Perceptive, Authentic, Team-building, Resourceful, Imaginative, Collaborative, Kind

Perceptive

Authentic

Team-building

                     

                  

Resourceful

             

Imaginative                          

Collaborative

Kind

Remember sharing the magic of Amy's dollhouse and fun crafts to occupy sisters many hours?

                                                    

                             

 

 

Ever the  courteous host, Patrick can not only fix a broken suitcase, but makes a wonderful tour guide,
 tolerant of Lanae's penchant to be a predictable game winner.

 

Glad we are, to know Patrick!  

Happy Returns...love, 

your family

Home again, home again, Jiggity Jig!

Home for one week:  Monday we were released by President (and Sister) Ocampo

                                Our neighbors scooped us up and whisked us out the door 

We must have left at least eight boxes outside poor Gomez's door.  (Thank you for helping us!)

                        Sister Valle was working, but made sure to call, so we knew we were thought of.

                     Brother Caceres lugged our Guatemala boxes to the front office...he gets the freight award.

Sister and Brother Peterson printed lists, then gathered and shoehorned papers and me, out the door, as I contemplated making one last picture back up that said it would take an hour...no time for lingering now!

Brother and Sister Caceres shared baleadas on Sunday and stories about their family of 11 children.  

Brother Torres brought his truck, promising us that they will come see us in Guatemala (at least 8 hours north and west.)

One last look at the [T]orres (or steeple) of the temple

Now we know why they scrub the sidewalks so carefully Mondays.

President Ocampo had to see us (and the garbage) out.

We were interviewed by our stake president and got a picture in front of the stake picture board of 113 missionaries...4 couples.   

Missions bring blessings.  Our lives are enriched!

My favorite part of our airport arrival  came when our 3 year old grandson William asked his mom..." Where are Grandma and Grandpa going to sleep?" 

"They are coming home with us to Grandma Lolly's house."  (In case you have not heard, I am Grandma Lolly.) When he heard this, he did a dance.  

We have had Kix cereal, and played hide and seek and given one baby bath and three diaper changes.  Life is good.

Part of our heart is still in Honduras...but we are stronger for what we have learned and who we have loved...and your prayers and support have been an appreciated part of this. 

This is what waited outside a closed door, singing "Three little ducks!"

We walked into the full swing of preparations for a wedding

 and sealing of my nephew David Scott and his fiance Francesca.

Because some of our friends were busy (or far away) during our Sacrament meeting report, we will try to share in writing. Val and I were given the topic of applying October 2014 conference.  Val shared stories of temple friends, and touched on President Uchtdorf's talk "Is it I?"  I wanted to share more stories...but only had 10 minutes, so more stories will follow.  Here is the essence of my talk, after expressing appreciation to David Scott and Francesca for inviting us to be part of their special day, so that nearly all of our brothers and sisters could be present.  I started out by sharing what we would hear in most of the meetings we would attend:  The opening prayer would include "Gracias por estar aqui"  which I would take personally, as our friends would call us "Estar Aqui."

I will title my talk:  "Scouting out the Good, for Better, and Best"

             Thinking of our food scientist daughter, master of food making, I will ask you, if you have ever been in the kitchen, cleaning or working and picked something up with out knowing it, tasted it, and wondered, "What was that?  It sure was tasty!  Wanting more," it is time to retrace your steps to find it!

In the wake of a glorious worldwide conference, broadcast to a church of 15 million, translated into 94 languages,...we have been invited to cast our minds back ... (Doctrine and Covenants 6:22) We have been invited with ancient Central American people (3 Nephi 17: 3) to "go  unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand."

I am pondering a talk by Elder Carlos A. Godoy about "understanding who we are, why we are here, and what the Lord expects from us in this life." I remember that Moses and Joseph Smith and Jeremiah spoke with the Lord.  He called them by name and told them He had work for them to do. 

This painting was in our guest house

God knows my name and has a job for me.   I prepared before our mission, learning Spanish, a little, and learning organ.  I did not fully anticipate having the blessing of teaching or stretching in various ways.  This summer, when given opportunity to play for Sacrament Meeting, Val was speaking about Christ as a perfect leader.  I had earlier been asked by our President Ocampo to teach his daughter and granddaughter organ--there is one LDS organ in all of Honduras, two of us who played--and I was invited.   
As I taught Gina and Rebecca 
from the BYU organ lessons from lds.org I came across a quote from President Hinckley-- " Don’t be a scrub! Rise to the high ground of excellence. "  I didn't want to be a scrub.  So, rather than choose a song I could play without practicing, I worked hard to polish arpeggios of an arrangement of  "As I Have Loved You." It is a piece I had put on hold to learn for years during my lessons with Pamela Davies. 

