Sunday January 25, 2015
Dear Cassidy -

Happy Monday! I hope your p-day has been good. Thank you for always writing such great, informative letters and sending us so many pictures. You're awesome!

In reference to your last letter...

I'm so glad you converter is working well and that you've gotten a blow dryer, etc.

I always love reading your day to day happenings and you're sounding more and more German every week! I try to use Google translate when I don't understand some words. It works sometimes:) We always smile and comment when you say things like your appointments "fell out" instead of fell through or got cancelled. That was very funny about Sis. Lisonbee's skirt getting caught in the bahn door. I can picture you giggling silently! And the old guy that thought you were looking for a husband!!! Ha!

Good girl for going to the hospital to help Comfort - even though it makes you sick. Is she getting better? Did you get to teach David again?

I'm anxious to try your chocolate! It hasn't arrived yet. Maybe this week? Did I tell you we sent a package? I'm thinking you won't get it until next zone conference though. So it may be a while.

I saw today on your mission blog that your new mission Pres. has been announced for this summer. He looks very nice. Do you get notification of that or no? They look a bit younger than your other Pres. they have 5 kids and some of them are young enough I think they'll still be at home. Both he and his wife are from Germany.

So - we've had a pretty normal week here. The kids and I drove home from Vegas on Monday. It was pretty uneventful other than at the beginning of the trip Colten had some pretty terrible breath and almost made Hadlie gag. We stopped at the Petro gas station by the raceway and got some breath mints along with our snacks. It was pretty funny in the car for a few minutes. Picture Colten breathing heavily in Hadlie's face just to irritate her:)

The rest of the days were pretty normal. Work, school, YM/YW.

Friday night I went to Kelli Orton's bridal shower. She's marrying Moe finally. They've been dating since before Katie Jackson got married! Anyway - it was fun and she seems really happy. I'll send you a picture of the girls there.

Saturday I went over to Adam and Brooke's house to have Adam look at my ear. I was having some weird jaw/ear pain and thought I might have an infection. My ear was not infected and he asked me a bunch of questions and we came to the conclusion that I had tweeked the muscles in my jaw (close to my ear) by wearing my retainers this week!!! I had started wearing them almost every night this week because I can tell my teeth have totally been moving. So there's my explanation. It actually feels much better today. I also ran a few errands with the girls yesterday and we went to Waffle Love. It was delicious.

Today I went to the YSA Ward Counsel. Kyle Nielson is the new Ward Mission Leader in that ward - and he got braces! So he got released from teaching mission prep in our stake and is now there at the ysa ward. Abby's also been coming and now teaches a gospel principles class. That ward is having a talent show tomorrow night soooo that's what we're doing for FHE. I don't know how thrilled Colten is about that. But oh well.

So I went to sacrament meeting there in the ysa ward today and wanted to share a story that was told there. A high counsel speaker spoke and his job for work is something to do with the Church's translation department. He brought a stack of Books of Mormon in different languages - crazy ones like Hebrew and Persian and Croatian, etc. He told stories about all of them and all of them were pretty amazing, but then he had one that was in the language of Maum (mom) which is a Myan language. He told about a mission in Guatemala where there are Myan people who speak this language and the mission president saw an opportunity to teach them, but nobody spoke their language. So he felt inspired to ask one of his Latin missionaries to learn this language. The missionary asked how he was supposed to do that and the missions president said he didn't know, but the Lord would provide a way.

That night as the missionary slept his Grandpa came to him in a dream. He spoke to the missionary in MAUM! The missionary from then on was visited by his Grandpa EVERY NIGHT and was taught a Maum "lesson." Each morning the missionary would wake up and write down the things he'd learned and teach it to his companion. Eventually he became fluent in the language and later was the person that the church used to translate the Book of Mormon into that language. The Myan people have obviously greatly benefited from having the Book in their own language and they have now done comparisons and found that the missionary translated every single thing perfectly! Cool right?!

I loved that story and thought it really shows how the Lord uses His missionaries in hastening the work. And what powerful things can happen because of obedience and faithfulness.

Well Cass - I love you so much! I hope you have a good and successful week. Stay positive and happy:)

Love - Mom

 Jessie, Abby, Kellie, Katy...I had all of them 10 years ago in YW!

Our new EAT sign:)