Dear Family,
Was Christmas only a couple of days ago? It seems that it was at least two weeks ago. Christmas was good, but very different from what we have known in the past.
The office was closed on Monday, but Dad had made an appointment with the postman to meet him at the office so that we could get as many of the packages for the missionaries that we could. We were glad that we did because not only did we get about 40 more packages for the missionaries, but we also got packages for us and for another of the office couples. After logging in the packages and dividing them into their zones, we had good dedicated senior couples come into the office to get a zone’s mail. They delivered it and the missionaries had a little bit more of home for Christmas. We waited for the President and Sister Caplin to get to the office so that we could make up packages for a couple of the missionaries who didn’t get anything. Then we got to go and deliver packages to a couple of zones and what fun that was. We only delivered the packages to the designated missionary companionship who was assigned to get it distributed to the rest of the zone. We felt a little like Santa and Mrs. Claus.
We had made arrangements with a sister companionship living in our apartment complex to come over at 8 am so one of the sisters could call home. She is a sister from the Philippines who is so quiet. When she got talking with her family it was delightful to hear her laugh and talk with her family. She is the 9thof 10 children, so there was a large group of family including some excited nieces and nephews. What fun it was to see (and hear) the joy brought to someone because of family. While she was talking we fixed breakfast with the help of the other sister. Again, it wasn’t our normal Christmas breakfast, but we were so grateful not to be here eating breakfast all by ourselves. The missionaries were glad to be eating breakfast with “parents”. A win-win for both of us.
We had a good visit with all of you later on—you were finally up. Then we went for a walk in our little wooded area by our complex and decided to take a new trail or two and ended up using our GPS to get back home. It works for walking as well as driving.
Wednesday we were back at the office and trying to get caught up. I LOTS of month-end activities that need to be done. In addition to the regular stuff, I need to get all of the money for the sisters’ dress slacks on their cards before the end of the year. When SLC decides to do something, they really move fast—at least in this case. I just found out the Friday before Christmas and it needs to be done by the end of the year.
In the evening we went to a baptism. The young man being baptized had taken the day off of work on Friday and spent the day reading the Book of Mormon, fasting, and praying about the Church. The elders teaching him spent the day fasting and praying and attending the zone conference we went to. The young man decided to get baptized on the Wednesday after Christmas. This was especially nice since one of the elders doing the teaching was leaving to go home on Friday. What a way to end a mission!
On the way home Dad and I stopped by a Lowe’s store so we could buy a board to make our Pictionary board. Dad wants to teach the senior couples how to play Pictionary Nelson style. I suppose that could end up having Dad teach the brethren how to cheat at the game. Do you think that the ladies will still win--maybe not since we don’t have Chelsea.
On Thursday Sister Caplin came into the office to talk about the Sisters’ night. The sister wanted to have a girls’ night, so half of them will meet on New Year’s Eve and the other half will meet on New Year’s Day evening. The senior sisters will divide up and go one of the evenings to help. Sister Caplin had done a presentation in her stake at home with the Stripling Warriors, but had an artist draw a picture of a young woman putting on her armor. She wanted to talk to the sisters about the importance of putting on the whole armor of God and had this picture with a velum overlay done for each sister as a reminder. She had the originals, but was wondering if we knew where she could get copies made. We were able to scan the picture and good a good copy and I volunteered to retype the scripture to be printed on the velum overlay.
On Friday we spent the morning getting the pictures printed and the overlay printed and put on the picture. Then we got them in the envelopes ready to be given to the sisters.
We also had two missionaries come in for their exit interviews and that leaves their companions for us to get to visit with. President Caplin was running a little behind and needed to leave to get the missionaries to the airport, so asked Dad if he would interview a friend (investigator) for baptism. It was one that needed a more mature priesthood holder to do the interview, so President Caplin asked Dad if he was comfortable doing it. Dad said that he had been a bishop a couple of times and thought he could do it. President then told Dad that he had been praying about it on the way into the office and had felt like he should ask Dad. When Dad said that he felt comfortable doing it, President Caplin said, “I guess that I can receive revelation.”
Sister Caplin dropped by the office after taking the missionaries to the airport, and said that after much prayer she had decided to fly to St. George to be with her family. Her step mother is in the last stages of life here on earth and she felt that she needed to go and be of support to her father and youngest sister. It was 20 years ago this month that her mother died and now the scenario was repeating itself. She was feeling a little guilty about postponing the sisters’ night out and having us do so much work getting the pictures ready for her. We told her that we would use them later and that family was most important now. Life can be challenging even when we are doing what is right. Our hearts go out to the Caplins.
