Our beautiful family - how many grandchildren will we have when we return from our mission???

THE FIRST FEW WEEKS!

Being set apart by Elder D. Todd Christofferson and Elder Cláudio M. Costa on

Thursday June 18, 2009

At the MTC everyone has to say, "We're going here!!!"

All of the Brazilian and Portugal Mission Presidents at the MTC
along with Elder Costa and Sister Julie Beck. We we would be the only gringo's!

This is my dear friend Carmen, who was one of the "psiuu's" that I knew on my first mission. I called her (and her sister Gladys) "psiuu's" because they were soooo short. Their mother, Irmã Lima was my Brazilian mother and took care of us while I lived in Rio Grande. We fellow-shipped the family and today Carmen is married to the ward mission leader, Gladys to one of the bishop's, and Daniel their brother is the Stake President. We will be speaking in the Rio Grande Stake Conference in Aug. Carmen found out we would be doing interviews at one of the chapel's this day and surprised us with a visit.

Office staff Elder's Rush and Zanella (assistants), Gubler (going home) Simões (exec. sec) and 

F. Santana (housing sec). Elder Watts (financial sec) wasn't in the picture. Great staff!!!

Our awesome Zone Leaders for the 9 zones in the mission. They're amazing!

We got to go to the temple with the departing missionaries on July 22nd. It was an unbelievable spiritual experience as we sat in the Celestial Room. It was like having a big, huge Celestial hug for quite some time. It was a wonderful realization of a lot of dreams and hopes after 35 years to see a temple right here in the middle of our mission!!!