Planted on the wooden bench, a  Saturday evening just before the Sunday to play, I worked to calm down the unpredictable chords, and it grew late.  As the activity of youth and children in our church building diminished, I saw our young bishop sweeping the chapel floor.  Everyone was going home, as his four children went out the door with their busy mom, who held three callings and taught music privately and in a school.  The young father pushed a broom along the tiles and under each pew of the chapel to remove dust or litter to prepare a special place for a meeting of "La Santa Cena" the last supper--or Sacrament Meeting--the next morning. 

 My mind cast back several decades to remember my dad, the father of four and then five, cleaning in an Elk's and a Knights of Pythias Hall from remains of Saturday evening festivities, to prepare a special place to remember the Savior.

Playing bits and pieces again and again brought home to me the idea of what happens as we try to find in our lives a "sacred space"  as we participate in sacraments and ordinances.

I played the notes and the words sang through:

"Now there were in that upper chamber,

Jesus and his disciples;

There to eat at the supper of the Passover,

e'er the end should come."

What was the "end"? Thinking of the difficulty and drama of Christ's final night with his friends as he culminated a life of correct but hard choices, from Bethlehem to Nazareth to Galilee to Golgatha,

                   Bethlehem                             flight to Egypt

loving the children

 growing in wisdom                 declaring his ministry 


                                                                                                             

Bearing one another's burdens

serving without regard to status 

suffering without complaint

it hit my heart, that Jesus Christ's choice to walk through the atonement was an "ordinance" that no other mortal has been required to pass through.    I learned that as we work to do His will, whisperings of truth penetrate into our doings to teach us more of the doctrine--the whys of what we are trying to do.

For me "the end"(at least for that weekend) was to learn the piece and play (without a major disaster) to complement Val's talk about Jesus as a leader.  

I remembered Alma 34:14 that talks of all things pointing to that great and last sacrifice:  (..."behold, this is the whole meaning of the law, every whit pointing to that great and last sacrifice; and that great and last sacrifice will be the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal" ) and decided that every good thing that we offer through work to build his kingdom can parallel in a small way this "great sacrifice."  

But as I rehearsed the notes, I recognized that there are other ends--ends of doing a good job in a calling, being  good friend, understanding a different language, reaching out to our children. 

Preparing Family Night this month, I learned in a 2009 conference talk by Elder David Bednar, that as we attend to temple covenants, we can be more than just willing, (like we promise in  partaking of the sacrament)  but we can actually take upon us the name of the Savior, as we come to "honorably hold a name and a standing"-- by offering vicarious ordinances to others. 

It is possible to lift where we stand--but at least for me, in the standing,  sometimes we question our own abilities.  Learning a new language I thought about my dad. The summer before he passed,  Dad shared a story about being discouraged with a new job.  When he requested a father's blessing.  His father told him amazing things about his future, about  his career.  My father confessed that "I couldn't believe what my father told me, but I did believe that my father believed in me."  Dad went back to work, and things got better.  In time, each of the promises were fulfilled.

When Val and I left for our mission to Honduras, we heard from a stake president that we would blessed in learning and remembering the language, we would be blessed with health, each of our family and more would be there to greet us when we returned home--and we would feel closer to our family when we were away from them than when we were home.  I  hardly dared believe it could be true. 

But as we walked through the mechanics of trying to "do his will...we learned of the doctrine."   For the most part, we grew to overcome language barriers.  We had good health.  Each member of our family and more has waited to greet us. 

  

We feel closer to our family.  And we feel closer to one another. We are learning that in order to get something done, it is good to be one.

Acknowledging with Elder Godoy that "the people we love are affected,"  we hope to express our gratitude to family members and others who loved our mothers, our children, our grandchildren, and weeded our yard.  We want to say thanks for each measure of support that we have received.

What I did not hear in intial promises is how we would feel towards the wonderful people with whom we served:

Then Jesus looked in their faces,

And unto them he spake:

As I have loved you, love one another.

This new commandment, love one another.

By this shall men know ye are my disciples,

If ye have love one to another.

In a book full of parting notes compiled by our temple matron, my neighbor upstairs wrote to me:  "No one here will ever forget you!  You truly are a "flipitijipit" and may have been caught with "curlers in your hair" more than once, but you always prevail and leave a trail of smiles in your wake."   I may be the only obrera, or sister temple worker, who danced in the dressing room or counted to "cuatro" over and over dressing, trying to beat Superman in changing fast-- ("Superobrera!") making faces and charades to get my message across (yes, family night charades can have many uses!),...whatever happened to make them love me, I do not know.