Since the sisters were not having their get together on Monday, the senior couples decided to change our get together from Saturday evening to Monday evening enabling more of the senior couples to make it.
Saturday we were going to go to the office to see if we could make up for some of the time lost on Friday helping out on other things besides office work. But before we could left we got an email telling us that instead of having a sisters’ night, the President thought it would be good to have all of the missionaries meet at their chapels as districts and have some fun and then go home by 8. He thought that would help have them all in safe places. He then invited the senior couples to join the missionaries. Now we had to go into flexible mode and change our get together again. We are now going to do it Tuesday evening.
We went to a baptism of a man that was SO prepared and ready for baptism. When he shared his testimony at the end of the baptism, I could feel the Spirit so strongly. How grateful we were for being at the baptism.
Off to the office we went and worked for about 4 hours and then went on home to do another walk in our little wooded area by our home. We found a figurine that people leave and were able to take new trails and make it back home without GPS. This time when we were out about 25 minutes we just turned around and retraced our steps. Dad had to be home for a call from the bishop of the ward that the sister he interviewed would be attending.
I spent the evening doing some office work that I could do at home and then Dad did some ironing.
Church was good today and the music was again wonderful. We certainly do have a lot of talented people in the ward. The 3rd hour the bishop spent helping us know where we could look and find helpful sources for our home study. There is a lot of sources available to help us in our learning. Now it is just a matter of spending the time doing it.
We love you lots and pray for your well being always.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Although is appears that Dad is praying in front of the map, he is really just looking at something at the bottom of the map up close.
P.P.S. I forgot to put a story in that was told at the baptism that I thought was good.
The man welcoming the baptized person into the ward said that when he was young their family went every summer to a home in a town that was very near the ocean. This town had an ordinance in the summer that all homes had to have all of their outside lights turned off at night. Prior to this ordinance the lights of the homes would confuse the hatching turtles so that they couldn’t find their way to the ocean. Before the town was built, it was dark when the turtles were hatched and the turtles followed the only light visible which was the setting moon to the ocean. As the lights began to come with the growing town, the turtles lost sight of the one true light that would lead them to where they needed to be to become what they were meant to be. They were distracted by closer lights, fancier lights, or blinking lights and lost their way. Life is like that. We must keep our eyes on the one true light (Jesus Christ) to get us back to where we want to be.
Was Christmas only a couple of days ago? It seems that it was at least two weeks ago. Christmas was good, but very different from what we have known in the past.
The office was closed on Monday, but Dad had made an appointment with the postman to meet him at the office so that we could get as many of the packages for the missionaries that we could. We were glad that we did because not only did we get about 40 more packages for the missionaries, but we also got packages for us and for another of the office couples. After logging in the packages and dividing them into their zones, we had good dedicated senior couples come into the office to get a zone’s mail. They delivered it and the missionaries had a little bit more of home for Christmas. We waited for the President and Sister Caplin to get to the office so that we could make up packages for a couple of the missionaries who didn’t get anything. Then we got to go and deliver packages to a couple of zones and what fun that was. We only delivered the packages to the designated missionary companionship who was assigned to get it distributed to the rest of the zone. We felt a little like Santa and Mrs. Claus.
We had made arrangements with a sister companionship living in our apartment complex to come over at 8 am so one of the sisters could call home. She is a sister from the Philippines who is so quiet. When she got talking with her family it was delightful to hear her laugh and talk with her family. She is the 9thof 10 children, so there was a large group of family including some excited nieces and nephews. What fun it was to see (and hear) the joy brought to someone because of family. While she was talking we fixed breakfast with the help of the other sister. Again, it wasn’t our normal Christmas breakfast, but we were so grateful not to be here eating breakfast all by ourselves. The missionaries were glad to be eating breakfast with “parents”. A win-win for both of us.
We had a good visit with all of you later on—you were finally up. Then we went for a walk in our little wooded area by our complex and decided to take a new trail or two and ended up using our GPS to get back home. It works for walking as well as driving.
Wednesday we were back at the office and trying to get caught up. I LOTS of month-end activities that need to be done. In addition to the regular stuff, I need to get all of the money for the sisters’ dress slacks on their cards before the end of the year. When SLC decides to do something, they really move fast—at least in this case. I just found out the Friday before Christmas and it needs to be done by the end of the year.
In the evening we went to a baptism. The young man being baptized had taken the day off of work on Friday and spent the day reading the Book of Mormon, fasting, and praying about the Church. The elders teaching him spent the day fasting and praying and attending the zone conference we went to. The young man decided to get baptized on the Wednesday after Christmas. This was especially nice since one of the elders doing the teaching was leaving to go home on Friday. What a way to end a mission!
