Week of November 22, 2015

Sunday we attended the Tabernacle Choir broadcast. It is amazing to be sitting in the tabernacle and hear them sing live. Afterward we walked around the nativity display and took pictures of the decorations and the temple. It will be beautiful when they turn the lights on. At church a lady walked through the building pulling a suitcase with a broken wheel. The branch president visited with her briefly. It sounded like he was offering to get her a suitcase that didn’t have a broken wheel.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Apparently, she comes through every week, probably trying to get some warmth or a break from the outside. There are so many people we see every day with piles of their stuff. It is sad.

Monday we attended the first session of our zone inservice meeting that is held once a month. Part of it was a presentation by the man in charge of FamilySearch talking about the system and what they are doing. It was amazing the scope and the growth of FS. I was in awe of everything going on and the plans in the works.

Nativity at Temple Square

Wise Men and Shepherds in Nativity

We met with our zone leader just before lunch to discuss our assignment. He introduced us to Elder and Sister Newton who are the assistant zone leaders working in the Family History Library doing continuing training. We will be working in the library doing more training for the missionaries assigned there. After each group completes the two week training we just had, they have 4 more days of additional training if they are assigned to the library. We will also teach enrichment classes to missionaries on various subjects to assist in their work and classes for missionaries that are going home to make sure they are prepared to help with family history when they get home. Leaders tend to call our missionaries to be family history consultants and some don’t work in family history areas here, so we give them a crash course to help them. This will be a great opportunity and I’m looking forward to it. I’m sure we’ll learn a ton. It will also make it easier to do our own work since we will already be at the library.

After lunch we went to the library to join our class and take a tour of the library. In the meantime we had received permission to travel home for Thanksgiving since the zone wasn’t working during the holiday. All the missionaries are given half a day a week to do personal research and the training zone doesn’t get those when they are training new missionaries. They take their research days all in one week and most of them were leaving town.

Tuesday we were up early so we could be at the temple for the 7 am session. We left immediately afterward and arrived early in Las Vegas.

During Thanksgiving we took time with our family to reflect on our blessings. We have so much to be thankful for. I am grateful for family, for the gospel, for the opportunities we have been given, for the opportunity to serve this mission and the opportunity to come home, for the abundance we have been blessed with. Even things that on the surface appear to be trials and challenges usually turn out to be blessings as we look back on them. I know the Lord is blessing us very generously.

Saturday we returned to Utah. We had good weather most of the way with only a few snow flurries for a short time. We stopped at my sister’s home to pick up some things and grab a bite to eat. We came out of the restaurant we it was snowing. It made us a little anxious. We left immediately for Salt Lake. The weather cleared as we drove north, and the roads were clear, but it was really cold. We thoroughly enjoyed being home and being with family, but we were glad to be back.