January 25th and before

This weekend we did not have the kids.  It is pretty quiet around here when they are not here.  But it is nice to have a weekend to recuperated from things.

Sacrament today was on the Godhead.  Brother Emmett reminded us that we can only know the truth by the Holy Ghost.  A young couple in our ward spoke.  They took their teachings from the new youth curriculum.  They were both good talks.

Sister Crawford first mentioned that we must be like Alma and ask God if the things we learn are true. She talked about the Who, What, When, Where and Why of the Godhead. The First Article of Faith States, "we believe in God the Eternal Father and in His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost".  So the Godhead is three separate beings God the Father and Jesus his son have a body of flesh and bone.  The Holy Ghost is a personage of Spirit so that he can dwell in our heart.  The when is that they are Everlasting and Eternal.  Where are the Godhead.  God himself spends his time going about in the Heaven.  Jesus works on earth as well as in heaven.  Omnipresence is achieved through the Holy Ghost.  Why do we have the Godhead, they work for the immortality and eternal life of man.  Jesus was the needed sacrifice to bring us home to our heavenly father.  The Holy Ghost will teach you all truth.

Brother Crawford talked about how the scriptures can help us to have a testimony of the true nature of the Godhead.  If we study, read the scriptures we can learn the true nature of God.  He talked about Ether Chapter 3 as an example of how the scriptures can help us to understand the nature of God.  Jared prayed to be preserved by God from the effects of confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel.  The Brother of Jared was able to see the Savior hundreds of years before he came to the earth because of his faith despite the fact Jesus was still a spirit at that time.  The scriptures also teach us that we are made in the image of God.  Moses saw God face to face, saw that we are in the similitude of our Father, saw the world and all the creations of God.  He then concluded that we are nothing compared to God.  Then he also was able to discern the difference between God and Satan because Satan has no Glory.  Joseph Smith had a similar experience.  God came to him in his glory with his son so we could know what we worship.  Doctrine and Covenants 93 talks of the things that John saw in vision and reported on the character of Christ.  In other words we must study the scriptures and keep the commandments to know the mysteries of God.

Obviously it is easier to listen and take notes when the children are not there.  We also had a great lesson in Relief Society about the power that prayer can have in our lives.  It made me realize that we needed to have more prayers as a family and with the kids and that could help with some of the problems that we face when we are together.  Larry and I say our couple prayer but we have not been so good to include Nathan and to have prayer with the kids when they come.

In the afternoon after dinner I just worked on the blog until it was caught up until the 19th.  Nathan was talking to Marcie and Larry has found You Tube Music Videos for Sunday afternoon listening.

This week was transfer week.  Tuesday we were in the office while the Williams went to feed the outgoing missionaries.  About noon I realized that a missionary that was leaving for home had ordered some name tags and I had not got them ordered.  So I had to go up to talk to him to figure out what needed to be done.  I lost a couple of things that I wrote down in Hawaii and this was one of them.  After that I went to feed Nathan before I went back to the office.  When I got back to the office Larry had gone somewhere so the office had been closed for a while.

Tuesday nights we were planning to watch Bones for a while before we went to bed. But then we remembered that it was Ward Temple Night that we had been planning for for some time.  Larry and I were headed grocery shopping when he remembered.  So we shopped faster than usual.  When we got home Nathan was talking to Marcy on the phone but we got him dressed and were still there on time.  It is an 8:00 p.m. session so we were able to make it but it gets out late also.  Every night this week we only got 6 + hours of sleep so we were pretty tired by Friday.  Usually we do not tolerate this amount of sleep well but the Lord has been blessing us to have the energy to do the work he has called us to do.

Wednesday we were responsible for feeding the missionaries coming in.  They have decided to meet for lunch at the Stone Oak Chapel for lunch as it is the closest to the Temple.   So they take the missionaries to the Temple for pictures and then they come for their late lunch.  The missionaries that come in from the Mexico MTC don't come in until about 3:40 p.m. now, so we just fix lunches for them and they eat on the way to the Alamo to pass out Book of Mormons.  We were supposed to have lunch ready for them at 2:00 p.m. but they didn't even come in until 1:30 p.m. and it took them longer at the Temple taking pictures so we ended up just sitting at the church for about and hour waiting for them to show up.

