Meeting the missionaries

This was our first day to meet with the missionaries! We started off with District Meetings at 8:00. Then we had Relief Society and Priesthood Meetings and right after we had Sacrament meeting. After that we were set apart by the MTC Presidency as Counselor and Relief Society Counselor. In our blessings we both received promises that our family would be blessed for our service rendered here in Spain in both the temple and the MTC. We were promised other blessings associated with our duties. We truly felt the spirit of the Lord sink deep into our hearts. We were then invited to the MTC dining room to eat with the elders and sisters currently residing in the MTC. This group will be going to their missions a week from Tuesday. The food was chicken, french fries, salad, bread, spaghetti, fruit and ice cream and flan. Not too bad! There will be another group of missionaries the day after this group leaves. At 2:30 we went to see a devotional on DVD from the Provo MTC of David Bednar and his wife. What incredible talks they gave. What a treat it was for us to see and hear. His talk was how do I know if it's the Holy Ghost or just me thinking. His answer to that was quite worrying about it and get to work. You may never know for sure if you are getting impressions by the spirit or not. It doesn't really matter whether you know if the spirit is talking to you or not. If you are a good boy and a good girl and are keeping the commandments you will never be led astray and will be given guidance to do good and the right thing for the right reasons. He told stories where that had happened to him and he didn't realize until 20 years later that the thing he had been impressed to do had been from the Holy Ghost and had had such a positive influence on certain individuals. We go to dinner in a few minutes then to singing practice with the missionaries then down to sing with the missionaries on temple square then to a fireside with the elders and sisters. This will be our typical Sunday for the next year!! We will be teaching each Sunday in Relief Society and Priesthood from Preach My Gospel.

New Calling

We enjoyed a farewell dinner at our apartment with the two couples to our right . They are the Sprouls and the Fords. They leave for home at the end of this month. It was also Elder Ford's birthday on the left end. The Sprouls are returning to South Jordan where he was a school administrator for most of his career. The Ford's are going back to Bountiful. He was a farmer for many years. We will miss these good and faithful servants. The Ford's were temple workers and the Sprouls were in charge of the Institute program and were in the MTC Presidency. We were called to serve in the MTC presidency in addition to our serving as Temple missionaries. We were truly honored, humbled and a little overwhelmed at the new callings we received and accepted. We are also very excited about being able to work with the MTC President and Sister Earl and the new missionaries that will be coming through the MTC from all of the different countries including the USA. Needless to say our workload and service load has been increased significantly and some of our extra-curricular activities will have to go. The couple to our left is the McDougals from Pleasant Grove, UT. They arrived 2 months ago to serve in the temple. We have enjoyed getting to know them. We are expecting 5 more couples from the USA to serve in the temple around the beginning of May. This week two bus loads of dedicated people from Portugal arrived at the temple to work hard for the week. We enjoy the activity generated by these kind of groups. We almost always have others from France, Italy and Spain join in with these larger groups and the language fun begins. We truly feel the joy of serving the Lord and are grateful for our opportunities to do so in spite of our ancient ways. We are too busy and happy to grow any older. Our minds are stimulated beyond our wildest expectations and our memories seem better than ever. We are more in love than we have ever been. We are experiencing a little bit of heaven everyday as we serve in the House of the Lord. We ask the Lord daily to bless you all and his spirit to be with you in all of your activities. Have a wonderful week !!! We are almost down to one year left and it will go by very fast so we have to dig in and work as hard as we can so as to not have any regrets.

Epistle

Thanks for the Valentine messages. We have 4 couples scheduled to come here but they, including our friends the Skousen's are hung up because of the new requirement to have an FBI clearance due to the terrorist event on Christmas Day on the aircraft that was inbound into Detroit from Amsterdam. So We will soon be hurting a lot for sufficient people to run the temple whereas the Picards from France and Guillens from Murcia have left and the Clementes from Alicante are soon to go and Perez keep saying that they will be going also. The dollar has gained some strength since we have been here and the 300 euros we usually get has gone down in price from $ 443 to $418. That has been a pleasant surprise.This winter is as cold as ever and we wimps from Arizona are getting tired of it. We have enjoyed knowing the Moores and other obreros who are here. Serving in the temple has been as wonderful as ever. We are scheduled today to speak in the CCM. We are excited about this opportunity. However we will be speaking to only 5 missionaries, 4 French and 1 Portuguese. Some of the other senior missionaries are going with us for moral support. We had a very busy day yesterday and it seems that the weekends right now are the best and busiest times. As Veil Directors last week Sandy & I had double sessions at 9:00 and 11:00 which as you know gave us some fun challenges , but it was a piece of cake. Brother Retuerto( Flt. Attendant with Iberian ) and Sister Zaldivar had their daughter sealed to a Swedish young man yesterday. We really feel needed and like we are doing a worthwhile thing in our lives right now. Where else except in the Church. We feel the tender mercies of the Lord every day. We are so blessed and try hard to have an attitude of gratitude.We appreciate you for what and who you are and love hearing from you. We went to the Cuatro Caminos Ward to do a Music and the Spoken Word program to help the missionaries there. We had fun working with Patricia Cerro who has a beautiful soprano voice and her friend who has been a member for only 9 months was our narrator. He seemed to get more out of the experience than anybody . He and I did some baptisms in the temple that morning. We have been talking to him about going to the temple for his own endowments 3 months from now. He is a great guy of 32 years age and his name is Hugo Morelli. I've got to run and play for our ward primary prior to going to the CCM sacrament meeting so better end this epistle. Have a great Sabbath !!!

Portugal and other Pics

Happy 2010

Happy New Year!! Thanks for remembering my birthday! Can you believe you are the son of a 70 year old mom? I am so blessed and well cared for by my wonderful family. Thank you for all you do and the way you do it. The temple has been busy even to the point that we had to work a double shift. This week a group of adult singles from our area have been here all week doing temple work during the day and having activities at night. They have been so faithful and seemingly tireless. We enjoy being busy!! Just a thought for you....our President gave us a FHE lesson this week on the Plan of Salvation with how temple work fits into the plan. He had some really interesting points that were a bit new to me. I found out after the lesson that he had taken some of his lesson from the teachings of Brigham Young. If you have your manual on BY look up what he had to say about temples. It was very interesting. We have been pretty much homebound for the last week because I was suffering with a cold and the weather has been cold, rainy and snowing. It is so funny to me to see people walking down the street with an umbrella during a snowstrom. I just do not remember ever using an umbrella during a snowstrom. The temple will be closed for 2 weeks starting next week so we are going to Portugal to visit a friend and do some siteseeing.

12 days...

Wahoo!! Thank you, Thank you , Thank you for the wonderful packages containing the 12 days of Christmas. We will be opening one a day for the next 12 days. Wrong, we have opened it all and really enjoyed your efforts. We are so pleased and happy to receive the super surprises in each package for each of the 12 days. Mom picked up a bad cold yesterday and wasn't able to go to the temple with me today . That is the first time that has happened and it was very depressing for both of us. I have to say you really made our day . We are so grateful for your unselfish efforts. It looks like it took just a little over 10 days to get here. Granpa really likes the oatmeal packages which they don't have over here in Spain. Somebody had a great idea. Of couse you what Grandma likes the best. We both are impressed with the time you had to expend to make the 12 days possible. We also did the 12 days for some friends over here and they seemed to really thrive on this effort on their behalf. It makes you feel loved and cared for. We love you and appreciate all you are doing and have done. Here is or wish to you for a HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!!!!!

Missionary Christmas Party