November 30, 2015

Hello kids,

How is everyone? We are freezing here in Kansas. It has been nothing but ice and cold since Thanksgiving morning, but all is well. We had sacrament meeting only today. There were twenty members in church this morning. Snow is suppose to be falling by about 10:00pm and for most of the night. So we might wake up to a beautiful snowfall.

Our Thanksgiving in the mission was different, but it was good. We went to the church at noon for a lunch. There were about seventeen people there. It was Thanksgiving and one we won't forget. Food always brings out people that you don’t see at any other time. One man in his fifties came with his mother. He was very quiet until he was leaving and he hollered, “Thanks everybody. That was a Damn Good Meal!” His mother wanted to crawl under the table.

After the church meal we left for a 2:00pm appointment at some members’ home for a more traditional dinner. It was very good, and we had some good fellowship. We went around the table before we ate, and everyone shared something they were thankful for. Some very nice words were shared in our behalf by the hosts. It was nice to say the least.

A picture with President Bell, but the photographer was apparently shaky.

This Friday night we go to Wichita for a Christmas devotional and party for just the senior missionaries in the whole mission. We just barely missed it last year. It should be nice. It will be the first time we have been to the Mission Home. 

We met with our mission president last Tuesday afternoon and expressed how not busy we are here and told him a little bit about what it was like for us in Concordia. We told him that after much fasting and prayer and attending the temple our answer was to come talk to him. He asked if we wanted to transfer somewhere else. Our answer was that we wanted that to be his decision, not ours. After talking for a few more minutes he said, "This may be an answer to prayer," and he asked if we would be willing to transfer to Pratt, KS.

We are excited at the opportunity to relocate and try to make our mission something we can say we loved when we go home. As soon as housing is found we will be moving - probably in the next week or so. The housing coordinators have to find a place in Lawrence, KS for some other missionaries first, and then they will go to Pratt to find housing for us.

We attended several meetings with the new apostle, Elder Gary Stevenson in late October. 

Pratt is about and hour and a half west of Wichita. From what we hear, we are headed to an area where there are lots of cowboys and cattle feed lots - the latter of which we experienced in Lamar. It is not the best aroma in the world, but the hope is that we will be too busy to notice these next seven months. We can get fresh air later. Ha ha.

Pratt is a little branch where about 65 people attend on Sundays, but it is growing rapidly from baptisms, re-activations, and move-ins. They have been begging for a senior couple since the last ones went home about six months ago. Several couples have gone home with no more coming to replace them. The Branch President promises to keep us busy. We are very ready for that.

We do believe many prayers have been answered. Thank you for your prayers in our behalf, also. We really appreciate them!

We have to get packing now. One day soon they will call to say they are coming to move our stuff. We will be sitting on the front porch waiting for them!

Love to you all. Stay in touch please!

Mom and Dad

July 5, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Hello, we are starting our sixth month of the mission. The wheat is being harvested. Every direction we go all we see is miles and miles of wheat fields. It is very pretty. Think of the line in our National Anthem "amber Waves of grain". That is what we see. It is so pretty especially when the wind is blowing you can see waves and waves of wheat. It is pretty cool. Soon we will be seeing waves of corn!

The gospel principles classes we are teaching on Wednesday and Thursday evenings are going well. We have one (non member) man that attends each week. The missionaries had been teaching him, but recently they stopped visiting him because he wasn’t progressing. We stopped by and invited him to our class. He decided to come because his air conditioner was broken, and the church was cool. His a/c is fixed but he still comes every week.  Now he is actually coming to Sacrament meeting as well. We are hopeful he will continue to have that desire to learn more and his understanding will grow.  Actually all the people that attend seem very eager to learn. You can tell some concepts they have never thought about. It is amazing to see how the members soak up some of the very basics of the gospel, and it is fun to watch each of their faces as they learn new things or come to a new realization about something they already knew. We learn a lot, too.

Elder Gorden playing the hymn's at the night class.

Sister Gorden participating in the class reading.

