April 30, 2023

Look who came to visit!!!

It was Tracey's birthday this weekend and Tom was out of town for a dental convention. So Tracey decided it would be fun to fly Rachel up to spend her birthday with her. Since Tracey lives so close to where we are serving we were the happy beneficiaries of her visit too! Rachel & Chris are doing great with us being gone so don't think Rachel came because she was missing us so much. She assured us that was not the case :). We had a wonderful day together with Tracey & Rachel. We started the day by doing a session at the Portland Temple, then came back to see our apartment, had lunch, and toured the mission offices. Then our granddaughters joined us to hang out with their mother on her birthday and we went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. It was beautiful! Very different from the tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point. This was acres of different tulips growing out in the fields. Then we finished the day off at Red Robin where everyone was happy!

This has been a great week at the office. The other new couple, Lisa & Gary Larson from Fruit Heights, UT finally arrived and we have loved having them here. The Weeds & Stewarts will be done with their service in the next few weeks and it will just be us and the Larsons in the office. We already know we are going to love them and have a great time serving together. We are finally starting to feel like we know what we are doing and that has been a great feeling. It was a slow week with no meals to prepare, no transfers, no zone conferences, no mission tours, and even the Mission President was gone for half the week at the Mission President Conference.

Tonight we had a Sisters Devotional. It was incredible! The spirit during the meeting was so strong. It was 16 young sister missionaries and then 6 of us older sisters. The theme for the devotional was taken from D&C 6:36, "Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not." I think it is going to become my new favorite scripture. At the beginning of the devotional we read the opening pages of a book titled "Look Unto Him, Finding the Love of Christ in Our Lives." It addressed many of the thoughts I had been having just in the last few days. It was like the devotional was just for me. Then everyone shared experiences on how our Savior has helped them overcome doubt and especially fear in their lives. Our Savior Jesus Christ is real, he loves us, and with that love we can do all things!