Nathan James Reeves was born August 4, 2008. He weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and was 21.75 inches.

Trip to Eagle, Idaho

Ryan, Valerie and Allyson got to go up to Eagle, Idaho the 2nd week of August to visit their cousins, the Bronsons, and to see Jenny and Mike with their new baby boy, Nathan.

The kids with Ashley, Megan and Sadie and their new baby brother Nathan.
Cousins and nieces: Kelly Bronson, Megan Reeves, Hailey Bronson and Sadie Reeves

2nd Group of Outgoing Missionaries

Elders: (L-R) Lopez, Warren, Humphries, Tavana, Henrie, Estrada, Lund and Cressall

The family with Elder Tavana - President Reeves's last AP
Ryan and Elder Tavana
The AP's - Elder Brown replaced Elder Tavana, Elder Fromm.

Grandkids at the Mission Home

Here are the Bourgeous and Stacey kids in what we call the "Baptismal Font" in mom and dad's masterbath. (L-R): Braden, Shelby, Mandy, Bradley, Aidan, Maddie and Audrey.

Julie and Brett (Bourgeous), and Laurie and Sully (Stacey) came out from Fontana (35 min away) for Ryan's Birthday on August 2nd and the kids decided to go "swimming."

Updating

It has been a very long time since our last post, so I will try to keep it updated from now on, because mom is very busy all the time. (as you all know : )
-Ally

Newsletter #3

To all our dear family and friends,

I am finally finding the time to sit down and write another update on the mission. I will ask the twins and Ryan to put this letter on the blog this weekend along with several new photos.

This has been a very significant month:

*Jenny (Detton) and Mike Reeves gave birth to baby #5 on August 4th. Baby Nathan James was born 16 days short of a year from the birth of baby James Michael, who lived for 11 days and passed away on August 31st, 2007. We are soooo grateful for the birth of this beautiful, healthy baby boy--truly a miracle baby! Baby Nathan has proved his healthiness by his strong vocal cords and alert eyes--always looking around and now focusing in on faces.

*Grandpa Bob Pike (our children's grandpa, step-father to Linda and husband for 23 years to Linda's mother, Barbara) passed away on Thursday evening, August 27th from cancer of the pancreas at age 90. How beloved Grandpa Bob was for his kindness, love, gentleness and devotion to our mother, Barbara. How we all loved and admired him. What a great and faithful man. He will be sorely missed by us all.

*Because of the funeral on Saturday, August 30th, all of the Reeves children were able to come to Arcadia, CA, except for Carrie, who is close to delivering her baby son anytime. All of Linda's siblings and spouses, as well as almost all 42 grandchildren were able to be together (including Linda who was grated permission to leave the mission to attend; President Reeves remained in the Riverside Mission with the missionaries!)

*School started at the end of August for Valerie, Allyson and Ryan who are attending Martin Luther King High School in Riverside. The girls are involved in Choir and also have the chance to accompany the choir for some of their performance numbers coming up. They are all making new friends at school and church. They have a great seminary teacher, which is helpful since seminary starts each weekday at 6:15 a.m.! Eric returned from his 5 week visit to Nicaragua and left for school in Cedar City, Utah to attend George Wythe College. Greg graduated in April from BYU and will live with Jon and Leah Reeves temporarily in the New York area, while he has interviews and plans to settle there.

*Jessica (Reeves) and Reid Anderson leave in two days for a month in Kenya, Africa, where Reid served his mission and next to Uganda where Jessica lived last summer for humanitarian work. They will be helping build and supply a school.

*Jennifer and Nyall continue school and nursing work at the U of U.

*Laurie and Sully, Julie and Brett continue to live with their families in Fontana, close to Mel and Linda, but don't see them very often because of the busy mission life.

Update on the California Riverside Mission Life:

*Mel and Linda just completed their second round of Zone Conferences this week, as well as the "one-week-into the mission" training of new missionaries and their trainers.

We loved being able to teach about obedience and the love of the Savior and His atoning sacrifice. We were privileged to be able to view Elder Bruce R. McConkie's final General Conference address on the life of the Savior, as well as his closing testimony of the Savior.

*We spent much of the month in interviews with the missionaries,(this takes 10 weekdays to complete our twelve zones) attending baptisms, and going on "splits" with one set of missionaries each day following interviews. We love the time we spend with individual companionships teaching and visiting new members, less-active and investigators. We have had the opportunity to speak at three stake conferences and a multitude of other meetings! Amazing that our missionaries seem to stay awake through all our training!

*We LOVE being able to attend the Redlands Temple with our missionaries. Mel has arranged our schedule such that we are able to attend five out of every six Friday mornings with different zones of our elders and sisters. This has been a unique and incredible experience for us and for our missionaries. We are so grateful for the chance to have this beautiful temple in our midst! What a blessing for our missionaries; how it increases their testimonies and helps keep them worthy of this great blessing.

