Happy New Years From Our Home To Yours!

Wishing all of our wonderful friends and family a very Happy New Year for 2017. It is remarkable how time flies and we are now at a New Year moment. We have certainly been very busy this year in our Mission endeavors. We have had many prayers answered, miracles received and a few disappointments along the way. We enjoy serving with the MLS couples and younger missionaries. We have worked with Elders most of the time until recently.  We now have great Sisters to serve with. We love attending our District, Zone, and MLS couple meetings. We have also had some outstanding Zone Conferences and recently a Mission tour and a Christmas Devotional. We have a lot of individuals and families that we meet with on a regular basis and have been blessed to see them progress in different ways. 
Our greatest source of joy has been those sweet times with family. Although it hasn't been as often as I would like we have enjoyed some fun minutes with them. Our Grandson Jackson returned home from his mission in Omaha, Nebraska in March. Our second son, Travis received his BA degree from BYU, Idaho which was such an awesome accomplishment.  We had a spectacular family reunion in June and everyone was able to attend. We were able to break away and watch a few of our Grandson's play in football and soccer games. The ones we were able to see play were Joseph, Jonathan, Jeffery, Joshua, Austin, Ethan, and Christian. Some of the games were on the internet but that counted as seeing them. My dear daughter in laws Amber, Amanda and my Granddaughter, Justice took me to TOFW in November for my birthday and Amandas. 
We had Sean's family down for Thanksgiving which was really nice. Our daughter visited us from Australia which was a highlight for this year. Then two of our Granddaughter's Sariah and April came in December to visit us from Australia. I shopped till I dropped with those two. We then had our son Sean's family down for our traditional Christmas Family Home Evening. We had a wonderful Nativity activity. 
We had a delightful Christmas. We attended the Christmas sacrament meeting held in the building we are assigned too. They were all very spiritually uplifting and we felt the spirit as talks and music were given on the Savior, His birth and atonement. We then had a quiet Christmas time with phone calls and Skyping with our children. 
The following are some more of our Christmas Activities - 

We are assigned to attend and work in the 5th ward. This is their Christmas Party. It had the theme of "The Grinch Stole Christmas". It was an elaborate celebration and everyone had such a good time. They put on the play; "The Grinch Stole Christmas." It was fantastic. 

We attended the 3rd ward Christmas breakfast. We loved having our photos with Santa along with our sweet sisters who were there enjoying the celebration. They had a great Nativity program and the Primary children were awesome. 

The 8th ward had a Christmas dinner. It was so fun. My husband played the part of Moroni in their Nativity program. The dinner was wonderful and the program was a lovely one. I loved the play and the music so much. The dinner of course was delicious. 

We had a uplifting Zone Conference and it was so fun to be with all the MLS Couples and the missionaries in two of our zones. The messages were so inspiring and helpful for our work. We found out that Elder Bowen who is in the photo with us is a 3rd cousin to Elder Williams.

We always have great District meetings. The large photo on the left side is a photo of a convert, a return missionary and then the sisters we are serving with; Sister Hanson and Sister Turner. The Upper right  photo is  Sister Pinkham and Sister Turner. This was transfer day and Sister Pinkham's last day in our Zone. We will miss her. 

Here is a flash back photo of our family Christmas's in the past. . We have several traditions in our family but doing the Nativity story is the one I love the most.  

This is our oldest son, Sean's family that came down for a Christmas Party. We have this every year and sometimes other families join us. We continue the tradition of the Nativity program. This was a sweet year. 

We had a fantastic Christmas with just each other and Sammy, of course. It was a really lovely day. We feel so blessed. We attended our ward meetings. The highlight of the day was hearing from our children. 
May this coming New Year bring you all many blessings from our Loving Heavenly Father. May your faith in Jesus Christ continue to grow. May you feel the peace, comfort and love of Savior more abundantly in your lives. May this year be a blessed one for all!

Have A Merry Christmas & Happy New Year To All! ~ #LighttheWorld

The Savior declared: “...It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am” (D&C93:1)

The Church of Jesus Christ extends an invitation to everyone, even all the world, to act upon the light within by serving others each day in some small way. The Savior showed us how, and now invites us to do the same. By so doing we receive an increase in light and greater love towards others. We receive grace and the gift of charity, His pure love. We’ll be blessed to receive of His nature and when the time comes for us to see Him, we’ll know Him because we have served Him. Each of us has gifts within, let us share them.

We know and we testify with great feeling that our Savior loves each of us beyond anything we will ever comprehend. We witness to you that He is the Son of God. He was born for us, lived for us, suffered for us, died for us, and was resurrected for us. He is our dearest friend, our brother and our personal advocate with the Father.

Five points of Gratitude and sweet memories from 2016

·    A fantastic reunion attended by every member of our family from Washington to Australia. It was an event not likely to be repeated for several years.

·         We celebrated with our son Travis as he received his Bachelor’s degree from BYU-Idaho

·         We continue with our full time service in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission with countless miracles and many moments of great joy.

