Temple Trip

We had a fabulous day at the St. Louis Temple yesterday with 24 of our 50 youth attending for Baptisms for the Dead. They did approximately 240 names. I heard several people talk about various temples they have attended and about past Youth Temple Trips. My youth was rather boring since we traveled 30 minutes for our temple trips. I heard of people traveling 8 hours to go to Dallas or Chicago once a year. Our ward had the added blessing this year of going twice to St. Louis.

As a leader, those trips to Dallas or Chicago would take a lot of commitment to take two days away from your family, spend a night in a motel keeping track of all your youth, and the 16 hours of driving round trip. Kudos to these dedicated youth leaders who sacrificed so much to fulfill their callings. A one day trip to St. Louis and back seems such a small comparison, not that I'm complaining, just comparing the differences that members face around the globe.

We had planned for all of us to attend, but because of Chris' broken foot, Mike stayed home and took care of our boy. I was sad about that because I wanted all of us to be in the temple together. But, I came home to a sparkling clean house and the laundry all done. I have the best husband! Even though our men couldn't attend the temple with Nayna and I, we can be comforted with the knowledge that our family is eternal, no matter where we go or what happens to us in this life.

I remembered a talk that touched me deeply called "Steadfast and Immovable" by Silvia Alred at the last Relief Society General Broadcast where she related this story:

Soon after my husband was called to preside over the Paraguay Asunción Mission in 1992, we attended a branch conference in an isolated community in the Paraguayan Chaco. We traveled four hours on a paved road and then seven more hours on a primitive road. The perils and discomfort of the long trip were soon forgotten when we greeted the happy and welcoming members of Mistolar.

Julio Yegros was the young branch president, and he and his wife, Margarita, were one of the few families who had been sealed in the temple. I asked them to share their experience of their trip to the temple.

At the time, the closest temple was the Buenos Aires Temple in Argentina. The trip from Mistolar required 27 hours one way to reach the temple, and they had gone with their two small children. It was in the middle of a very cold winter, but with much sacrifice they made it to the temple and were sealed together as an eternal family. On the way back, the two babies got very sick and died. They buried them along the way and returned home empty-handed. They were sad and lonely but amazingly felt comforted and peaceful. They said of the experience: “Our children were sealed to us in the house of the Lord. We know we will have them back with us for all eternity. This knowledge has given us peace and comfort. We have to remain worthy and faithful to the covenants we made in the temple, and then we will be reunited with them.”

Giving Thanks

Every year I usually list all the things I am thankful for in an effort to recognize my blessings, more, recognize Heavenly Father's hand in my life, and have a more positive attitude. While I love doing that each year, this year felt like something else was needed...a change...in my thinking, attitude, and behavior.

I prepared two Young Women lessons this month, one on Attitude and one on Giving Thanks. Both lessons were profoundly personal for me as I recognized areas I need to improve...still! After years of working on myself, especially my attitude, I can still see so much room for improvement that it sometimes gets very discouraging. So discouraging that I feel overwhelmed and dissatisfied with myself as a person.

The Challenge
I decided to challenge myself with a new Thanksgiving tradition...to be thankful for people and not just a list of things (which often included people). The list of things is a great starting point, but I felt that my focus was on little things sometimes, which are important to recognize as well, but I think for me, I needed to focus on the people I am thankful for and the relationships in my life.

So, I embarked on a plan to give thanks for various people in my life. This has worked so-so...it has been more challenging than I thought. It is easy to be thankful for things, they are easy to list, but how do I show gratitude for people? I realized I needed to be more vocally thankful for individuals in my life.

So, thanks peeps! I am so thankful for my core family (pictured above), my extended family, all of our friends, our ward family, and our homeschooling friends. We have so many friends from former wards that we love and miss!

This year as we embarked on the Missouri Adventure, it has been very apparent to me that what I miss the most from Arizona is the people we love that we left behind. I do not miss the desert, but we very much miss our family and friends.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Botanical Garden Fieldtrip

We had the opportunity to go to the Grand Opening of the local botanical garden. Everything was free and we had a great time with some of our friends. We went into the butterfly house, which is about to be closed. I'm sure late Spring, early Summer will be a better time to return. We saw three era's of homes, two log cabins and one wood home. They had hands-on things to do like grind corn. My favorite was the Japanese Stroll Garden with their beautiful ponds full of huge Koi! It was the perfect day to see these with the changing of Fall. Gotta enjoy the weather while we can.

Learning My Place

We moved to Missouri because we felt strongly that this is where the Lord wants us to be. That has not made it easier, however. In fact, I wonder what I'm supposed to be doing here most of the time. I was told today at church that maybe I just have not "learned my place" yet. I was a bit caught off guard by that because a few people over the past week have also remarked to me how different they find the church to be here compared to where they moved from. One is from Tennessee, another from Utah, and another from Oregon. So what do all these places have in common? I was especially surprised that the woman from Tennessee found the church to be so different here.

I'm not even sure that the change that is needed is in the church, maybe I am the one who needs to change. Some things here are by-the-book but most things are the spirit-of-the-law. I've been noticing lots of differences, the most being the lack of commitment. The same five families do most of the work it seems, which is very sad. Then I started to realize that maybe the reason the same five families do everything is because they do not LIKE how anybody else would do them.

