HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRAN!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO FRAN!! Guess how very, very old she is??? With all the black decorations, can you guess??

We love you Fran!!!

Merry Christmas

The annual family Christmas party was at Steve and Holly's this year. We had a great time with lots of good food. What a great family we have and how blessed we are to love each other and to be good friends. We had everyone there except Katelyn and her family, all the Sanders family, Max and Alex. We missed you all!

Maddi, Fran, Brock & Cole.

Dad/Grandpa George, Steve, Holly, Mark & Megan.


Rachel & Cruz.

McKenzie, Maddi & Merri.

Elaine, Kathleen & Preston.

Beckett with Brett, Kallie, Lauren & Stephanie in background.

Christmas morning at the Jones house.

Cole, McKenzie & Brock

Brock

Cole

McKenzie & Brock

Raymond

McKenzie

Yikes! Scary!!!

Cole, McKenzie & Brock

Cole & Brock with their levi quilts McKenzie made for each of them.

THANKSGIVING FUN!!

We had a fun Thanksgiving Day spent with family, friends and good food. Even though there was no mom's fruit salad, homemade dressing or pumpkin pie we had a great time. Elaine and Lexie came down for dinner and then we went over to Fran's for pie, games and lots of laughs. We are so thankful for everything we have. We live in a great community and are so blessed to have the gospel in our lives and to be surrounded by family and friends.

It is also that time of year to begin putting up Chirstmas decorations. Putting the lights on the house is not Raymonds favorite thing to do so this year he enlisted Brock to help out.

Cole and Max after Viewmont and Highland played each other last week.

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thank you to all of you who have influenced me and my family. Thank you for your love and support in all that my family does. Thank you for the relationship that we have not only by being related directly through our heritage, but for the relationship of love and friendship that we have as well. I feel so grateful for each and every one of you...my family and hope and pray for your well being, safety, and happiness. Thank you for being part of my life. I love you!
I wish each of you a grateful season of thanksgiving.
Please enjoy this link of "In the Spirit of Thanksgiving."

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Mission End

Oh my family! Well here we are:  my last e-mail. We had a wonderful week. Wonderful! We found a couple of new potentials that seem really good. Sister Cooprider is staying in this area still and training. I'm excited for them as they have many new people that we have set appointments with them to teach. It's weird to know I won't be a part of that, but it's alright...I guess!  We had our two wonderful baptisms this weekend of Jenny and Ashley! It went really really well and was just a really nice day for them. I think it was really great for their Dad too. I know eventually he will have the desire and he will receive an answer that he needs to be baptized.

There are so many changes I feel coming up in the mission and coming up in these areas. It just makes you want to be here for all of it! But I suppose it always feels like things are changing and great things are about to happen when you're about to leave! But it has been so amazing and wonderful to see the progress that has happened in the Anaheim 2nd ward and the Anaheim 

Last week we, Sister Brown, President and Sister Watrous and I, went to the temple and that was wonderful!. Last February we went to the temple and all wrote little letters-to ourselves sort of, about what kind of mission we wanted to have, and what we wanted to do and were going to learn. And then we were given those back while we were at the temple, so we could read them again. It was interesting, it doesn't feel like too long ago, but I know that I've (hopefully) grown since then. But it's still pretty odd to read the things that I said then, and to even see at that point how I had grown; I'm not sure how, but it seems like it. Our mission conference was really great. But geez, it's sort of unfair to have an inspiring mission conference right before you leave! Sang "Called to Serve" for the last time. Weird! Saturday morning I had my last interview with President. He renews our temple recommends, and then goes over all the info that mission presidents are supposed to say I guess. And he added in his own advice, and then he gives us a blessing. He's just such a great man. He is super humble and obedient and faithful. He really has been an amazing example for all the missionaries.

Today we're teaching one last lesson. Well, one last lesson for me with Raichel Goodyear. Remember I mentioned her once? She was golden, and sooo ready and we passed her onto some elders in another singles ward. Well, long story, she's back to being taught be us. We haven't seen her since September, and she wanted to be taught today. Fine by me! I'll do my last baptismal invitation as a missionary! I am so excited!

Well, I'll just say it. I LOVE being a missionary! It's been the best 18 months! And even though I really don't know what to expect after this, and I am a little anxious, I'm excited to see how life is just going to keep getting better. You know, I'm pretty lucky. I really am. I feel like I am blessed just over and over and over again and every year is better than the last! It's amazing to see how you really do become a missionary. Not just doing missionary things, but being a missionary. I'm so grateful for the things I've experienced and learned. Irreplaceable! My testimony of the gospel has just grown sooo much deeper. I have learned how to study the scriptures, to feast upon them! To love them! And I expect it to continue! If there's been a theme to what I've learned on the mission and what I've tried to teach others, it's love. It is the love our Heavenly Father has for us, and how everything he does is for our happiness. We just have to recognize it and act on it. I LOVE being a missionary! I am excited to see all of my little family again! I love you all so much and thank you so much for everything you've done for me! The love, the prayers, the letters! I love you! See you soon! Ah!

Love,
Emily

OCTOBER!!

A few pictures of the last week in October. Cole finished up his high school football career. His team finished tied for 2nd in the region but lost in the first round of the state playoffs. Cole loves, loves, loves football and is disappointed they didn't go farther in the playoffs. He worked his tail off this year and played great this season despite injuring his knee twice. Hopefully he can continue to play beyond high school - stay tuned.......... It's hard to believe his senior season is over - it seems like yesterday he was playing sophomore ball.

