The Pinnacle

 

         The morning sun on the Bountiful Temple

It was a glorious sight to see the statue of Moroni lit up with the morning sun this past Tuesday, February 7th. (The picture doesn't even do it justice.) It was like a sign for us of the pending experience to come. Like many of you who went this week, we thrilled at the clarifying changes we heard that morning in the temple ceremony. We felt deep in our hearts that the Lord Jesus Christ is preparing a people to be ready for His imminent arrival. The Bridegroom is coming for his Bride, (the church) and Elder Dunlap and I truly want to be wise virgins, ready with oil brimming in our lamps. The time is NOW to get to the temple! We encourage all of you to get there, get ready to get there, or get ready to get back there, whatever your case may be. It is GO TIME! Soon there will be no middle ground to rest on. We feel that our focus on the temple has been the pinnacle of our experiences here these last 3 months in the Headquarters Mission before we leave to India and one of the main purposes of our time here. Knowing we won't have this blessing soon, we have taken full advantage of being within a 1/2 hour drive of 5 temples, the Bountiful Temple only 15 minutes away. We've been motivated to find our ancestors like never before and offer them the opportunity to be a part of the First Resurrection. (It's a long time to wait for the 2nd!). Many of the names we reserved will expire during our time in India so this has also been a huge motivation for us, even though the expiration date keeps moving forward, for now. At some point, they'll go back to public domain. Just look at some of these great names of people and dates we've found on our lines! 

I've loved saying Fergusa MacErk's name with a proper Scottish brogue during the time I've done her work. I hope to meet her someday and learn about her life in Scotland in the 700s. You too can find these names in your own ancestral lines. A click and search rescue mission, so to speak.

We had some fun visitors at the library this week. My sister Laurel and her husband Tom came to check out the place and see if it would be a good fit for her. She's been giving tours at The Beehive House for many years but it is soon to close for renovations so she is scoping out her options for another service mission. There are no bad options when it comes to serving a mission and we know she'll find just the right one that matches her talents and experience. Good going Lolly!

On our late Thursday evening shift, I received a blast from my past. A gal came in that looked just like my post-college/pre-mission-days best friend Miriam. We both looked at each other with that quizzical look. "Mir, is that you?" Well, I wasn't too far off, it was her sister Annie that looks so much like her! It had been decades since I'd seen Annie. We had such a great visit, remembering our past and what we remembered of each other and a "Heinz57 catchup" of where our lives were now. Peanut and Bingo are all grown up! (That's the nicknames of her children I remembered somehow.) She was able to put me in contact with her sister Mir who I'd lost touch with when we moved to St George and it was so fun to remember again The Starlight Mint Chalet, Ponkies, Porkers, Licorice Allsorts, and many other things that wouldn't make a lick of sense to anyone else!

A happy reconnection

The group of Visa Waiters waxes and wanes through the weeks we've been here. We've seen many of them come and go. We and the Schramms (Norway) who got here the same day from the MTC are now the Senior VeeDubs. The Thurstons (Pakistan) have been here almost as long and they are so good about hosting FHEs, Sunday after-fast Pot Lucks, etc. for the gang. This picture also shows the newest arrivals~ The Oswalds (Peru) and the Jex's (New Zealand) We enjoy being in the same building as all these couples with the Oswalds right next door. It feels a little like college dorm living!

Classic VWs

I saw where the BYU International Folkdancers were performing for Winterfest at the Conference Center Theater on March 11th.  I adore folk dancing more than just about anything in the world; the music itself, the costumes, the cultural underpinnings of the movement. And how can you resist when all you have to do is walk across the street to see them? So we bought some tickets to give us something to look forward to next month. No sooner did we purchase them than that very day a few hours later we received an email letting us know our visas were submitted and received at the Embassy in Washington DC and are being processed. Yahoo!!! The email also said that in 2022 the return of the visas took anywhere from 20-63 days with the average time being 37 days. When we got out the calendar and counted 37 days from the 26th, that put us at March 4th, a very apt day to march forth to our appointed calling.  Yikes, now we have 2 reasons to be excited about March! We shall see if we have to give our tickets away or if we'll still be around. There are many missionaries who said they'd love to use them so we're not too worried about that. Isn't the timing of that too crazy? If we had read the email first we surely wouldn't have bought the tickets but maybe it will all work out. But that email gave us a lot of hope and reassurance that we are not going to have to apply again and India is just weeks away from becoming a reality. Hang with us! It's getting closer!