*The most difficult thing was sending home (after two faithful years) three of our zone leaders, an office assistant and one assistant to the president (eight missionaries altogether). These are remarkable young men who have proven themselves so faithful and worthy, with such outstanding leadership qualities! They will be sorely missed! We received 11 new missionaries, including one sister. We now have seven sisters in the mission (and 148 elders). We have been told we will increase to 186 over the next five months.

*This Monday, Mel and Linda will attend an annual mission presidents' training seminar being held this year in San Diego with all the mission presidents from Alaska down to the California/Mexico border in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California. We will be barely over our mission boundaries, since three of our stakes and zones in the California Riverside mission actually are in the San Diego Temple district. We are very much looking forward to this--especially the chance to be with our dear friends and Mel's former business partner, Dave and Susan Clark from the Spokane, WA mission.

*Mel has many opportunities to speak Spanish with our missionaries. We attend branches and baptisms at least once a week in Spanish wards or branches. This is a great blessing. We love these dear people more than we can express. Linda finds she slips if she does not practice every day (and listens to a fair amount of Spanish radio!) .

*We had hoped that we might have some time on occasion to get together with many of our dear and wonderful friends from our Duarte and Arcadia Stake days, as well as other dear neighbors and family members. What were we thinking??? Please forgive us for our lack of time, but know that we feel so unbelievably privileged to participate in this wonderful and holy work. How we miss all of you and long to spend time with you. We also very much miss all of our wonderful and loving Bountiful friends, who also mean soooo much to us. The mission is speeding by at an amazing rate! We wish we could hold back the clock!

Please know of our love and gratitude for your love and friendships! Thank you for the many emails and letters that you send! Please forgive us if we have not responded! We appreciate hearing from you so much!!!

All our love, Linda, Mel and all the Reeves kids!

Newsletter #2

Dear Loved Ones and Friends,

We have added quite a few email addresses that we somehow missed on our first email. It has been so great to hear back from so many of you these past two weeks!!! Thank you so much! We loved hearing from you! We are grateful for all the updates.
For those that might be interested, we now have a BLOG! You can go to melreevesfamily.blogspot.com which has some photos and the first email. My sincere and heartfelt apology goes out to our son, Jon and daughter-in-law, Leah, who got left off our list of children! (Be assured that you are still in the Will) The lesson learned is don't write an email at 3:00 a.m. when you can't sleep, without checking it over in the morning!) Jon and Leah live is Hoboken, N.J. where Jon is completing his 3rd year of law school.
We have now been in the mission for 5 weeks! We can't believe how quickly the time has gone! Every day just seems to get better! Last weekend, the twins danced in the multi-regional dance festival at the University of Redlands football field. They had so much fun! It was quite a spectacular event! The LDS Church in this area had not put on a dance festival in 23 years! A total of 2700 youth, ages 12-18 danced on the field. Dances from many countries were performed and the costumes and music were wonderful. One hundred of our missionaries in addition to missionaries from the San Bernardino mission helped behind the scenes.

We completed our first set of zone conferences last Wednesday . What a great experience! We were pretty nervous (or at least I was) to see how it would all go. The missionaries were so great! They seemed to enjoy our lessons Mel got a big boost with his attention getter/visual aid during his lesson at the Tuesday training--a 5.8 earthquake!! (We were less than 10 miles from the epicenter!) The elders were very impressed! Many of our missionaries were scared to death! We had all the chandeliers in the chapel swinging and one broke and started to fall over one of our Florida missionaries! He could hardly sit back down when all was calm again.
We began interviews with the president on Thursday and Friday. Mel has interviewed three zones and has nine to go. (Each zone has between 10 and 14 missionaries) What fun to get to know all the missionaries in personal interviews. They are such outstanding young men and women! I have been able to sit with each one and talk with them too, as well as do some teaching and training. We LOVE them all so much! Mel and I have continued attending baptisms and have been going out on splits with some of our missionaries. (We accompanying them on their lessons or track with them.) What a GREAT experience this has been! (challenging, but great!) Our missionaries love having us go out teaching and seeing investigators with them. We've had some very sweet experiences.

Our Laurie came over Monday to cut my hair (our Preparation Day) and brought our grandchildren. It was the first time we had seen them since the day we moved because of our crazy, but wonderful schedule! Yesterday was Ryan's 16th birthday! He is so excited to start driving! (I am so excited to have him start driving too! That will help this next year) Julie and Laurie were able to come over for dinner with their families to celebrate. Stake conferences are starting in two weeks and we already have a lot of speaking assignments. We can't believe how often we are speaking or teaching! (to missionaries, members, investigators, baptisms or firesides). It is truly amazing that there are this many people who want to hear from us!!! Perhaps it will be short-lived and only our missionaries will be forced to listen!
We love you all and miss you, but LOVE serving our Heavenly Father and Savior here in Riverside, California.

Lots of love to you all, Linda, Mel and family