Sacrament Meeting at the Kirtland Temple

We got to the temple about 9:00 AM on January 15th for a special sacrament meeting with young single adults from the northeastern Ohio stakes.  Here Mom is on her way to the meeting.

This was taken after the meeting.  As you can see it was a cold and snowy day, but we enjoyed a wonderful sacrament meeting with a talk by the Akron Ohio Stake President and testimonies from a number of the young single adults.  The closing song was "The Spirit of God" and it was amazingly wonderful.

Better late than never

Lisa here.  Just wanted to let you all know that I've finally uploaded all of the pictures from the gingerbread decorating party at Christmas.  Heads up: there are about a million of them!  I retro posted them where they belong in December 2011 so that years from now when we're trying to look back and find them they will be in the right place, but that means you have to navigate back to December to see them (use the "blog archive" calendar on the right side of the screen below Joe's picture). Hope all of you are enjoying 2012 so far.  Here is a random picture of Kristin and Megan visiting grandma and grandpa on New Years Eve.

Picture Video of the Start of Our Mission

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This video has pictures of the MTC Christmas and our trip to our mission.  In Nebraska we were able to find the house where Grandpa Lynn Anderson grew up.  Dad is standing in front of the house and then there's a picture with the house and the barn.  No one in the family had been back to that house since 1958 and it was a miracle that we were able to find it.  It is in a small town named Marquette and it hasn't really changed since Grandpa Anderson lived there from 1916-1935.  After leaving there, we stopped at the Winter Quarter visitor center and saw the amazing gingerbread display in the basement.  While there we went on the tour and heard wonderful stories about the pioneers who stayed at Winter Quarters and then went on to the Rocky Mountains.  They had such great faith and humility and proved their willingness to suffer for the gospel's sake.  They were willing to obey whatever the Prophet asked them to do.  We then went to the visitor center and tabernacle in Kanesville and saw an amazing video about the Mormon Battalion and another display of gingerbread houses.  You might get some great ideas for our next gingerbread making party.

In the beginning ... of our mission

Our District at the MTC

We were in the MTC for a week and a half.  The first week we formed districts (ours is the one pictured above) and studied "Preach My Gospel".  It was outside our comfort zone ..... and WONDERFUL.  Our group had couples going to Fiji, Navajo reservation in Arizona, BYU-Hawaii, Berlin Germany and, of course, Kirtland Ohio.  The focus of the first week was helping people develop a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father.  We learned ways to help determine needs and teach to them.  The second week we were trained by CES folks in how to teach the gospel and ways to develop lesson plans.  We LOVED the whole experience and are excited to practice what we learned.

Our Morning Trainers

We had two trainers in the morning and two in the afternoon.  Our morning trainers were Brother Hawkes (on the left) and Brother Pyne (on the right).  Brother Pyne was with us all day and was joined by Brother Thornton, whom you see in the first picture at the far right.