is such a  great gift for us out here.  We are already in the holiday spirit with our Dec. Young Adult dinner being on the 1st.  We are grateful for your help with the sub for santa and the young adults are excited.  We are going shopping next Monday and wrapping the following week.  We have a half mission conference this month for Christmas and Ward Christmas parties, etc.  We are also going to try to visit as many as possible with Christmas goodies.  We are doing so much better visiting the new families of the deployed than we did when we first got here.  We are sooo excited to see Mark and Mel & family!

We had a great Thanksgiving and we mixed it with missionary work.  We had thre soldiers        
and an investigator family plus the missionaries to dinner.  This family is sort of a miracle.  The son got baptized and the Dad is getting baptized Saturday.  The mom's sister lives in Kaysville and was recently baptized.  The dad's mother lives in Portugal and she is taking the missionary lessons.  None of them knew about the others until just recently.  The mission president tells us there are no coincidences.  We love the people here and are as busy as ever.  The winter is coming with three days and nights of snow this week.  Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving and we send our love!

weekly missionary news

Hi Gang, I am posting these pictures of this family because it is a typical story of how things work, out here in the North Country.  Mosiah and his wife Cindy were both raised in Orem, Ut and went to Orem HS.  Mosiah is flight engineer on the Chinock helicopter.  He deployed less than a month ago to Kirkuk, Iraq.  They had just bought a house in Natural Bridge, NY out in the country.  They have 4 year old twins and Mosiah's brother Dennis is living with them. They have been inactive since arriving over two years ago.  A week after Mosiah left, the upstairs toilet started to leak.  After several trips and parts I was able to fix that problem. Before I left I asked if everything else was alright.  Cindy told me the dishwasher wasn't working.  I checked it out and found that the valve in the basement was spraying hot water all over the place.  The plumbing was so old that the valve just broke apart.  I finally got things shut off and was able to get a new valve and fixed it the next day.  If I hadn't gone into the basement and notice the flooding who knows how long it would have lasted.  Cindy and the twins have been going to church since Mosiah left. Mosiah came to church the Sunday before he left and asked for a deployment blessing, imagine that.  Oh, did I mention that Mosiah's father Jorge sold us our car before we left, we found that out after visiting them here.  Mosiah noticed our license plate and frame and said his Dad worked there as a salesman.  Situations simular to this happen all the time out here.  They are common place until you start to think back on them.  The top picture was taken just a hour before Mosiah deployed with his unit, Scott and Jen were there also. At that time I promised Mosiah I would keep an eye on his family. We love the work and miss you all, stay close. Love Mom and Dad  

Mission News- 11/16/08

These two pictures were taken at Lake Placid, NY on our P-day this week.  It is about 2-1/2 hours North East of here in the Adirondack mountains.  We decided to go up there before the snow starts to fall.  It was just a beautiful drive not unlike driving in the Unitas of Utah.  The lake at the bottom of town, where Mom is standing is at 1890 feet elevation and the mountains they ski off are about 48oo feet so you can see it is a much smaller version of our olympic venue.  The building with me in front is the the hockey stadium where the famous "Miracle of Ice" game took place in the 1980 Olympics. It was kind of fun seeing that part of history.  The town has one main street with lots of gift shops and such, much like Park City's main street. It was fun to see, especially with all the history involved. The Adirondacks are a hugh recreation area for the whole East Coast, lots of camps, cabins and tourist stuff.  There are lots of lakes and waterways in the area with numerous SMALL towns.  We are still managing to stay involved the this mission thing.  We are getting used to having more to do than we will be able to complete. Kind of like always being behind. All the past deployed soldiers have returned now and we are gearing up for the new deploying one's.  It's kind of interesting that the wards have changed places with most of the new deployed soldiers coming from Carthage now.  We will have 17 spouses in the Carthage ward and less than8 in the Watertown ward. We still have a problem in locating the new YSA that come to Post, the lost sheep list is a constant worry for us. The elections have had little impact on Post, the military just keeps doing its job and not saying much.  We feel so blessed to be involved in this work.  We miss you all, love Mom and Dad 

We are sharing more pictures of the homecomings.  They are so great to go to.  It really brings tears to your eyes.  Three hundred men all saluting is impressive. This one in the picture had two men from the ward in the unit.  At the beginning they welcomed them all back and paid special honor to a soldier that was lost in battle.  His family was there and everyone stood and applauded.  They play the national anthem and turn them loose.  It is so great to be there!  These soldiers had been gone 15 months.  In the election they were all for Mc Cain.  They believe in the war effort and say that they are doing good things in Iraq.  The best thing is that they just want to go home to their families when they return.  They expect no honor or attention for what they do, it's just their job.  The next picture is of the baptism this week.  The young man is 16 years old and part of a whole family that is being taught the gospel.  He hopes to baptize his parents in a couple of weeks.  His father is an amazing man.  He was raised in Portugal and speaks several languages.  He has served five tours of deployment on special missions.  He goes undercover into the culture as one of them.  He has been wounded three times.  They are now remodeling an old home here to stay and live in as he is getting out of the service.  They will be great additions to the ward.  It has been so much fun this past week to get to know all the returning husbands.  Now we have a whole new group to visit whose husbands just left.  The work is great and we love it!