Happy New Year! Hard to believe it’s 2018. Also that the first week has come and gone so quickly. As is usual, we don’t really know what a holiday is like around here as we welcomed in seven new missionaries on New Year’s Day. A good new group and in that group we have a new Vietnamese elder who doesn’t speak any English. As I met with him we communicated with a lot of smiles, head nods and repeating ourselves. Slowly but surely we will begin to understand each other. ;)
We had the opportunity to meet the new mission president and his wife over a Skype call this week. The reality of our departure this year has become well, all too real. Aaron setup the call to help them prepare, ask questions, and it feels like we just did a similar call with the Ashton’s. I can’t think of any other callings in the Church, with the exception of a temple president, where you meet and talk with the people who will replace you. They asked a lot of the questions you might expect regarding family, school, and logistics and we shared all that we could to help them. A lot of changes coming their way, but they’ve moved every couple of years for the last 13 years so that part of the assignment will be as normal as can be.
We held our MLC this week and reviewed our mission vision and goals for 2018. We will continue to teach repentance and baptize converts with the focus of making faith a choice. A lot of new faces in leadership, but was happy by how quickly they have embraces their purpose and role in counseling with each other. The next day, we also had a great training on the Savior’s Atonement with our new group of arriving missionaries.
To kick off the New Year, we are doing a Book of Mormon reading challenge. We will be reading it in 90 days. Through the challenge, we hope to help the missionaries focus on the doctrine of Christ, His names, His attributes, and a favorite scripture.
The weather has been absolutely freezing this week and the kids haven’t had much to do. So what's a mom to do? I broke out the puzzles. We did our BYU stadium one first and then the U of U one. Jessie has been reading the Wrinkle in Time graphic novel. She loved the style and was able to read it in 3 days. Bode had two games and continues to score and defend well. Zac got out to golf once this week and said he was as rusty as ever. Jessie was so glad her Tennis class continued through the school holiday and it was warm enough to play outdoors. It gave her something to look forward to and be active. ;) She loves to go on bike rides with me going 3 to 5 miles each time. Happy Dance for both of us! The kids go back to school on the 8th. It’s weird that they didn’t go back on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Tonight, Aaron and I have speaking assignments for the Houston Stake Conferences at the adult session. I felt impressed to speak on New Year’s resolutions, but specifically repentance and Aaron spoke on the blessing of the sacrament. Our topics complimented each other’s talk really well.