But I believe the scripture: 1 John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us..  

First or last--

Ivy and one of our temple friends

As Val and I left Honduras, separated by an unruly escalator, feeling somewhat disgruntled and alone, I passed a glass wall to see my piano student Ivy passing a note through a crack in the window.  

After removing shoes and everything metal, being, stumbling through customs (Val's one pound weights are looking suspicious!) enduring nearly a full day of travel wear and tear, we finally arrived at home.  The next day unpacked to find and open Ivy's letter to read of her appreciation-- for my friendship, for working together to help her certify in the temple, to learn to hold her fingers on the piano, and to invite her to celebrate the sealing of Maria Ligia, our Nicaraguan friend.

The mission--"It was good, it was good, it was very very good!"

But having served as one of a total of five sister workers in our temple on more than one occasion, I can testify  that "the  harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: [we are praying with]  the Lord of the harvest, that he [will] send forth labourers into his harvest".Luke 10:2

For any considering missions or  greater involvement in family history work or temple work [or doing something different or challenging,  in helping to build the Lord's kingdom]...first hear that you are needed.  A quote from President Hinckley may fit here:  ..."Bring with you all the good that you have, and then let us see if we can add to it...” (meeting, Nairobi, Kenya, 17 Feb. 1998).

In Preach My Gospel,  we learn that the gift of tongues is not magic.  Mastering a new language (or any calling)  takes study and practice (You might "just feel a little pinch!") but the words  "added upon" are real.  Our labors will added upon by spiritual gifts....we receive "grace ... after all we can do."

After looking for that something that tasted good in the kitchen and in conference, as we work to add sacred space to our lives, let us ponder and learn the work that Heavenly Father has for each one of us to do.  As we magnify it, we can grow from good to better to best.  I testify that each of our lights can grow brighter and brighter until the perfect day, in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

So, to keep my promise (the best part is the story!) 
Here is a set of our friends we have with name Godoy.  Brother Godoy recently became a sealer in the temple, to bind and seal families, children, couples who wanted to be married forever.  Brother Godoy told me how they became members of the church.  A long time ago, their second son was run over by a car.  He was close to death.  Sister Godoy told me that she was not interested in hearing what the missionaries had to tell her.  But because when they brought their little boy to the hospital, he contracted three diseases, and she was so worried that he might not live, she told her Heavenly Father, that she would listen to the missionaries if He would spare her son.  She did listen.  Her son lived. 

 Now their whole family is actively giving to their community, their church, and all around, as they serve in the temple. 

 It is her daughter Vicky Arely, who I was able to help last November with their children's singing program. Vicky's  husband, President Torres grew up in the church, as the son of a woman who took the missionary discussions from football star Steve Young's brother.  This Elder Young was very discouraged and was about to return home. When President Torres' mother had a dream where she was told to read the Book of Mormon, she asked Elder Young to teach her the gospel, and was baptized.  Elder Young stayed on his mission, and her son, Jose Torres now presides over the Guaymuras Stake, a stake extremely involved in family history...They have indexed and researched their own family names and brought hundreds of names with the youth to do baptisms.  

Paul (with Gloria) our favorite family history guru

Val's brother Paul, who works for the Church in Indexing, says the research shows that it doesn't matter which you begin with--indexing, tracing and sourcing your family on Family Tree, or taking names to the temple--they all work together to help set a person, a ward, and a stake on fire, so it is hard to hold them back.

What Uncle Laurence told me Saturday and Steven showed me Sunday are features with Family Tree where during a commercial break on your ipad, you can use the descendancy view of the Family Tree on Familysearch.org to trace the children and grandchildren of an ancestor.  (See below..check "descendancy view")

Then, following the descendants down (see below) 

 you look to the right for the brown icon which offers research hints (such as census records which you can click on to follow and connect with your ancestor to "source" them for others) 

or you can press research suggestions (blue icon, which give you ideas of what might be good to look for as you are sourcing your family members--see this example...this person is over 15 with no spouse or children.)  Looking through census records or military records or death records, there might be a spouse or child and it could be added.

We have not had much TV time, so I am guessing our "sourcing" will not happen during commercial breaks...but we are liking our descendancy view..

namely our children and grandchildren ... hope to keep you updated.  

Much love

Laurene and Val