Family Reunion

"God is having a family reunion and I'm helping." This is one of the several signs that are up around where the missionaries congregate. I like the idea that we are here doing work to help with what will be a great reunion.

We had another great week working on the Tongan project. One thing that we have learned is to take things as they come. We spent a day working on the format that we had decided on just to come in the next day and find that our supervisor had felt that some changes needed to be made. We had to agree that the changes made the postings much better for people who will be using them so we spent another day changing and fixing the 90 records we had done the day before. Under other circumstances we might have been frustrated, but it feels so different when you are doing work for the Lord. We want to be sure that what we do, the offering we make, is the best it can be. It actually felt good to go back and improve what we had done the day before.

The weather has been so glorious! We have only had two rainy days since we have been here. People keep commenting to us about how warm it is, but we are loving this wonderful weather, cooling off at night and beautiful sunny skies during the day. We have seen the wind pick up on a couple of days and it has been interesting to watching the clouds move quickly across the valley. It has also made for some spectacular sunsets. We love walking around Temple Square and seeing and smelling the flowers. Early in the morning we have been watching the crews put the Christmas lights up. It takes a long time to put that many tiny lights on these big trees. The crews we see in the big trees are at least 4 people on lifts. It takes a couple of weeks to complete one tree because I think they only work early in the morning and not when the Square gets busy. I am sad that we will lose the wonderful foliage and flowers, but I am looking forward to the lights for the holiday.

Last night the crowds of women were here to attend the Relief Society General Meeting. I went to watch the meeting with my mother at her condo and as I was driving out of our parking lot I had a slight taste of what it will be like next weekend for General Conference. What traffic! Both before and after! I had no idea that there are buses of people coming. Who rents the buses? One of our missionaries told us of walking down Main Street toward the conference center in the same direction as the crowd of women and hearing two men who were obviously not LDS comment about all the women here in SLC. His friend said, "Yeah and they're all good looking too!" That was in contrast to another missionary's experience at the exit desk last year during the Priesthood session. After watching all the men in suits walking toward the Conference Center a woman came up to her and asked, "Do you let women into your church?" But, the meeting was wonderful as always and there was much to think about.

There is so much to be grateful for these days. I watch the sun set and I am so grateful that we are lucky enough to be here in this place and have this view and have plenty of room. I feel blessed to have a washer and dryer in our apartment. I feel so blessed that we have such a short walk to work. I am grateful I can walk!

Today in our Sacrament Meeting a Sister missionary spoke about her first mission which was to Mississippi. She arrived just before Katrina hit. She described the devastation of the people but recalls the many people who came to help from many parts of the country. Church members were called the chain saw gangs. They went wherever there was a need. People lived in the church buildings as long as they needed to. One woman who had 12 feet of water in her house was telling Sister MacDonald about how blessed she felt because hers was the only house on her street that still had a roof. Perspective is everything, isn't it?