Independence : 42 YEARS

We celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary the way we started it, in the temple. But this time we were in the Kansas City, Missouri temple instead of the Los Angles temple. It had snowed quite a bit over the weekend and we were unsure whether we could navigate the roads to get to the temple. The driving conditions were so bad that the previous day, Monday, our Family Home Evening with some of the other senior couples had been cancelled. Fortunately, we made it to the temple just fine. As we sat in the chapel awaiting the start of the session, we felt the Spirit very strong. Silent prayers of gratitude for the blessings of the Lord through these 42 years of married life were offered and it was again confirmed to us that this is where we needed to be. We pray that we might always be worthy to come to the House of the Lord.

Most of the week was spent visiting less active families and encouraging them to come partake of the blessings of the Gospel. The Amayo family is one of many that we are working with to become more fully active. They immigrated from Nigeria a few years ago, and welcomed us into their home and hearts. We are so grateful for the love and acceptance that we feel here in the Kaw River ward. Bishop Miller is so helpful and supportive. We were invited this morning to attend ward council to report on the families we are visiting and receive assignments from the members of the council. The bishop also asked us to return next Sunday for PEC to discuss some additional ideas to help strengthen the members here. There are over 600 members of record in this ward. A lot of those are members whose records have been moved into the ward but are either inactive or unknown. This Saturday, all the full time elders and sisters in the stake are going to team up with members of our ward to go out and try and visit as many families like that as possible. Hopefully we can invite those that are here to come join us on Sunday and at the same time clean up the records of those that might have moved out.

Amayo family

The weather, I am sorry to admit, was the cause of our first real 'fight' since we had been called to serve as missionaries. It was probably due to a case of 'cabin fever' that Robyn was experiencing over the weekend, not being able to venture very far out into the blizzards. Without any warning, she felt the need to attack me when I was least expecting it.
I, of course, turned the other cheek. But I reminded her of Kahn's words to Captain Kirk: 'revenge is a dish best served cold'.

Something you don't see everyday in your parking lot in California,

a truck spreading salt

We have found that sometimes the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It also is a good way to be invited in out of the cold. Since we have been here, Robyn has been busy baking cookies and bread. New Year's eve she baked a batch of pumpkin bread and monkey bread to share with some of the members we have been visiting. Our mission president has challenged all the missionaries here to invite members to accompany them whenever they teach a lesson. So we decided to follow his counsel and invited a member of the Overland Park 1st ward to go with us as we delivered the goodies New Year's eve.