End of August Happenings

                         Here are some things we have been up to in August.

         What better way to spend a summer night then with your two best friends.  A concert in the Park with the Thackers.  Sharing this experience with them has been a blessing in all of our lives.

Can you believe this.  Christmas lights in August.  They start early in Salt Lake because there is so much to do.  Take a look at this tree with all the wires and cords.  The electrical lines are reminds me of vines hanging from the trees.  I am sure it will be beautiful for Christmas.

They are still working on this project.  We have seen many people volunteering to help. Just watch your step when your walking by.  They have all kinds of equipment to assist.  The lights are wrapped all the way around the trees.

Trouble in the Training Zone

These are the churches topnotch computer guys.  Every time something goes wrong with the computers there called in.  It takes three of them to fix one problem.  This is a picture that shows what the zone looks like without missionaries being trained.
They worked for days on the problem.  It is scary to think that Family Tree will be opened to the public soon.  I have a lot of faith in these brethren.  This work is ready to roll forward.  Get ready!!!

A highlight of the month was our trip to the Brigham City Temple for the open house.  Our Zone went together to share in this wonderful experience.

The Training Zone is located in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the 3rd floor.  The mission office is right next to the zone.  There is nothing like walking through the grounds and entering into this magnificent building.  There is always soft music being played in the mezzanine.  This sets the spiritual tone.

Visitors

Being here in Salt Lake means we always have visitors.  Here is my cousin Julie Downing who stopped by after she dropped of her daughter at school.  Thanks Julie for stopping to visit.  She really was a real support to me at this time.  I was having a hard time adjusting to my new life.  What would we do with out family?

Sep 10th -16th

I have now had my first week as a trainer and have been learning a lot as I have been training someone else. They were very nice to me and gave me someone that knew a lot of information about her family and her daughter-in-law has done a lot of research and documented all the information that she has found. It made my work a lot easier. I still have a lot of research to get caught up to all the work that Grandma Danielson did and source the information.

Salt Lake Temple with the fountion.

This week on Wednesday after work we went to the temple to do sealings. Our branch has an assignment each week to do sealings. There were 17 from the Branch this week that showed up for the sealing, so they put us in two rooms. It was nice to walk to the temple, do a sealing session and then have dinner in the cafeteria and be back in our apartment in 2 hours. Not like the old days when it would take 2 hours just to get to the temple in Los Angeles, or 20 hours from Oklahoma to Utah. It is wonderful that temples are now within a few hours of most people in the world.

Friday evening we went to the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge concert in the tabernacle. It was celebrating the 225 anniversary of the signing of the constitution. We arrived a few minutes early and ended up sitting on the side, one row away from the orchestra. The music was by the Tabernacle Choir and Temple Square orchestra. We were surprised when the audience went quiet and all stood up. We looked around and saw that President Monson had just entered and was escorted to a reserved row in the middle of the tabernacle. They presented him with a painting during the evening. It was a wonderful concert and program. 

This week I did receive the bike I ordered and I was able to get it put together. I took it out for a couple of rides in the evening. On Saturday I met up with 6 other senior missionaries and drove to the start of the road to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. We rode to the ranch on the island and back which was 38 miles round trip. I am afraid that it has been a few weeks since I have been on a bike and the others really kept me going, considering that I am probably the youngest in the group. The oldest was 73 and I had a hard time keeping up with him. None of the bison that are on the island paid any attention to us even when we were within about 30 feet from them, thank goodness. 

While I was riding, Brenda went to the Riverton Family History Library and took a couple of classes, one on British research and one on Blogging for family history. I guess I really should be going with her to learn, but I was having too much fun.

Guiding our Children

This is one of my favorite pictures. Whenever I walk by this statue I can't help but think of the many years in my life that I spent influencing young children. I hope that I made deep impressions on their little minds. Those years of teaching I hold dear to my heart. I have now moved on to another chapter in my life. I am thankful that I can continue to influence my grandchildren and be an example for them.

Sep 3rd- 9th

This week we had Labor Day on Monday. We spent the morning cleaning, since we did not do it on Saturday. We then went to visit Liz, Preston and Lauren. Liz has done a wonderful job with their new house. I know that it took a lot of work on her part, since Randy is in Idaho on a fire there. We were able to take them out for lunch and stopped and had Hawaiian shaved ice. Liz had to get back for an appointment, so we spent a little time in fixing her dryer, which I had dropped a screw inside the back and there was no way to get it out, so we took the kids to go buy a new screw. We really enjoyed our visit and are sure glad that they live close were we can get to know them better. 

Another highlight of the week was that a couple that are members of our social group in the mission were good friends with Clay Christianson (the tabernacle organist). They arranged for us to meet him at the tabernacle and he showed us the organ and told us about its history. He then played a couple of numbers that he had arranged. After the short concert, he took us behind the organ and we were able to see the pipes and the workings of the organ. 

 Brenda and I have been working on getting certified as trainers. I was able to pass off the first core part of the training. Brenda is finished with the core part, but they were too busy to test her on the information that she has completed. One of the trainers has not returned from a knee surgery, so they asked me to take a new trainee for the next two weeks. I do not know when I will get to finish the next two parts of the training because I will be training instead. 

