Make the Days Count

I’m taking advantage of a little downtime to post another blog. I can’t believe how fast the weeks and months pass! Here’s what happening in our part of the world:

Elder baptized Jose on December 17. We found out that the week Jose attended our ward, it was fast Sunday and Elder had introduced us to the ward and born his testimony. It was during that testimony that Jose decided he wanted to get baptized and he wanted Elder to do it. Elder was happy to be involved. Here they are with the two sets of sisters who taught him.

The week before Christmas was very busy with lots of activities:

Monday morning we went back to our favorite park for a walk around the lake.

I discovered a tree seeming to grow sideways. (Can you see me in it?)

Monday night was a Mission Office dinner for all senior couples and office workers. Fun!

Thursday night we went caroling with some ward members and other missionaries.

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Friday night we went caroling with our district of missionaries—in the rain and wind and it felt cold!

Saturday was a Mission Christmas Devotional complete with an ugly sweater contest.

Sunday we had 4 sister missionaries over for Christmas dinner and two of them used our computer to talk to their family.

In between all these activities, we had about 15 appointments with members, plus baked and delivered 15 bags of star cookies.

I just need to remember to take more pictures of the members we are working with—I’ll make it a new year’s resolution.

The week after Christmas saw our daughter from Las Vegas and her whole family come for a visit. We packed a lot into those two days!

We visited the Getty Center and loved the views!

We also loved the snuggles!

We played at the park.

We played games back in our apartment.

We celebrated Andrew’s 9^th birthday!

We went to the beach and dug holes,

played football and Frisbee,

took a walk to the pier, made awesome sandballs

and tried to keep warm.

We went to see the lights at the LA Temple.

Thanks so much for coming! It was great to see you all!

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve, and have since made a few changes to our apartment.

The Tree of Lights is now a Heart of Lights with the same 15 grandkids’ pictures inside.

We rearranged the furniture in our living room to accommodate our new little pico projector—our Christmas gift to each other.

In Delhi, there was a flat screen TV in each senior couple apartment. Here, the other MLS couple brought theirs from home. Sometimes it’s nice to watch something a little bigger than a laptop.

Rather than buy a TV we would just leave here, we decided to buy a little projector to watch on our wall. We love it! But sharing the one chair was getting old, so we moved the couch and chair around so now we can both sit on the couch and watch whatever we are streaming from our computer.

We are systematically trying to find everyone in the directory and are finding lots that have moved 3-4 years ago. But just last week we found a mom and 2 grown kids that had been baptized 12 years ago and inactive for most of that. We had a nice visit, showed a short video from lds.org, and the 24 year old son was close to tears. We asked what he was feeling, and he shared that his mind had been flooded with memories of what it was like when they had gone to church and that maybe he needed to come back. We invited him to come on Sunday and he said maybe (he didn’t make it). But they did make another appointment for this week. It’s a start. We are working with several who say they are ready to come back, but change is hard sometimes. It takes time and effort but is definitely worth it!

Know that we are very busy and have tons to do before we leave in a few short months which are going to whiz by just as fast as the last few. I like the saying, “Don’t count the days. Make the days count.”