Cole and Grandpa George

Happy Halloween!! Brock and his friends dressed as up and just cruised around the neighborhood. They didn't know what they were dressing up as at first and then decided they were the "Mormon Mafia". What? Go figure.

Cole went the high school dance on Halloween night. The whole group he went with dressed up as pirates. He was supposed to be "Smee" from Peter Pan.

Assyrian Babylonians!

Hello family! Well, it’s the halfway point of the transfer. Things are still excellent here! I love California. Seriously. It’s funny how a place becomes your home. I definitely will miss it here. I just love the people and the palm trees and the sunny days and everything else. It still is weird, but this is definitely the place where I needed to be! Who would’ve thought?Let’s see, an update on people. The Luceros are doing great. For the last week and a half we had planned to read in the introduction to the Book of Mormon with them, and then get Brother Lucero (non member) to pray right then, with us, and then we were going to ask him to be baptized. This is what President Watrous wants us to do with everyone when we first teach them. And even though B. Lucero has been taught for a long time, we wanted to do it with him anyway. And it went really well. The spirit was definitely there, and we asked him to be baptized. He said he wasn’t ready. We pretty much expected that. But we had to ask. That’s what missionaries do! But for the next little bit that we were there talking to the girls about their baptisms, and when we left, he definitely looked like he was thinking really hard. Good! Who knows.The Lopez are also doing great. Everything’s set to finish up the last couple of lessons and get their program together. And after saying it over and over again, we finally feel like people are starting to fellowship them in the ward. Good!Raven’s good. Still teaching him. Also still teaching Cesar and getting him ready for baptism. We found out he smokes. But because he’s bored. He said that the addictive properties don’t affect him, and he can completely stop whenever he wants. Alright. We’ll see. Cesar understands and remembers everything we teach, but he definitely still has some kind of disability. We don’t know what though. When we started talking about prophets and asked him why it would be good to listen to a prophet he said “because it’s a straight shot to the celestial kingdom.” True, true. We were glad he remembered the lesson about the Plan of Salvation a couple of days earlier! He also asked us if after the resurrection, if the pre-earth life would be destroyed-because there “would be no need for it.” Interesting, I’ve never thought about that one before. This is why it’s great talking to all the odd people we teach, because their perspectives are so different, and their questions are so much fun. I love it!

On Saturday we went to teach Nicole. Oh man. That morning she called and asked me if it was okay that she was already wearing her Halloween costume-because that night was our ward activity and she was going to it. I said that was fine. She said she should’ve called the night before to check with us and she was sorry. But I said it’s okay, you can be wearing it. She said she just wants to respect us and she’s sorry, and blah blah. Really, Nicole is one of the most interesting characters ever. I will try my best to do an impression of her someday. We brought one of our ward missionaries with us to the appointment and when we opened the door, there she was, Snow White! The thing is, Nicole is very small, thin, super pale, black short hair, always wears red or pink lipstick. So her doing Snow White makes sense. Yet she still wore a wig and oh wow, she looked pretty funny. It was so hard not to be distracted and look at each other and laugh. There she is sitting on the couch as snow white as we talked to her about prophets. Then there’s a knock on the door. Nicole freaks out and doesn’t want to answer it. That’s normal. She asks us if she should answer it. We say yes. She doesn’t want to because she thinks it’s her mom. Then you hear someone say something through the door, and Nicole’s 2 year old son George goes “Grandma!” So Nicole lets them in. It’s her mom and her grandma. We have never met them, and we’ve always been curious about Nicole’s mom. Nicole swears her mom doesn’t love her. Her mom is in these little black stretch pants and leopard print shirt and sweeps into the home and is like “oh Nicole, oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company, oh George! Oh Nicole, have you eaten..blah blah blah.” She was very dramatic and funny and came in with pizza and gave us all pizza as she talked the entire time and kept moving around, doing Nicole’s dishes, and cleaning her house and, well it was pretty hilarious to us, even though Nicole was distressed. I asked her mom where she was from and she said “oh, we’re Assyrian Babylonian. We’re east Catholic, Nicole was baptized as a child…” and Nicole is going “mother, please, mother. you weren’t supposed to come until later. Mother…” Very funny. So apparently her family is from Iran. Who knew? Assyrian Babylonian. That’s a first from me. I guess I’m wrong, but I sure thought the Assyrian and Babylonian empire were destroyed a long time ago. Pretty much her mom is not what we expected. Just a flashy/dramatic/nagging mom. And as she was doing her dishes, our member said she wishes her mom would come over and do her dishes at her house and Nicole pipes up and offers to come over and do her dishes for her. It was one of the best teaching appointments I’ve had. Snow white and her mom.

That’s probably the best story of the week. There are always lots of good stories. This week we should be pretty busy too. We have to go on splits a couple of times, and that should be crazy. Good to be busy! We’re just trying to find those new investigators, so that after these people are baptized, there will still be people to teach. Just in case you were wondering what we’re doing here on Halloween…well, we’re doing normal missionary work! Last year we were supposed to be in the apartment at 6:00pm, studying, if we didn’t already have set appointments to go to. But this year we are to be out working as usual! So we’ll be doing that. Trick or treat, we brought you the Book of Mormon! And today we will be carving pumpkins as a district to celebrate!

I can’t believe how time is flying. Everyday I love being a missionary more and more! It’s crazy! It’s odd and feels a little, uh, scary, to think I won’t be doing this much longer. So I try not to think about it! We’re still sprinting! I love you all so much!

Love,Emily