 

Dad with his trainer Elder Peck

  This is Sister Jordan.

 Here we are with President Peterson and his wife.  

This was a very happy moment for us to finally be here in Salt Lake.

This weekend was our stake conference. The Saturday adult session was in the stake center, which is a whole one block from our house. I was a very great meeting with the concentration of the meeting on Christ. On Sunday it was a regional conference that was broadcast from the conference center. We had L. Tom Perry as the presiding authority. Our stake was assigned to go to the conference center for the meeting. It was wonderful to be able to walk to a regional meeting and be in the presence of an apostle of the Lord. 

 I did have one disappointment this week. I found a group of missionaries that like to bike ride together. They set up a ride for Saturday. I did not bring my bike with me, so I order a bike to ride with them. It arrived on Friday and UPS tried to deliver it, but of course I was at the mission office when they came, so they left the note that they made their first attempt to deliver. I called UPS and had them hold it so I could pick it up and still get in the ride on Saturday. I went to the pickup point and waited for about 1 ½ hours while they tried to find my bike. They could not find it anywhere and even tried to get in touch with the drive to see where the bike was. They ended up telling me that I would have to wait till Monday to get the bike. Well, for some reason the Lord did not want me to ride on Saturday and I will probably never know why but that is OK with me. Hopefully I will get it on Monday and have to get in some rides before it gets too cold and the snow comes.

Our First Visitor

Michele Hoover was our first guest.  We went to The Spoken Word Sunday morning and then Joan had us over for scones.  Of course Michele had the tour of both of our homes.  On Friday she was back to see us again and we were off to President Monson's Birthday Celebration at the Conference Center.  We had a great visit.  Thanks Michele for coming so far to see us.

Aug 20th -26th

This is the chaple we meet in on Sunday.  It is in the Joseph Smith Building. I have never met for church in such a beautiful place.  Our meetings are so quiet with no children,  just old people.  We are a one of a kind ward with 100% temple recommend holders and 100% tithing payers. 




How do you like the view from the window of our Sunday School Class!

The  carpet in this room seems to add to the reverence of our Sacrament meetings.  I wish that everyone could feel this special peace each week.  Everywhere you look you are surrounded by beautiful.

Dad took Violet back to our office to show her around the place.  They took this darling picture.  I spent the time downstairs watching the boys.  I was afraid they would run around like little boys do.  The fear of getting in trouble caused me to stay with them.  I seem to cause enough excitement around on my own.

Week 1

         This has been one busy week for our first week in the mission. We got into our apartment on Thursday and got a little settled. On Friday 8/3 we had our orientation lunch with the Mission Presidency. Brenda and I were privileged to sit at the table with the mission president and the branch president. We had 29 missionaries at the luncheon that are reporting in this month.

          It is a very interesting mission. We have 1200 missionaries in the mission, 70 of them are Elders that have special needs and the rest are senior missionaries. We cover a four block area. We are the largest mission as far as missionaries, but the second smallest, because the temple square missionaries only covers one block. We have missionaries in the Family History Center, Church Office Building(COB), Joseph Smith Memorial Building(JSMB) and the Church History Library.

          We will be in training for the first two weeks. We are being trained on our own family tree and are documenting all the names on our pedigree chart onto our PAF files. It is a lot of work and we come home very tired at the end of the day. After the two weeks of training, we will be given our assignment within the 20 zones of the mission. Once in a zone, we will be staying in that zone for the rest of our mission. Our training is in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the 3rd floor where the mission office is also located. It is wonderful to walk to our building and have to pass by the Church office building and walk through the beautiful grounds.They have already started working on getting the lights up for Christmas. Our apartment is about 1/2 block away from the Church Office Building, so we are able to walk to our training each day.

       The day after we checked in to the mission and had a short orientation, Brenda and I got permission from the mission president to fly home to attend the baptism of Ashlyn, our first grandchild and the blessing of Garrett our last grandchild. We flew home on Saturday morning and attended the baptism/blessing and then flew back to Salt Lake City on Sunday morning and were able to make it to our church meeting. 

            We are in the Ensine 3rd Branch, which is made up of the missionaries that report on the even months. We have at least 250 in attendance with 100% tithe payers and 100% with temple recommends. I hear that they are close to 100% home teaching, but Sacrament meetings are very quiet without any children. We meet in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building chapel. On Monday night, the branch had an aloha dinner in a park up the canyon. It was a wonderful meal and we had an entertainer that came and gave a great program. I wish I would have gotten his name. He has played several parts in church movies and had several songs that were in 17 miracles. He will also be singing for President Monson's Birthday.  

            Brenda got a terrible cold over the weekend. On Monday she was able to meet the on call doctor for our mission. We are the only mission who has its very own staff of doctors on call.

          This morning we were able to walk to the conference center and listen to the spoken word with the tabernacle choir. We met some friends for the broadcast that have come up for education week and decided to come early to visit with us for a little while.

          If you haven't guested by now, we are having a wonderful time and can not believe that we are here. We are really anxious to see where we will be assigned and can start learning our assignment. We will have what they call a "go forth" meeting on Friday to find our assignment, and then we will all go to the temple together and do a session and then have lunch in the temple cafeteria.