For the Sunday session of our stake conference, Elder Christofferson didn’t call on us to speak but he did have us stand and thanked us for our service. He assured us the Lord would put us to work when our service is finished here in Houston. That was very reassuring for Aaron. For me, I would prefer a calling were I’m not in charge. I love to share ideas that will increase faith in Jesus Christ and then help put them into action. Elder Christofferson took the time to shake the hand of every primary child and youth. I hope our boys and Jessie will treasure these experiences. They don’t come as frequent as they have for us while serving here.
We had an elder who broke his big toe and the prognosis was that he couldn’t walk on it for 6-8 weeks. He only had 10 weeks of his mission left and so it was decided it would go home to heal. Not easy for this elder to finish his mission sooner than he anticipated. We felt it was important that we do all the regular departure activities with him. We hosted him for dinner and FHE on Monday. FHE focused on preparing Zac and Bode for their seminary assessment. We had a good time laughing at some of the answers Bode wanted to use for some of the questions. His departure temple trip was scheduled for Tuesday, we joined him at the temple and then raced him to the airport.
The majority of our week was spent at the temple for our quarterly trip with the missionaries. Our missionaries were assigned by district to attend a specific session and we were blessed to have members bring them. Aaron and I returned on Wednesday to do sealings and it was a great experience. We hadn’t done them for at least four years and it was a great reminder of the covenants and blessings we will receive if we’re faithful. All in all a very successful temple trip and I love the missionaries enthusiasm and desire to be at the temple.
We had our final face to face MLC on Friday and that was a tough meeting for me. It was our 36th council and they have all been wonderful teaching opportunities and a blessing to us. We focused on Christ-like attributes that our found in effective leaders. We used the Book of Mormon and had the missionaries point out scriptures that demonstrate how leaders demonstrated a number of attributes to help them in their stewardship. Aaron decided to have the leaders plan for our upcoming district councils in June and July so they can help Pres Guthrie know what to do when he arrives. We had the assistants teach on how to weekly plan and specifically how to weekly plan for finding, something we could do every meeting. We had an extensive counsel on things we can do to help the mission including obedience, being purpose driven, using the safeguards and technology, and how to help missionaries that are discouraged. Kim taught on how to feel and recognize the Holy Ghost and the importance of listening and acting. Aaron and I will miss these opportunities to train future leaders. I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity to do it in some other way, but doing it with our zone and sister training leaders has been awesome. I feel like the group is well prepared to welcome a new mission president and they’ll be a great support to him.
The boys finished early morning seminary on Friday and we are grateful. Actually, I am thrilled beyond words. Waking the boys at 5:20 to get out the door by 6 turned into 6:10 so they were always late. This caused some cheering (nagging) on my part to get them out the door. No more early mornings, no more cheering. Yippee!
We had a good family preparation day. Aaron did an 80 mile ride. Jessie and I did a 3 mile loop on the bayou. Ha!ha! Jessie went to a birthday swimming party and the boys played Fortnite until Zac left for work. The obsession with Fortnite is crazy! They watch videos of other people playing the game. Where is the joy in that? I am in charge of two of the 5th grade senior week activities so I have been planning and gathering beach themed games for 150 students to rotate for one of the days and the other day is donuts for the kids and coffee for the teachers. That was an activity they did last year that I am carrying over. Yeah for the end of the school year!!
Have a great week!