Happy Sunday Afternoon, Everybody,
It
is absolutely beautiful here in Upstate New York! Last week we went to
bed one night and woke up the next morning and it was totally green
outside. The trees are green and the ones that aren't green are covered
with blossoms, the grass is green, the wild flowers are gorgeous, and
finally more often than not this week, the sun shone and the sky was a
brilliant blue. Digital cameras are the best because we can take a
zillion photographs. We're sorry Utah had so much rain.....mostly
during the state track meet....but glad you're getting the moisture that
you're needing. Does this mean you've already had summer and by the
time we come home in the fall, it will be winter?? We've really liked
our walking outside instead of in the grocery store....the waterfalls,
the Plantations, Sapsucker Woods. We've surely gotten slower this last
year though. Maybe by the end of the summer, we'll be back up to where
we need to be.
We
don't miss all the cooking for Friday Forum, but we miss all the people
at Friday Forum.....our non-members who came, the students who work in
Anabel Taylor Hall, even the ones who see the "free lunch" sign wand
just stop in and we never see them again. But it's nice to not be going
a hundred miles an hour for many, many hours in the day most days of
the week. But we're trying to catch up on what we left behind the last
two semesters, clean the pantry and the freezer so we know what's in
them (I wonder if we accidently put the toothpaste in one of those two
places), get our summer institute programs ready, and finish up the last
of the semester's work with CURW. But.....in the next 3 weeks, we need
to visit all the early-morning Seminaries and give them the rah, rah
for Institute wherever they happen to be this next fall. Dad's already
put in a couple of air conditioners for a family in the branch and is
doing all the backed up computer work that has been put on the back
burner this last year. We had a zone leader training this week, our
last meeting with the chaplains until summer is over, a birthday party
for a cute 5 year old, and our two Institutes. It has been such a great
experience to teach the Book of Mormon this past year, and we were sad
to have our last classes in that this last week. It is a volume of
scripture that is for our time! At our Institute in Owego last week we
had 22 people come. It was amazing! Everybody that's come off and on
over the last year all decided to come at the same time. It helped that
we were having red velvet cupcakes and ice cream. We hope some of you
teenagers got to watch the on-line world-wide fireside with Elder and
Sister Bednar. It was a totally unscripted question and answer session
with them and was so good. How grateful we are for Prophets and
Apostles to guide us and give us direction! In fact, our summer
institute will most likely be Teachings of the Living Prophets. It
seems like more and more we need to follow the Prophets given
particularly the moral and social climate that we live in. This is the
20th Anniversary of the Family Proclamation, and I remember hearing it
given as though it were last week. We thought it was really a good,
solid declaration of what we believe....never even thinking that 20
years later, it would be absolutely crucial to proclaim to the WORLD
what marriage and family means.
We're
imagining all the end-of-the-school-year things going on these last
couple of weeks. Maybe we'll have a last day of school picnic and
pretend you're all here. So when is the last day of school? We
actually had a picnic last week on Preparation Day and it was so nice to
sit by the waterfall and do nothing....absolutely nothing. Are there
any special family plans for Memorial Day? We'll be spending the
weekend in Palmyra for the Palmyra/Rochester Stakes Gathering in the
Grove, a Regional YSA Conference. They put us to work when we come but
there's still some down time to go to the temple and visit the Sacred
Grove and other Church History sites. There's a wonderful little place
to stay called The Palmyra Inn that is within walking distance of all
the sites except the Hill Cumorah and we like to be there. We also like
the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with the other CES couples
who come to help as well. Besides working together, we pick each
other's brains to look for ways to do our own assignments better. And
it's also nice to do something with people who go the same speed as we
do! But hey, we had a great YSA FHE last week and played Pictionary and
I do have to say we're pretty good at it!
Well,
our nothing after Church day now has a meeting in it....actually it's a
meeting we really like going to, Branch Missionary Correlation Meeting,
because these Elders and Sisters are the best and they make us better
missionaries. We love you all and we pray for you all and when you're
doing something that we would normally be to, just remember that our
work is here but we allow our hearts for a minute or two to be with all
of you. We love you....oh we already said that. So what.....we'll say
it 3 times.WE LOVE YOU! And now we're going to go outside and sit on
our mini patio until time to go to the meeting.
XOXOXOXOXO Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma and Elder and Elder-ette Jolley
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