Family Temple Session and Farewell

August 20, 2012

On Saturday we met most of our children, our mothers, our sisters and our brothers-in-law, and some cousins and nieces and nephews at the Mt. Timpanogoes temple for the three o’clock session.  It was so wonderful to be all together in the temple.  I think there were 32 of us there.  We had a very large prayer circle.  It was a special moment, and it was so sweet being together in the Celestial Room.  Then we enjoyed some wonderful food that everyone had helped with at our home.   It left us with a great spirit to begin our Sabbath Day with and it’s a memory that I will always cherish.

                On Sunday, all of our children and grandchildren were there, even Rhett who surprised us and made it home from Oklahoma, and our mothers, siblings and spouses and nieces and nephews and cousins and so many wonderful friends met us at sacrament meeting.  As Bob and I sat on the stand and watched so many coming in, old friends, new friends, school friends, BYU friends, it was overwhelming.  During the sacrament song which was, I Stand All Amazed , we started to weep.  At first I was borrowing Bob’s hankie, but he needed it, and I had to reach up on the pulpit for tissues.  Seeing him so emotional made it even harder for me.

                We have known the counselor, Noah McKinnon, who conducted the meeting since he was born, and he said some very nice things about us.  A new Sister Missionary, Julie Schneider, spoke before us.  We have known her for a long time also.  She is a triplet, and has one sister out all ready, and the other one also has her call. 

                When I got up to speak, I talked about how powerful the feeling was during the sacrament, and I believed it was because I felt so much love coming from the audience.  Many of them were in tears as well.  Our talks went well.  The spirit was great, and we had a wonderful day visiting with our family and many friends during the day.  I am ready to go.  But we still have two weeks to go and many fun things to do and packing to finish.  I send our love to all who were there to love and support us, and to those who couldn’t be there as well.

Looking up "Guyana"

We have read books, newspaper articles, and a magazine article on Guyana in preparation to our going.  In the interior of Guyana are giant river otters that grow to be 7 feet long.  The ones I googled looked much smaller and a little more gentle.  Sappingtons told us that the whole world is trying to keep Guyana pristine and a rain forest.

Preparations

On July 20 we went to St. George to visit Ed and Linda Sappington.   They returned from serving with the Perpetual Education Fund and Employment Resources in Guyana in June.   We think we are going to replace them.  They are lovely people and were so helpful.  They talked non-stop for two days trying to answer all our questions and tell us all about what to expect in Guyana.  They told us to be "Careful and Not Fearful" and to LOVE the people.  We enjoyed our time together so much.  They are still answering our questions regularly and we are so grateful.

We have been back to the Perpetual Education Fund service center in the church office building to volunteer and learn more every time we go.  This next week we are going to go to Education Week at BYU.  We plan to take a Family Search class there.  We are supposed to be familiar with Family Search and be able to help the Guyanese people learn about it.




We stopped at the Family History Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building when we were with Bob's cousin, Kaylynn and her husband David Arnell.  We had fun finding out a few things about Bob's ancestors.
We have spent a lot of time this week working on our sprinkler system and getting our yard in shape.  We are also trying to downsize and make room for Ruth and Nate and Scout to move in upstairs.  Rhett and Jan, Ruston, Annie, and Lindsay are going to stay in the basement.  We found a bunch of old treasures and gave the kids and grandkids monopoly money and we had an auction.  The grandkids were excited!  I don't think the parents were quite as excited:).

We have a book of lists, and although we have crossed off a gazillion things, the list is still getting longer.  We have been busy every day.  The time is going faster and faster.

Less than a month - oh man, will we ever be ready?

It seems like every day we work on getting ready to go.  Last week we spent parts of  two days at the PEF Center at Church Headquarters and also went to the county jail twice to get fingerprints.  Security is about as tight at both places, but the atmosphere is at opposite hemispheres.  We never realized how many things, especially paper, that we had saved over the years.  Did we not ever throw a receipt away?