We were able to go back to the office for about an hour after they ate and we cleaned up.  We had to go and get the materials we needed for the next mornings orientation so we would have them.

We went to get the food from Blanco BBQ about 5:30 p.m. and then we headed to the president's home to get the dinner ready for 7:00 p.m.  It was really good barbecue this time and I was proud of myself that I didn't go over my points to far.  But we were late doing dishes because I didn't notice that the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes and so I basically started that and then we had washed the dishes but at least we only had 16 come in this time and not 33.

Elder Nelson with his bike

Thursday for Transfer day we have to be there about 2 hours before we usually get to the office, at 7:30 a.m. for the orientation meeting for the new missionaries.  We got up and did our usual rituals but for some reason we lost time again and we just barely made it in time for us to speak and the President, Elder Williams, Sister Williams all speak before us.  It was a rainy day and so it was crazy how wet it was that day and it was also cold for San Antonio.

Elder Presser, Elder Nelson, Sister Presser

Isaac and David and Sammy at Bingo night

One of the Elders was a missionary from Heber who had been converted by my cousin's family and lived with them for a year and now he was in the mission field.  It was fun to know we had a connection and we took a picture of him with his bike and with us so that they would know that he got here.  I posted that on Facebook. His name is Jayson Robert Nelson so when I first saw the picture I wondered if he was related to Robert Nelson in Vernal.

A worker who always brings us our sodas early with Nathan and Isaac

We attended transfer meeting at 9:00 a.m. and enjoyed that.  It was a rainy day and we found out that a missionary had parked his car in a handicap zone when he got home and had had his car towed so after that meeting Larry had to work on getting the car back and paying the fine because the Elder was transferred to Austin area.  He was very apologetic but it cost him 210.40 for the fine.  He paid Elder Presser back later.  I worked on the office work.

Maggie and Nathan

We went to lunch and then came back and worked. Nathan came to the office with us so that we could leave from there for Wounded Warrior Bingo night.  Just before we were getting ready to go home about 4:30 p.m. the transport truck came to pick up a car from Elder Presser.  I decided that he was inspired not to go to the Austin transfer meeting because he had those two things that he had to be in San Antonio to do.

David, Sammy and Larry

Thursday night we went to Bingo night with Nathan and the kids.  We had a good dinner but I ate too many desserts.  But for the first time in our time here I won a bingo game and got a prize.  I actually got a $50.00 gift card to Target so it wasn't too bad of a gift. Because I won the 2nd game and it was raining we didn't have any reason to stay because if someone in your family wins then no one else can win that night.  So we decided to go to Target and see if I could get a skirt or a blouse or something.  I couldn't find anything at the Target in Converse except a scarf but it gave us the extra hour with the kids and then we took them home.

Friday we slept in some and then didn't exercise so we could leave earlier.   We basically worked at the office that day.  Larry had to take back the van and trailer we had rented.  We looked forward to having a weekend to do what we wanted.  We realized that it was Larry's Sister's Birthday on Saturday so we decided to go to Kerrville and take her and John out to dinner for her birthday and probably for John's also because we were not so alert when it was his birthday.

Saturday we slept in until about 8:00 a.m. and then I worked on the blog until we needed to go about 3:00 p.m trying to get it caught up because I was a month behind.  Then we went to take a car to the Bulverde missionaries.  We thought that their apartment would be closer to Bulverde but it turns out is was in San Antonio just east of the temple.  We traded them cars and then we went on to Kerrville.  We hadn't planned to take Nathan because we had to drop off the car.

We had a good night talking to Judy and John.  Judy wanted to go to Billy Gene's one of our favorite places to eat in Kerrville.  Of course we had to have turtle cheesecake for dessert.  Judy and John wanted something else that they said was seasonal so they ended up having turtle cheesecake also.  We had a fun time talking with them but decided not to spend the night this time because of church and having to take Nathan.  I also wanted to finish the blog.  When we went to church and it was so inspirational I was glad we had made it back.