Newsletter #5

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. We are so grateful for all of you--our beloved friends and relatives. We just completed a whirlwind week (and 4 1/2 months in the mission)--finishing up three weeks of interviews, having a "mission tour" on Friday and Monday, and three stake conference speaking assignments all on one weekend. We love being able to train and meet with each missionary individually. President Reeves does the serious interviews and Sister Reeves gets to see family photos and find out about the lives of the missionaries.

We were so proud of our missionaries when we had our annual (and first for us) mission tour. Elder and Sister Paul Johnson spent two and a half days here with us and our missionaries. We were so proud of our missionaries! They were so good to make sure they looked great and were on their best behavior. Elder Johnson was an incredible teacher (being head of church education) and tried to inspire our missionaries to be "low-maintenance, high-yield" missionaries. Elder and Sister Johnson were so full of love and interest for each missionary. We all loved having them here.

Valerie and Allyson just celebrated their 18th birthdays yesterday on November 14th! They are so grown up! They had a fun party here at the house last night with many new Riverside friends and some cousins. Valerie and Allyson got to celebrate last Saturday with Ryan and our Jessica and Reid who drove down from Utah for a three-day visit with us.

Tuesday morning, six of our missionaries will go home (always so hard on us!) 16 new missionaries will arrive on Tuesday afternoon, which is always a great thrill! We just received a sister from the Temple Square mission (from Singapore). This brings our total of sisters to 8! (Compared to 162 elders! Needless to say, our sisters are very precious!)

We were thrilled with the outcome of Proposition 8 and what we saw happen with the people here. At first, there was hesitancy to get involved, but as leaders and organization fell into place, people really stepped up. Doors were knocked, donations given, pamphlets passed out and a huge effort was made to stand together on street corners holding signs. As most of you know, there have been continuing demonstrations throughout California and other states by those opposed to the marriage amendment. California's governor Schwarzenegger has publicly applauded and encouraged the demonstrations and encouraged doing whatever it takes to overturn the voters' decision in this democratic process.

We can't keep ourselves from mentioning the 80-90 degree weather every day, in case any of you want to join us down here! It is a huge perk for us, we admit! We are so grateful for the many cards and emails you send that mostly go unaswered. Please know how much it means. We wish we had more time to respond; thank you for being patient with us. We truly LOVE being here with these wonderful young men and women and are thrilled to be part of this missionary effort. We continue to see many miracles in the lives of people here.

All our love, Linda, Mel, Ryan, Allyson and Valerie

P.S. We hope to have our Blog updated by Monday.