Happy Mother's Day

Tree at our church, saying Happy Mother's Day!

I was blessed with such a wonderful mother, Marge, and two special grandmothers, Georgia and Ethel. What a blessing in my youth.  When I married into the Orton family I gained another mother, Clora,  and she was very special too and a great example to me.  We are so so fortunate in our family to see the amazing mothers that our daughters have become and grateful that our sons chose wonderful wives that are amazing mothers as well.  As we work with so many dysfunctional families we appreciate more and more the blessing of good, strong, faithful, dedicated mothers.  Happy Mother's Day to each of you.  I know the Poyfairs had a special experience, talking for over an hour with their son Dallin in Mozambique, Africa, for Mother's Day. Isn't technology wonderful?!  We enjoyed Skyping with them earlier today too and could almost smell the wonderful Minestrone Soup that the family was making for Karli!

We have spent too much time in the car this week - but that just happens some weeks.  We made a trip to Columbia, on the outskirts of Baltimore, on Wednesday for transfers.  We traded our Elder Mordecai for our new missionary, Elder Rodrigues, who comes from a small town near Yosemite Park in California.  We will come to love him as we have all the missionaries we have been privileged to serve with.  A bonus of our going to the transfer meeting was to see a couple of  missionaries who had served in our area - Elder Salazar and Elder Goodell give their final testimonies as they prepared to go home after serving an honorable mission.  What fine young men.

We spent a lot of the day yesterday in the car too as we took John and Audrey P, and Sonja M to the temple. Audrey and Sonja were just baptized a few months ago and I have been doing genealogy work with them.  Yesterday they did baptisms in the temple for over 40 family names!  It was an awesome experience for them and for us.  Sonja said it was her Mother's Day present to her mother who died several years ago, she was so excited.  We love them so much and it will be so neat to be with them over the next year as they progress and take more steps in their eternal progression...

I was able to work more on genealogy, picture albums (for a member), and indexing while Wayne took the

New steps for Sonja,  Priesthood in action

van to be serviced Tuesday afternoon, then back to be checked because it was losing transmission fluid on Thursday (yes, it was their fault).  And more housework and indexing Friday when Wayne went to a service project, then fishing with Johnny.  Sometimes it's difficult just having one car - other times, I kind of enjoy being "grounded".   Today we have been delivering Mother's Day flowers to women we missed at church today, it's a beautiful day to be out, so pretty around here and the temperature is in the 80's.

Again, Happy Mother's Day.  We continue to love it here and love what we are doing.  Especially we love our Savior and are very aware of everyday miracles and tender mercies.

After the service project...

Boot Hill Church

Sara - This picture is for your Dad, we met this couple, the Barnham's, at the
Temple Visitor's Center yesterday.  When we said we were from LaGrande, they asked
if we knew their friend Tony Blake - Yes we replied, our son married his daughter!  Small World.