Thanksgiving moments

Dear Loved ones!! As we approach Thanksgivings we wish to express our love and appreciation to each of you for your efforts to build our eternal family and to be the very best person you can be. We know you are all trying to be the kind of person your Heavenly Father wants you to be. This brings Him and us joy beyond words. We sincerely hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with an attitude of gratitude. We love each of you with all our hearts. Our Thanksgiving dinner here will be celebrated here on this coming Monday with 37 other people. Some of these are workers in the temple or missionaries in the Madrid Mission. We have been put in charge of this meal and have had fun preparing for it. We have ordered 3 turkeys and a ham and made food assignments to everyone coming and will serve the meal on the 6th floor of our building in the MTC cafeteria. The temple president and your dad will demonstrate the carving of the turkeys which will probably look more like ostriches but who cares!! We still remember the two we got the last time we were here that were given to us with the heads still on and legs 2 feet long. We asked the butcher to cut the heads on and then the legs also because our ovens are small. We spent most of this past week serving a good sized group of Italian members from the area around Rome. They spoke only Italian which was quite challenging at times. But. we were able to help them accomplish their work for their ancestors in all the various areas of the temple. It was a pleasure to work with these dedicated and pleasant people. They truly touched our hearts with their sweet spirits and dedication. They flew directly from Rome to Madrid. We also had a sizable group come from the east coast of Spain where the LLadro factory is..Valencia. Most of them travelled all night to get here then travelled all night to return. We have to run to a Christmas choir practice so we will close for now. Hugs and Kisses

Thank you for the wonderful video Birthday Wish. it is so fun to see you for real. We love you so much and miss being able to hold you and kiss you. Please keep posting things for us to read. It makes our day!!We are doing well but need your prayers for us. We keep you in our thoughts and prayers each day by name.Keep taking good care of Lyla.

Lots of Love,
Granpa & Granma

Thanks

Dear Family, Thanks, Chad, for encouraging us to use this blog again. You are soooo patient with us. We will use this means of keeping in touch. Love, Mom and Dad

Johnson Family Picture

June 2008 Sunday 22

My turn to blog a little. We just returned from our Ward meetings where we had ward conference. The stake presented the new Bishopric and pronounced us with a new Ward name. In turn they organized a new Branch which was divided off from the East area of our Ward and is called the Sacaba Branch with A new Branch Presidency. The Ward name was changed from Puntiti to Esmeralda. There were close to 300 people present filling the chapel completely up. Our Choir sang as the closing song, "This is the Christ - El Cristo Es " and they did a very nice job with this difficult number. Mom was excellent as the Director.It warmed up considerably today and the sun shown brightly on everything. A very beautiful day. We are headed to President and Sister Dalene's for dinner and it is ready so got to go.

We love you All,
Mom & Dad

update

Hi Everyone! The days and weeks are flyingby. We had a full week in the temple . Daddy had 2 really special sealings on Sat. Both couples were very attentive and prepared for the experience. We got to help with all of the ordinances so we felt very blessed and grateful to be here. We are having really cool weather right now so we are wearing our sweaters and jackets. The changes here have been interesting but we are adjusting really well. We hope that all is well with you and yours. Love, Mom and Dad

update

Hi everyone, This has been an interesting week. The country of Bolivia has been in turmoil and because of this our temple president put us on lock down which is that we cannot leave the temple block. We were instructed to have at least 10 days of food and supplies on hand plus water. We complied with all of these things. Today, Sunday, we had our church meetings in the president's home. It was very nice! We are about to have our break the fast dinner with the other gringos. Tomorrow we are in charge of the early morning devotional for the temple employees. Skousens will help us with this. We are so grateful for the chance to do many different kinds of things. Last week one of the stakes here in Cochabamba came in force to do baptisms, sealings, initiatory and sessions. It was outstanding!! The president of the stake is about 30 and one of the greatest leaders we have ever seen. They are blessed to have him. Pres. Hinkley promised the church members that if they would e faithful in their temple attendance their country would be blessed. We saw this blessing realized this week when Bolivia's President did not send his troops the Pancho Rojas into Cochabamba as he had threadened. We continue to love our mission and all that we are doing. Please continue to pray for us and we will continue to pray for all of you. The gospel is true!!Con much amor, Mom and Dad Grampa and Gramma