OTHERS March 2013

Timpsons not Simpsons!

Violet is growing and talking more than we ever imagined.  She's very active and surprisingly coordinated too!  You should see this tiny 3 year old ride a razor scooter!

Lucas can read now and can count to one hundred all by himself.  Kindergarten really agrees with him!  He's happiest around his close group of school friends and is eating currently us out of house and home.   We hope its just a growth spurt.  

Caralee is growing too!  Out, that is.  She's almost 4 months pregnant now and is due in August.  Hope to find out the gender of the baby in a few weeks.  She's still in school full time, happily trucking her way along. 

Nick is busy at work and busy with his added duties at home while Caralee is a tad tired.  He's been making pots and mugs on a potters wheel in the garage for fun lately and loves it!  He's quite the artist!  

Missionary email from Elder David Boggs

this week has been great. i started carrying an index card around so io can write stuff down and have it do i can remember what i wanted to write about. but i didnt start carrying it till saturday... so the information starts on saturday. well sunday technically.

on sunday nights we can choose what to watch after the devotional. either talks or a church movie. this week we watched the testaments in spanish. it was awesome :) i actually understood a lot of it. probably because i jhave practically the entire movie memorized in english. :)

we have ore sacrament meetings at 7:30 in the mornings and for those who don't know, my singing voice isnt the best before at least 10 because im normally super tired. one of the elders in my district was the music coordinator (sp?) for that week and i told him saturday that i was willing to be the musical number. just a side note, this was saturday night at probably 8:00 and our sacrament meetings are in spanish so the musical numbers are in spanish. and i had no pianist. so sunday morning roles around and i go up to elder runs through (yes thats his real name. its the translated version though) and said would you like me to be the musical number? he asked me what song i would sing so i said hymn number 73 (spanish hymn book) which is "yo se que vive mi Señor". i wasnt nervouse until  after the first sister gave her talk. then i started getting super nervous. 1 cuz im still not entirely comfortable with my pronounciation and 2. i was going to be singing a capella. my pitch pipe is a live saver. so in the middle of sacrament meeting at 8 in the morning, i sang "i know that my redeemer lives" a capella in spanish. i think i shocked everyone. everyone kept telling me that the pronounciation was great and that they didnt hear me mess up at all. (i did a couple times though and singing a capella is really hard cuz you never have time to breathe when its a solo.)

my companion keeps telling me that i should try out for a devotional musical number. which intails having the words to the song memorized and singing infront of close to 1500 people. and thats just in one room. there are cameras and two other rooms full of missionaries. and the mtc presidency. and it seems like its the entire world cramed into one room. its super huge! but it sounds fun :) so im probably gonna do it :)

so i was looking around on family search and i have found  way back to adam an eve twice. through two different lines. and through both of those were a lot or european royalty. a couple kings of france and before france was france , saxony kings, a couple scottish barons. and on top of all of that. i found Charlemagne Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire twice. thats pretty cool :) not sure how correct it is though. charlamagne is through mom's side. its awesome :)

in one of our classes, brother warburton had us read a couple verses in John chapter 14. verse 18 really stood out to me. it says "i will not leave you comfortless. i will come to you." its really cool because Christ is basically telling us that He is there when we need Him and He is always waiting to help us when we need Him.

at the end of the same class we were learning about the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion. we then did a mini lesson role play thing. we were to invite our investigator (in our case brother warburton as a guy named Jesus) to be baptized but they were supposed to have a concern about it. we were told to pause (not as a sales tactict) to listen to the spirit to know how to address that concern.  it. was. amazing. during role plays ii had never felt the spirit very stongly but during this one, i felt it so strongly i was shaking. the concern was that he didnt know what his parents would think. they would probably be mad at him. right when he started saying that, i knew exactly what to say but i paused to make sure that it wasnt just me thinking it. the thoughts didnt go away and they didnt feel wrong so i said something along the lines that his parents will respect him for the decision that he makes and that even if his family isnt supportive at first, they will still love him. he then said he didnt know if they would kick him out or not and he wouldnt have any friends. as he said that, John 14:18 popped into my head and as i was thinking about it, the poem footprints also popped into my head. the digest version of what i said is no matter what your parents do, Christ will always be there for you and he will carry you through the hard times if you trust in him.

Henry has agreed to be baptized on march 9th. heis going to a baptism this saturday to see what its like. and we are going to continue to teach him up till we leave. Ruben said he would pray to know if baprism was the right thing to do or not and he will tell us what his answer is when we talk to him on friday.

some of the missionaries in our district get to be investagators. its gonna be awesome :) i get to be one of them and we get to make our own character :)

hope everyone is doing great. lookin forward to hearing from everybody :)

(a thing that brother warburton said)

The church is true, the book is blue, Moroni is on the ball, and i love you all

~elder boggs

Missionary email from Sister Mica Duran

Hey! I've been emergency transferred to the Azores! I'm serving with Sister Baer in Angra! I found out last Tuesday night at 8pm and I was in Angra Wednesday morning at 9:30am. Wow! It all happened SO fast. It's crazy beautiful here. It's very green, hardly any graffiti, and just flat out cute! You can see the ocean from our apartment  =). Things are great. The branch is awesome! It's really strange to see so many Portuguese in church and walking the street. I miss talking to black people. They're SO elect! Not saying that the Portuguese aren't, I'm just not used to being promted to talk to them.  =) Everything is great. I'm learning to love it here and I absolutely LOVE Sister Baer. She was the person I've worked with the most on my mission who was not my companion....and now we're companions! It's a big change being here. Everything is very calm and I'm adjusting from the city life in Lisboa. I feel like one of the reasons I've been called to this area is to help my ankle heal faster/more. Yes, my ankle still hurts and it's been giving me more grief lately. Sister Baer is a doll! She's been told by President to be careful with my ankle and she's taken that quite literally. =) She's extremely considerate and goes the extra length to make it more comfortable for me. I'm very grateful for her and our friendship. She's from Utah (of course!) and has a facebook page where all her emails from her mission are. If you'd like to read some our adventures look up "Sister Aubrey Baer." Her parents are Mike and Lori Baer.

The time here is one hour behind Lisboa. I stayed up to 2:30am packing my bags and left at 6am. Yikes! I could only bring one bag with me. I'm SO glad I brought that travel scale from back home. So, I basically stayed up for 46hrs straight. Haha. It was awesome... -_-.  It was only a 2hr flight. Not too bad  =).

Next Monday we're going shopping for clothes. Neither of us like shopping, but we need to go. We've both lost a lot of weight and we're swimming in our clothes. Sister Baer is almost done with her mission...Just 9wks left. WOW! I'll probably be her in the Azores for several months. It gets hot here. O_O

Today is Elder Later's Bday and we're going bowling after this! Pretty cool, huh! Oh man, I love bowling! It's so crazy...there things to do here on Pday! I'm stoked  =).

That package you sent me will sit in the office until I come back from the islands. I hope none of it was perishable. Ugh...
The address for my snail mail is the Elders' address because we don't have keys to our mailbox, haha.

Rua Beato João Batista Machado
Nº15 R/C ESQ
9700-28 Angra de Heroismo
Terceira, Açores Portugal

The area I'm in was opened up to Sisters last transfer and Irmã Bear opened it up. She's so awesome!  =D


Congrats to Jordan, Stephanie, and baby Ryan! He's adorable! I'm praying for your little family.  =)

I have to go. BOWLING! I love you all. I hope you're all well. Heavenly Father knows best. The Church is true and the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Please share it with others.  =) Until next week.

Love,
- Sister Duran