Turkey day and Reunion

Thanksgiving this year was spent with all of our foster daughters, the Sister Missionaries.  We closed Temple Square at 5:00 pm and took all 160 missionaries to "Chuck O Rama" for dinner. 

President Stewart spent some time in the morning explaining the concept of the American Thanksgiving to all of the Sisters, many are from different cultures and have no idea of our traditions.  I am not sure that all of the Sisters had turkey and cranberry sauce.   I asked several if they liked the cranberry sauce, they looked at me and said what is that?

All of the Sisters have Digital Cameras, so a lot of the time is spent taking pictures of each other.  It is amazing to see all of the flashes going off all over the room.
Sister Glad took this picture with me talking with some of the sisters from left to right, Hungry, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, and France. Sister "K", from Hungry is on of our favorite. We use Initials or nick names as many of the names are very hard for the older English tongue to pronounce, 

Sister glad with some "Indians" from Tonga and Hawaii.  The gals love to dress up.  Mom is mentoring a new Missionary from Brazil.  They assign a senior missionary to met once a week with new missionaries to help them in the transition to the U. S. culture and learning English. Many of the Sisters have English as a second language and are struggling to speak it clearly. They are required to take people who speak English on tours many times each day, so they are thrown in to the fire quickly.  
We were working in the North Visitors Center Sunday night when who should show up but Wayne and Karen.  We had a good visit with them.  Wayne is here for a doctor appointment. He did not know that we were here on a mission and had come to see the lights, then LaVere and Diane walked in, they were here with Shaun, their adopted son, and some of Dianes family. They had came to see the lights.  It was a real unplanned family get together. Cami had also came in earlier with all of her family.  Temple Square is really busy during the Christmas Season.  

We had 900,000 Visitors come to the Square last year.  It seemed that that they were all here Saturday and Sunday.  We had to deal with, one bloody nose, a child that need a barf bag and help cleaning up s stinky mess, band aids, three sets of lost children, keeping track of wheel chairs, making sure that the Choirs were in the right place at the right time and some how getting the visitors out of the buildings so we could close up for the night.   Real fun !!

Story #3

I was a young 20 year old man going on a Mission, we went when we were 20 in the good old days, entering the Mission Home.  I was not sure what I was getting my self in to, was scared, very unsure of my self.  There was a large sign at the front door which read "Don't be a crank, be a self starter."  I said to my self that is what I want to be. Since then I have always tried to be a self starter.  My mission was some times hard, we went out every day knocking on doors from 10 in the morning to 10 at night as we had no referrals, but I started each day in my morning prayer by asking for the desire to work hard that day to be a self starter.  I think that it is important in life to go do what is right with out asking for some once else to motivate you, to really be a self starter.