We enjoy teaching the classes, and Elder Gorden spends many hours each week preparing. This week’s lesson helped them understand how the Fall was a necessary part of Heavenly Father’s plan to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life. We used the example of a traffic light that won’t turn from red to green. You sit and wait, and then back up hoping to trip the switch to change it. You wait longer, and back up again. You have to be at your destination, but you don’t want to break the law. How long do you wait? Eventually you have to go through the red light. Isn’t that what Eve realized? They were never going to arrive at their destination of having children and experiencing all that life holds for us. They could never appreciate good things without being faced with the undesirable alternatives, too. Going through her “red light” wasn’t a sin, but it was a transgression of the law. Most of the world doesn’t understand that Eve was a heroine. Their fall was an essential part of God’s Plan of Happiness. It was pre-planned in the councils of heaven.  

 We went to Omaha, Nebraska last week and attended the Winter Quarters Temple. It was a great trip, and we very much enjoyed our time in the temple.  Our temple visit happened to be during the same week we were teaching about the Fall in our weekly classes.  It had never really connected with us before that Lucifer thought he was frustrating God’s plan by persuading them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but when Eve realized that what they had done was actually PART of God’s plan for us, it seemed that the devil was surprised that he had been “punked.” 

At the Winter Quarter's Temple in Omaha.

We are looking forward to attending the Denver Temple later this month. We are going with the couple, Brad and Karen Beard, from Lamar, Colorado, that we help return to activity in the church back in January. We drove to their home in Western Kansas on June 20th, and taught them the fifth lesson of the temple preparation course (about how the Lord uses symbols to teach us). They are excited to be sealed in the temple and we are very excited to be able to go with them and be their Escorts.

We went to watch the little fireworks show at the Concordia fairgrounds Friday night. We found a good place to park where there was a live band playing. Dad thought they sounded good even before we got close enough to see them, and he was even more impressed to see that there were only three musicians making so much sound. Then one of their Moms told us they were only 16 years old, and it became really impressive. They were a Christian rock band. 

As it started getting dark we were disappointed that there were so many bright lights between us and the direction of the fireworks, so we decided to find a better location to park. We drove to the other side of the fairgrounds just outside of town and found a little dirt road we turned down. There was a small field in front of us and several other cars parked a short distance away off to our side. It was very dark, but we could see some clusters of barricades that looked like they were stored in the small field. They looked the size of track hurdles but were wooden and had red tape on them. We pull up to them and parked. Immediately we noticed a small mob of men approaching us rapidly. They told us we couldn’t park there. It turned out that the barricades were actually the fireworks they were about to ignite by remote!

Our branch president’s father died last week, and we went to the funeral in Salina. We were the only members of our branch at the service. It was a sweet experience, and we felt the Spirit strongly. Funerals in our church are such a contrast to others because of the joy we all feel from knowing the separation is for only a small moment. They are a good family.  He was 91.  

We are out of news for now so we will close with a spiritual thought from our lesson about the Creation. Genesis 2:20 says “And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.”  Have you ever wondered why it says “help meet” instead of “helpmate” or “helper?” Most other Bible translations do state “helper.” {NIV says: “But for Adam no suitable helper was found.” RSV says: “but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.”}

In our preparation for that lesson last week we learned that translating the word from the original Hebrew the meaning is quite different than “helper.” Our favorite reference was from a BYU-I Education Week presentation ("The Family Under Siege: The Role of Men and Women," by Bruce Satterfield). He said the phrase “help meet for him” translates the Hebrew words “ezer kenegdo.” Ezer literally means, “help.” However, kenegdo, translated “meet for him,” literally means ‘opposite as to him’ or ‘corresponding as to him’.

So the phrase “help meet” means “an equal but opposite helper to him.” To make it simple, think of your left hand as the “help meet” to your right hand; both hands look alike except they are exactly opposite. Both hands are equal but opposite. This is so that they might work better together. Imagine how limited you would be having two right hands. The “help meet” of the right wing of an airplane is the left wing; they look exactly the same except they are opposite each other. Both wings are equal but opposite. This is so that the airplane can fly. One wing is no more important than the other. The same is true with man and woman. Man’s “help meet” is woman. Both are equal but opposite. It requires both to fulfill the role of parenthood!

We are so overjoyed that each of our children have found their perfect Help Meet. We know that because of the restoration of the church and the authority of the priesthood, temple marriages and the family relationship are not until death do us part, but can continue throughout all eternity..

One of the things that the Lord has commanded us to do is to multiply and replenish the earth, that we might have joy in our posterity.

We did, and we do!
             
All our love,

Mom and Dad