On the way home Dad and I stopped by a Lowe’s store so we could buy a board to make our Pictionary board. Dad wants to teach the senior couples how to play Pictionary Nelson style. I suppose that could end up having Dad teach the brethren how to cheat at the game. Do you think that the ladies will still win--maybe not since we don’t have Chelsea.
On Thursday Sister Caplin came into the office to talk about the Sisters’ night. The sister wanted to have a girls’ night, so half of them will meet on New Year’s Eve and the other half will meet on New Year’s Day evening. The senior sisters will divide up and go one of the evenings to help. Sister Caplin had done a presentation in her stake at home with the Stripling Warriors, but had an artist draw a picture of a young woman putting on her armor. She wanted to talk to the sisters about the importance of putting on the whole armor of God and had this picture with a velum overlay done for each sister as a reminder. She had the originals, but was wondering if we knew where she could get copies made. We were able to scan the picture and good a good copy and I volunteered to retype the scripture to be printed on the velum overlay.
On Friday we spent the morning getting the pictures printed and the overlay printed and put on the picture. Then we got them in the envelopes ready to be given to the sisters.
We also had two missionaries come in for their exit interviews and that leaves their companions for us to get to visit with. President Caplin was running a little behind and needed to leave to get the missionaries to the airport, so asked Dad if he would interview a friend (investigator) for baptism. It was one that needed a more mature priesthood holder to do the interview, so President Caplin asked Dad if he was comfortable doing it. Dad said that he had been a bishop a couple of times and thought he could do it. President then told Dad that he had been praying about it on the way into the office and had felt like he should ask Dad. When Dad said that he felt comfortable doing it, President Caplin said, “I guess that I can receive revelation.”
Sister Caplin dropped by the office after taking the missionaries to the airport, and said that after much prayer she had decided to fly to St. George to be with her family. Her step mother is in the last stages of life here on earth and she felt that she needed to go and be of support to her father and youngest sister. It was 20 years ago this month that her mother died and now the scenario was repeating itself. She was feeling a little guilty about postponing the sisters’ night out and having us do so much work getting the pictures ready for her. We told her that we would use them later and that family was most important now. Life can be challenging even when we are doing what is right. Our hearts go out to the Caplins.
Since the sisters were not having their get together on Monday, the senior couples decided to change our get together from Saturday evening to Monday evening enabling more of the senior couples to make it.
Saturday we were going to go to the office to see if we could make up for some of the time lost on Friday helping out on other things besides office work. But before we could left we got an email telling us that instead of having a sisters’ night, the President thought it would be good to have all of the missionaries meet at their chapels as districts and have some fun and then go home by 8. He thought that would help have them all in safe places. He then invited the senior couples to join the missionaries. Now we had to go into flexible mode and change our get together again. We are now going to do it Tuesday evening.
We went to a baptism of a man that was SO prepared and ready for baptism. When he shared his testimony at the end of the baptism, I could feel the Spirit so strongly. How grateful we were for being at the baptism.
Off to the office we went and worked for about 4 hours and then went on home to do another walk in our little wooded area by our home. We found a figurine that people leave and were able to take new trails and make it back home without GPS. This time when we were out about 25 minutes we just turned around and retraced our steps. Dad had to be home for a call from the bishop of the ward that the sister he interviewed would be attending.
I spent the evening doing some office work that I could do at home and then Dad did some ironing.
Church was good today and the music was again wonderful. We certainly do have a lot of talented people in the ward. The 3rd hour the bishop spent helping us know where we could look and find helpful sources for our home study. There is a lot of sources available to help us in our learning. Now it is just a matter of spending the time doing it.
We love you lots and pray for your well being always.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Although is appears that Dad is praying in front of the map, he is really just looking at something at the bottom of the map up close.
P.P.S. I forgot to put a story in that was told at the baptism that I thought was good.
The man welcoming the baptized person into the ward said that when he was young their family went every summer to a home in a town that was very near the ocean. This town had an ordinance in the summer that all homes had to have all of their outside lights turned off at night. Prior to this ordinance the lights of the homes would confuse the hatching turtles so that they couldn’t find their way to the ocean. Before the town was built, it was dark when the turtles were hatched and the turtles followed the only light visible which was the setting moon to the ocean. As the lights began to come with the growing town, the turtles lost sight of the one true light that would lead them to where they needed to be to become what they were meant to be. They were distracted by closer lights, fancier lights, or blinking lights and lost their way. Life is like that. We must keep our eyes on the one true light (Jesus Christ) to get us back to where we want to be.
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| Family Photo Arrangement |
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| Garn looking at map |
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| Owl in the Forest |
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