Week 29 Email Between Mom and Jon

I love my missionary!!!! I’m so excited to hear from you tomorrow! How has your week been? It was a really good week, it flew by and now I'm in the last week of the transfer. How crazy is that? How are your investigators? Theyre doing really well, the last couple days weve kind of weened out the good ones and the ones who are going to progress. How’s your companion? Hes doing super well, for a while I didn't think he liked me that much but lately we've talked about and we get along pretty well now.  What have you been studying? Lately I've been studying the book of mormon and some other principles I thought would be good to be more knowledgeable on like conversion and repentance. love Monday’s because it means I get to hear from you!!!!

Not too much to tell you about our week. The kids went back to school. I worked hard in my classes. Dad’s company had their year end on Friday so he’s gonna be super busy for a few weeks.

I got a call Wednesday that my sweet Phyllis Basham passed away. She went to sleep and never woke up. What a blessing for such a sweet old woman. I love her so much and I’m happy she is with her sweet husband now. She missed him terribly. I will go help tina dress her body tomorrow. I’ve never done anything like that before . Her funeral is Tuesday. So I have a few busy days ahead. Dad went to the temple on Wednesday and I went to the temple on Friday. It’s been amazing to make the commitment to serve in the temple more regularly. It’s not always easy and I really have to plan out my week in order to do it. But it’s such a blessing. Sounds super fun, wish I could go to the temple.  It's been a while.

Friday night our stake had a nativity display at the stake center. Our ward choir sang two Christmas songs and then the primary sang a bunch of Christmas songs. That’s why I sent the video of Jill. She sang and played ukulele with The Skousen’s daughter. They did fantastic too. The choir did as well. It was fun! Then the kids were starving and I took them to In N Out. While we were there, I had the awesome idea to do my homework “teaching” assignment with the kids right there while we were finishing our dinner. There were tons of teenagers around and here I was teaching my kids about D&C 138. It was awesome. And they were all participating. I loved it and josh mentioned later that the kids across from us were talking about going to smoke pot afterward and we were discussing the gospel. I felt like we had a little light in the world when darkness was all around us. 

Josh marched with the band in the MV Christmas parade. Jill and I went and hung with the Andrus family there. From There we went straight to the church for the ward Christmas dinner. We got there just in time to eat meat and a roll (all the other food was gone!) and the play that was thrown together was pretty much a train wreak. But James was Joseph and Telisha was Mary. And it was the sentiment that made it special. But I was happy to go home and eat afterwards .







I had a little “epiphany” today while we were listening to the Christmas devotional as a family. Here it is....
“Oh come let us ADORE Him....”

I got to thinking tonight while watching the devotional - how do we ADORE the Savior? I think most of the time we don’t think of the word ADORE in the way it is actually meant for this song.

Adore - to most people - means to regard with loving admiration or devotion and also to be very fond of. And that is good - we love the savior, are very fond of him, admire him... but that is not the first definition of the word ADORE. The first definition in the dictionary is - to worship or honor as a deity or as divine.

Did you know that? I had no idea! My feelings regarding this beautiful Christmas song have grown so much as I’ve pondered this word. I worship and honor my savior. He has blessed me more than anyone or anything else in this world can or will. And the sentence is an invitation - “Oh come let US adore him!” Happy #lighttheworld to you!!! What plans do you have for this week? We are having a ward family night tommorow to introduce then light the world event which is super great. We need to make a family plan - any ideas for us? To be honest idk, you could follow the documents the church came out with or pray about it and do a family night on it.

I’m so excited for stake conference next weekend!!!!!! I can’t tell you what a joy it is to go to stake conference. It is my absolute favorite besides general conference. And I get to hear your dad speak and Elder Hallstrom speak. It will be the best! And I get a break from crazy nursery. We had 17 kids today and it was me trina and Wendy crippen. I just about lost my mind. I had to go into the bathroom and mop up the sweat all over me - I’m seriously not lying. It was CRAZY!!!!! I came home and took a shower - yes I did! It was that bad! Made dinner immediately so we ate at like 3-3:30 and sat on the couch the rest of the night with the family. It has been a great Sunday being together. And we ate banana split Sundays for dinner/dessert. Awesome. Day.

Ok - I’ll send this one off and look forward to hearing from you. Rebecca invited me to go to the airport to see Adam come home next Wednesday. I’m so freaking excited to hug him!!!! How can it be two years already?! It will be the next best thing to hugging you because he reminds me of you 

I love you so much and pray for you every single day! I can’t wait to hear from you.
All my love!!! Mom 🥰🥰🥰love you too!! Excited to talk to you and talk at Christmas!