·         We welcomed our Grandson, Jackson, home from his Mission in Omaha, Nebraska.

·         God has given special gifts to each of our amazing grandchildren. They have increased their talents and divine gifts in writing, music composition, visual and performing arts as well as competitive sports. Their light increases as those gifts are nurtured near perfection with patience, perseverance, and the support of loving parents.

Wishing all of my family & friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

May you know that I love you all, even those that I have not officially met but know through social media. You have uplifted me, brightened my life, inspired me in so many ways. Thank you for being my friend. You have all blessed my life. 

I thought I would share a very special Short Nativity video that I thought you would enjoy. #LighttheWorld

Happy November Moments, Missionary Activities & December Fun! #LighttheWorld~

The Light Of The World - Let's All Light The World With His Love~

Here is a photo of a luncheon in November that I went to with my extra loved friends from High School. We have been friends for over 50 years. This is such a fun group and we usually try to have lunch once a month. I attend when I can. 

The month of November was sweet with many awesome memories. Then December rolled in and we have been so busy with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Christmas Worldwide Initiative. It has been fun to share the Christmas message and encourage others to do acts of service each day from December 1st through the 25th. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we continued these big and small act of service for 365 days a year. There is much good to be done in our world and serving others is the best. 
Here is a few glimpses into our extra special moments in November. #LighttheWorld

Missionary Moments~

We have really been enjoying our missionary experiences during the month of November and thus far in December. We have enjoyed having sister missionaries to serve with. Sister Pinkham and Sister Turner in the Left upper corner are fantastic missionaries and are doing some great work in our area. They are on bikes and when it is cold we worry about them and try to drive them when we are not busy. We have had some great District and Zone meetings; here are photos of two of them. Sister Pinkham and Sister Turner had a baptism that was exciting. This young girl was so ready to be baptized and very excited for this special ordinance. The bottom middle photo is a moment at the Oquirrh Mountain temple. We had a Zone Temple day and enjoyed being with the the group of Elders, Sisters and MLS couples that we serve with. We find ourselves very busy thus not a lot of time to work on my blog posts. 

Here is my November Birthday Celebration. 

This was an extra special birthday. My two daughter in laws; Amanda, Amber  and granddaughter; Justice  came down to celebrate Amanda's birthday on the 18th and my birthday on the 20th. We attend "Time Out For Women" a very special two day events. There were more than 3,000 women at this event and we heard some great messages and lots of good musical entertainment. We had so much fun. We laughed, cried and just enjoy all the precious moments.. 
My favorite gift of all was the middle photo of a locket This locket is over 100 years old. It was my Dads. His father was killed in World War I in France. His wife, my grandmother had died a year earlier and this locket was sent to to my grandfather in France with a photo of her and my Dad, just days before he killed.. I have had this locket for a long time and the chain had broken. My dearest husband bought me another beautiful chain and had the locket polished. I shed some tears on this one. The bottom two photos are my sweet daughters, Amanda, Amber and granddaughter Justice. 

We had a lovely Family Thanksgiving celebration with our Son Sean, Daughter in law, Mary and their family. We had a plentiful thanksgiving dinner and enjoyed games and fun conversations. 

The family photo - Front row; Jackson, Dana, Sagan, Joshua, Mary and Jeffery. Back row; Roger, LeAnn, Jacob, Joseph, Gillian, Sean and Jonathan. 

Here are our fun times from the first part of December. This collage is one of our sweetest activities.. My two granddaughters, April 17 and Sariah 19 arrived here from Australia. They came for a cousin's wedding in Idaho and were able to stay with us for 5 delightful days. We had so much fun together. These photos are of our dearest Sariah celebrating her 19th birthday with us. We took them to dinner at Olive Garden. Sariah didn't want a cake so her Grandpa got her a cupcake, so she could at least blow out the candle. It was so fun to have them here. 

Middle photo is April and Sariah~

We were invited to a family home evening at the Griffith’s home in one of the wards we serve in. The Walker family from Missouri was here for a visit. They previously lived in our home ward and we have been good friends with them. They have a family of 20 children, 11 adopted, 9 biological, 14 live at home. Most of their family was present along with some choice friends of theirs. We then had a surprise of having Elder Alin Spannaus with his wife and two lovely daughters there. We had such a delightful evening of sharing messages of service and Christmas music. Beautiful Christmas carols were sung around the piano. We enjoyed those endearing seconds of time. 

Here is the photo of all that were in attendance at this fun event~

We took our granddaughters to see "The Forgotten Carols". It is a fantastic musical play and we laughed, cried and had such a good time. I wish everyone could experience this production is was so wonderful and inspiring. 

                     Sariah, April and I - Then Myself and my dear eternal companion~

Finally, We took our beloved granddaughters to Temple Square to see the Christmas Lights and Nativity. It was a bit cold but at the same time we felt the warmth and light of the spirit. It was the perfect ending to our visit with these lovely young women of ours. 

Thus far this Christmas Season has been wonderful and we are enjoying our family and many missionary  activities and opportunities to share the #LighttheWorld Initiative.