I've come to realize that I do have a purpose here and that any change will be slow in coming - both in me and in the circumstances. As I drove home from church today, I had 30 minutes to ponder what had happened at church today. I realized that I had already been thinking about the solution during sacrament meeting, before anything had even come to the surface. I still need to stand tall as an example on moral and ethical standards that are universal to the church regardless of culture. Even if that does not make me popular or well liked. How I go about doing this is still unclear, but hopefully the Lord will provide me with that knowledge along the way.

My last thought was that culture is important. I thought about The Other Side of Heaven when the missionary gets to the islands and realizes that many of his efforts are ineffective to the local populace. He adapts his style and proves he is "one of them", making his teaching effective.

The question is then...what is the answer? Do I need to change to the local culture or does the current thinking here need to change? Since this area seems to be different even than other mid-west states it makes me wonder...

Pumpkin Daze

"It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!"

The winning pumpkin weighed 1092 lbs. and took up the entire bed of this full size Ford truck.

Standing in Main Street, USA

Our community in the Ozarks has a ton of things to do each weekend. There are a lot of events going on...some free...some not free...making it fairly easy to decide which events we might be able to attend. ;-) Our city had their annual Pumpkin Daze today so we decided to check it out this morning before conference started. I thought there might be more festivities, but there are less than 9,000 people in our city, so what can we expect. There was some fun things for kids and the live music was pretty awesome. It was crowded but we made our way up and down Main Street to check it all out.

Mike and Celeste

The Invisible Scarecrow

More Pumpkins that weighed in

It was a fabulous day to spend some time outdoors. I feel Fall a comin'! Hopefully the leaves will start changing soon. I can't wait.

"Got the Job!" and "Big City? Where?"

Got the Job!
Within talking to me about 15 minutes I was offered a job as a substitute teacher for the "big city's" school district. I have to pass the FBI check and all, but hey, we passed all that when we became foster parents so I'm not worried about it.

Thank you to those who pray for our success! It means so much!

Big City? Where?
It is funny how people think Springfield is a big city. They talk about crime rates and things that make me laugh inside (it would be rude to laugh out loud). They have never lived in Arizona where crime rates are triple what they are here. (Hmmm, maybe that's why Arizona wants SB 1070?) It is the largest city in our area, so I can see how it would be big in a way, but we have St. Louis, Kansas City and Oklahoma City within a 3 hour drive...so...?

Our little city is so clean! We decided to make it a game and have been trying to find graffiti or trash. We did see one train car that had one little squiggle of graffiti on it last week. That's it! I see more "graffiti" on people's bodies than anything else.

Beautiful Sunsets and Daylight Savings

It was raining the other night and we saw the most awesome rainbow and I snapped these photos of the beautiful colors we can see here at sunset. Of course, sunset is at like 9:15pm! I think daylight savings is weird!

Marshmallow Canons

Chris LOVES making things. He says he is leaning towards becoming an Engineer. I think it would be an awesome career, based on his likes, dislikes, and abilities. He and his friend took apart the Marshmallow Guns he made the other day and made this...

A Pleasant Surprise...

The other night we sat out on the porch and I looked up to see a pile of sticks on top of the porch light. I thought, "Why did Christian put those sticks up there?" Upon closer inspection I realized we have neighbors...cute little birdie neighbors!

A warm, safe place for a nest out of the wind...

...with three babies percolating.

We've seen the mama bird several times and now I realize why the songs she sings are so loud...they are right outside the back door! These eggs are American Robin and will someday look like this...

Time to Post Some Pics!

We are getting settled in and finally have a home phone and Internet hooked up. Today I am getting around to downloading the 200+ pictures on my camera and getting a few posted. Finally!

We lived in a couple of different hotels for a week before finding a home. We looked at several homes, but everything had cats (Celeste is allergic) or smokers (Christian's asthma can't take that)...so we went with a brand new duplex home instead. It is a comfortable 1600 sq. ft. Our only complaints are that we share a wall and there is no fenced yard. In the mid-west only a few have fenced yards. The ward is super nice. When I hear about people from "the West" being rude (No offense! I'm one of those rude westerners, too) I now know what they are talking about. I guess you have to have something to compare to understand.

Odd Things

• People drive SUPER fast on skinny little farm roads that have no shoulder. You have the white line and then a grassy ditch. I've had several people fly past me going 70 mph in a no passing zone. Yikes! Marlayna is nervous now about getting her permit after seeing how people drive here. I thought Arizona, California, and Utah had bad drivers...but Missouri drivers take the cake in this area.
• No Mountains. I didn't realize how much I rely on visual clues to know where I am. In the Phoenix area, the valley is surrounded by mountains and you can judge where you are by which set of mountains you are by. In Flagstaff, it is pretty obvious with the large San Fransisco Peaks. Here...no mountains and I'm directionally challenged now! Thank goodness my van has a digital compass or I would be REALLY lost.

So far, we are loving it! Enjoy the slideshow of what we've been up to the past couple of weeks.