Turkey, Lights, Family, and Friends

This has been a much more relaxing and fun week. We had one event last Sunday, The Caribbean Educational Devotional - BYU Pathway. And we have the second half this Sunday, Love, Share and Invite by the Caribbean Area. Other than that we didn't have any other events this week. Oh, there were some language coaching events, but even those were just a few. Lots of people off for the holiday.

The Linfords are doing well on their own now. They started learning some of Steve's responsibilities and are taking over some of those from him. I'm still answering questions, but they are doing really great. It has given me time to rewrite the procedural manuals since we have changed the way we do things from what our trainers taught us. Steve's manual went from over 70 pages down to less than 20. I think my manual will have similar reductions.

On Monday we had a wonderful, and even somewhat emotional, Family Home Evening as each of us shared thoughts about someone we were thankful for and how they impacted our lives. We couldn't be related to the person so I talked about the wonderful example of Sassie O'Sullivan and how she is such a missionary at all times and how she is so giving to everyone. I mentioned that she even gave thanks for her illnesses when she is in the hospital because she can give out more copies of the Book of Mormon. Others shared very tender and emotional stories of people who changed their lives.

On Tuesday all our missionaries were in the office. Sister Petty works from home 3 days a week and comes in on Tuesdays and Fridays. The cafeteria was having their annual Thanksgiving Lunch with all the trimmings so we all went down together to enjoy lunch together. It was so fun. Baptiste was planning on being there, too, because he loves the annual Thanksgiving Lunch; but, he had his COVID booster shot the day before and wasn't feeling very well. We missed him.

On Wednesday the Linfords left a little early to attend a funeral of their niece's husband who just died of COVID. Aaron came in for an event in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. He joined us in the COB for the afternoon, so we enjoyed visiting with him for a few hours. We spent the day finishing up projects and making sure we were up to date on everything. I got a big portion of my procedural manual done. We were able to go home a little early. That was nice.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. I worked on the procedural manual a little in the morning before we headed to Katie Lofts house for Thanksgiving dinner with her family. They had 47 people there which included family and friends. Jeff and Cali Gibbs were visiting so it was fun to see them again. The whole Call family was there, too. About 1/2 hour before we needed to leave, they began showing old home movies. It was really fun because our family was in several of them. All our kids were at Brian's wedding so they were all in the video. We left at 5 so we could be home in time to jump on a Zoom call with Douhet's family so we could talk to Alyson. 

It was so fun to talk to her as well as the rest of the family. We even got to visit with Kirstin, Jayne, Susie, and Jeff too. We've been gone almost 6 months and I can't believe how big the kids have grown. Griffyn surprised me the most. We miss family so much, be we know were are supposed to be here at this time in our life. We are so grateful they our family supports us in this decision.

We started our "White" Friday in the Jordan River Temple doing sealings. I didn't get all our names done so we will try and schedule a few more appointments to complete our names. I found it is easier to schedule last minute appointments because of cancellations. Trying to schedule far in the future doesn't work because we never know when we will have an event; but, last minutes works great. We have done an Endowment and the Sealings just in the last two weeks. It is awesome.

We tried to connect with Sister Brynn Castleton-Rudolph who is serving in Orem, but unfortunately that didn't work. Maybe one of these days we will just go to Orem and drive around in hopes of seeing her. That would be fun!

Later that afternoon we found out that Laila and Tyus were in Utah so we were able to connect for an hour or so and visit with them. We enjoyed that so very much. It was so nice to get a hug from family!!!!

Just about the time they had to go we needed to pick up the Linfords. We all went out to dinner and then went to the Luminaria show at Thanksgiving Point. It is spectacular and so beautiful. We all really enjoyed it. We had a mix up getting the tickets, but eventually we got it all worked out and they let us in even though the gal on the phone put us down for Saturday instead of Friday. It was worth the hassle.

Saturday was pretty laid back. I did some more work on the procedural manual before we went out to do some shopping and get our COVID booster shot. Walmart advertised having all three booster shots available at every store. NOT! The first one we went to only had Pfizer and we needed Moderna. So we went to a different store and got right in. So far no side effects!!! It is fun driving to new places.

Next week our events start picking up again; however, they are all either Zoom, in different buildings, or language coaching so we don't have any events to attend until next Sunday's Christmas Devotional. We will actually do two events for that. We do the live one on December 5 and then we do an additional 9 languages for post recordings on December 7th. 

I hope you all were able to watch Luz de las Naciones last week. That event was recorded completely in Spanish. Our Spanish team then interpreted it into English so we could understand it.  Lluvia Campbell was the female voice. She is a good friend now. And Alejandro (Alex) Melecio was the male voice. He was also the solo singer and lead dancer in the opening scenes. Side note, his whole family performed in that number. If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it on You Tube. You won't regret it. 

We just got to shake hands with President Ballard as we arrived at Church  a little early.  His ward meets right before ours.  We attend his ward sometimes when we have an event in the middle of our meeting, but this is the first time we got close enough to exchange greetings.  

 

I hope you can all watch the Christmas Concert tonight. It is sure to be awesome.

Enjoy this Holiday Season,

Mom and Dad,

Grandma and Grandpa,

Steve and Leslee

Elder and Sister Wilcox