Our dear friends and family,
I haven't written an email in many weeks. I tried to send out a few Christmas cards to some of those who don't use email or didn't yet have our new home address. We have been anxious to keep in touch with all of you and hope you had a WONDERFUL holiday season! Thank you for the many wonderful cards, letters and photos we received! Several of our cupboard doors are full of your pictures! We loved reading about your families and all that is going on in your lives!
One by one, each of our children and grandchildren, except Greg and Carrie & Brian, were able to come out and visit in December. Carrie and children will fly out in February while Brian is involved with tax season. We can't wait to see 5-month old Tanner, whom we have never seen! Almost 5 month-old and 20 lb. baby Nathan came with Mike, Jenny and girls in December! The twins played for the high school choir Christmas Concert. I told their former teacher, Jean Messick, how great it has been to see the fruits of many years of piano lessons! Eric leaves for Nicaragua in a few days. He will be helping farmers increase their crop yield and nutrition. Ryan has been running, practicing up for track, though he misses lacrosse and his friends terribly. The bishop of our ward here has challenged all of the ward members to reread the Book of Mormon starting January 1st and complete the reading in 90 days. We are enjoying it so much and can already feel an increasing great spirit in our home because of it.
We had a very exciting December in that we had so many dear people who were baptized--74 throughout the mission. Our missionaries worked so hard to bless the lives of many people. It was the most wonderful way to celebrate the birth of our Savior.
We are still trying to attend as many baptisms as we can. Last month we had several unique experiences. A family of six (the parents and four children, ages 26, 22, 18 and 14 got dressed in Sunday clothes one Sunday and set out to find a church. They felt prompted to stop at one of ours and walked in. Over a period of two months, they were taught by our missionaries and decided to all be baptized! At the baptism, the youngest, a son, taught us all about Lehi's "tree of life vision" from the Book of Mormon. They are an outstanding family! We have also had several baptisms of people in the 80's this month! Our college-aged group seems to be the most interested. It is so wonderful that a large number of them end up deciding to serve full-time missions. We currently have about 12 missionaries serving in the California Riverside Mission that are between 24 and 27 years old! It is amazing to see the desire they have and love for the Lord to leave everything they are involved in and pay for themselves to be missionaries for two years at these older ages! Many of them already have their college degrees and have certainly had many opportunities to date. Isn't it something to put all of this on hold and devote two years to service to the Lord? We love it!
It has also been amazing to us to see how many people the Lord is preparing to hear the fullness of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. It seems that almost every companionship of our missionaries (each set of two) has in the last month or two had what we call a "self-referral"--a person, who on their own, feels prompted to call the church, search for missionaries, walk into a church meeting, or go onto the church's website and request to have missionaries come and visit and teach them. Others, seeing the good example of their neighbors or friends ask how they can find out more about the church. We are grateful for our good friends in many other religions who were very grateful when they saw our stand on families with Proposition 8. (We were so grateful to them for all that they did to support Prop 8!) We love that the relationship between our church and our other church-going friends seems to be improving. As most of you know, we often join forces for humanitarian work as well.
Have we mentioned before that Valerie and Allyson attend a club at school called "GLO"--Girls Living Obediently two lunch periods a week? The group studies and discusses the Bible, among other things. They even have a darling Jewish friend that attends. Last month, some music videos were shown at an assembly at school that were not at all appropriate. The GLO group ended up writing letters asking that this not happen again at school. We are proud of the twins and the GLO club!
We can't help mentioning again how much we are enjoying the climate. We did have three very cold and rainy weeks in December, but almost every day in January has been between 70 and 83 degrees. There has been enough wind to blow all smog away. The grass and plants are all green and it is gorgeous! (Still pretty rocky and brown in our more deserty areas!)
Please know of our love for all of you. We miss you all, but are kept extremely busy all the time and time is speeding by at an amazing pace for us! We can't believe we've been out nearly seven months!
We love you! Linda, Mel, Ryan, Allyson, Valerie and Eric
Former Sister, Michelle Carter, came to visit some of our Sisters at the Mission Home.
Three of our Elders at the Redlands Temple.
The Mission Presidency with our AP's Elder Best and Elder Bringhurst.
