Alex and Charlotte's Sealing

One of the blessings of being able to serve a Senior Mission is that you can attend important family events.  We were so excited when our mission presidency gave us permission to attend Alex and Charlotte's sealing on May 13th in the Atlanta Temple.  And we were even happier to get very cheap airfares and car rental!  

We got in late after a direct flight and spent that night at Matt's and Tana's.  We headed down early on Saturday morning to the temple to participate in baptisms for the dead for Faith and Clara doing family names.  Then we left them in the annex to attend Alex and Charlotte's sealing.  They had been married last July, just before we left on our mission.  She hadn't been married a year yet in order for them to be sealed.  But this was even better because her parents had come from China for her Ga Tech graduation, so they were able to participate in this as well.

We stopped off in the waiting room at the front of the temple. where Eden was waiting with Charlotte's parents to meet them and give them a copy of the Proclamation on the Family that we had gotten in Mandarin and framed for them.

The sealing was so lovely - and so neat to be there with Matt and Tana, Clay and Amie, and Brittany and Michael.  They are such a sweet couple - we can't wait for everyone to meet Charlotte.

Here we are with her wonderful parents!

Such a sweet couple!

Lots of family were able to be there.

How beautiful the temple always is!

We Receive a Transfer

Most of the folks in the Interpretation Department  (The Bridges were with family that day!)

We knew from the time we first opened our mission call that we were going to be serving in Interpretation at the top of the Church Office Building.  We did that from August through April and two General Conferences. As we have mentioned before, we worked with the interpreters who served during Conference and other voice overs and events.  And we thought we would be doing that our whole mission.  Here are some of those great folks:

Stewart Bridge

Sead Osmani

Belisario Benites - one of our managers

Nick - a producer

Kevin -  - a producer

Amy -  - a producer

Jason - Social Media

Darly

Michelle Draper - ASL Language Coordinator

Carmen - Spanish Language Coordinator

Eric Anderson - African Language Coordinator

Much to our surprise though, in May, we had a change in our mission assignment...  Rob was tapped because of his career experience in doing marketing research and surveys to begin work in the Language Quality Department, helping with the project of having end user surveys for General Conference and other translations to determine how the reader or listener in the audience felt about the quality of the translation.  He has been very busy with that.  I am serving as more of an administrative assistant to our manager and others in the department.  I have been doing a little work with the Fog buzz team to respond to unsolicited user feedback on issues and problems in Gospel Library.  It isn't as busy as Interpretation, so I have been also working on this blog, family history and family stories to keep me busy.  

The change involved our moving from the 28th floor down to the 2nd.  Rob referred to this as moving from the Celestial Kingdom to the Telestial, but only in terms of altitude!  

Here are the interpreter badges that we had to show for General Conference and other events.  

Here I am in our office on the 28th

Here is Rob - you can see that our offices allowed us to communicate easily.

They even had a little going away party for us, which included Dunford donuts!

And here we are in our new offices.  Our chairs back up to each other.  We continue to work with great people, and we are learning a lot.  

Grace's Birthday and Dance Recital and Duncan's Robotics

To celebrate her birthday the end of March, we were able to take Grace for frozen yogurt.  There is a great Farr's ice cream place in Provo, and that was her choice.  We enjoyed Farr's ice cream parlor when we grew up in Salt Lake, so this was fun to do for us to have a little one-on-one time with her.

                                

Grace's dance studio put on the Lion King, and we were able to go see her.  She is such a lovely dancer and it was such a well done production.

Then Mom was able to go with Heather to watch Duncan's robotics competition.  They had programmed their robot to go along a line drawn on a track.  It was really cool!  Several other teams robots couldn't stay on it at all, but Duncan's team's robot was right on.  They didn't take first place because of some other parts of it, but this was their first year and the teacher didn't really know what she was doing.  She didn't even come that day!  

Heather's Birthday

Heather has been spending every other Friday night with us while she is doing her Executive MBA program at BYU at the Salt Lake Campus. So we made arrangements to meet her for lunch at Carlucci's Bakery before we went to class that day.

And, her birthday falling on a Friday night meant that we were able to host her for a little birthday party.  Fortunately, she didn't stay late at school and was able to join us for dinner.  Bert and Chris were there as well.

Heather has been so challenged since her divorce from John.  But her courage and attitude have been so inspiring to everyone.  She had to go to work full-time with KT Tape  and then began her MBA program last August.  She was the first person accepted to this class and has received some scholarship money as well.  We have been so amazed as she has talked about the things that she has learned and the challenges that going back to school has brought, besides balancing school and the five kids.

She took first place in a speaking presentation back in October where she was Joan of Arc - she practiced with us, and we wish that we had recorded it.  Her fellow students also though that she was the best!  (And her costume made a great one to also wear on Halloween!)

She has worked so hard, getting extra tutoring in math to bring her up-to-speed after being out of school for around 25 years.  Her class mates have been very supportive which has been wonderful as well.

And while interviewing for a new job - she is now with Vital Smarts in Provo as their regional marketing manager- she wrote a great article for Silicon Slopes digital magazine on "Company Culture."

We are so grateful for this amazing daughter and for being able to help her a little while we are out here on our mission.

Missionaries from Georgia That We Serve With

Unlike our earlier mission, we are serving with other missionaries whom we know from back in Georgia (we did serve with the Cornish's in the Caribbean, but he was in the Area Presidency, so it wasn't quite the same)

We have known Linda Remund for nearly 30 years.  She moved into the Snellville Ward after we did, Her oldest son Matt is the same age as Brittany, so they would play together sometimes.  Linda was already serving in our zone in Self-Reliance, so she welcomed us to our new world.  She will go home the end of June.  

The Savoldi's who are from Marietta worked on our temple shift.  They have previously served missions in Albania, Italy, and here on Temple Square.  When they learned where we had been called and to serve in Interpretation, they knew exactly what we would be doing.  So we were very pleased when they were called here in November.

Dave and Linda Ellefson lived in Lawrenceville Ward for a number of years before we moved to Sugar Hill.  They are such great people.  By the way, they joined the Church up in Brittany's area, so we had a double connection with them

And it has been so special to be serving again with the Cornish's who were in the Caribbean when we were there.  Elder Cornish is now the Assistant Church Historian, and they have an apartment just east of the Church Office Building where President Monson, Elder Oaks, and Elder Hales also have homes.  We have been blessed to hear Elder Cornish speak several times in our meetings.  But we only have a photo of Reid, who is able to serve a mission here as well, working in the Church History Library and also in the Temple.  Such a sweet, energetic young man!

Valentine's Day and Rob's birthday

I love my dear husband so much!  He has done such fun things through the years for Valentine's Day and this year was no different.  I love my Valentine.

I made him an egg with a hat on it, cutting the bread into a heart shape. 

 And he danced my the cutest Valentine's Dance while he sang.  

No woman is more blessed than I am!

That evening, our Mission Zone was in charge of a Tri-Zone Social.  We held it in the Relief Society room of the JSMB with a lasagna dinner, including mini cheese cakes for dessert.  I had made red velvet cupcakes for everyone which were part of the centerpieces.  We had a great speaker from the Self-Reliance department come speak to all of us about the great things that they do.

We went down to Heather's the Sunday afterward to celebrate Rob's birthday with Heather and Bryan and their families.  She had decorated everything so cute and even had meat loaf and chocolate cake- his favorites.

This cake has a magic candle on it.  When you light it, sparkler flames come out.  Then the petals open up and it spins around playing "Happy Birthday."

Grace enjoying her dad's lap.

All the kids living here were there, and he was so thrilled to have been able to hear from each one of the kids who wished him a happy day!

Snow, Glorious Snow!

One of the best parts of serving this mission here in Utah is the snow that we have been able to enjoy lots of this winter!  There are just not words to say how wonderful it is, and I can’t get enough of it.  While others have complained about the snowy winter, it has been so fun to walk to work in the morning wearing my boots and being surrounded by snow!   So this post is just photos of snow all over the valley.

Bert's house one snowy morning!

Our car on a snowy morning!

Bert's and Chris' lovely backyard!

More snow!

View towards east mountains from COB

Mist on the snowy mountain

More of those clouds

Downtown Salt Lake