December 2, 2014 (Thanksgiving 2014)

It's hard to believe that we are starting the last month of the year!  It seem like every year goes by a little faster than the last.  We continue to feel extremely blessed to be serving a mission.  It is a blessing to associate with so many fine young elders and sisters as well as other senior missionaries like ourselves.  We stand in awe of the many talents these young people have in teaching the gospel and in showing leadership qualities.  They are the future leaders of the church and some probably will lead our country or other countries from which they have come.

We are also very blessed to have a wonderful family.  We have our share of trials and hard times, but we have a bunch of outstanding children (and their spouses) and grandchildren, all of whom we love very much.

We are mostly blessed to know that we have a Heavenly Father who has a plan for us and that if we follow that plan, we can return and live with Him someday.  We are blessed to know that our Savior, Jesus Christ lives and loves us.  We are blessed to know that we can repent of our sins and that through His Atonement we can be like Him and someday be with Him.  What peace and joy comes through this knowledge!  It truly is something that we want to share with everyone that we come in contact with.

We are entering the last month of our mission and we are feeling such mixed emotions.  We love being missionaries so much!  The good news is that we can and should always be missionaries whether we have the official calling and name tag, or we are member missionaries in our own community.  There is a great work to be done no matter where we are and we hope to help spread the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ all of our days!

Here's a recap of our Thanksgiving and the past few days:

We love our sisters, Sister Roy and Sister Jones!  Sister Roy is going home this week.  She has served her 18 months honorably and with all of her heart and now she is returning home to her family and to resume her life.  We will miss her very much.  She has been with us for our whole mission so far!  We wish her the very best!  We had so much fun spending Thanksgiving with them.  

We were expecting our daughter, Melecia and her family for the holiday, but due to bad weather, they weren't able to make it!  We were so, so sad about that news, and we appreciate these two for making us smile and be grateful even through our disappointment!
 

Sister Jones made us a homemade apple pie.  She had watched and helped her mother make pies for years, but this was her first solo attempt.  She did an outstanding job and we were so proud of her effort!  It was a delicious pie!

 

Elder Moore and Sister Roy watching the creation of our apple pie!

TaDaaa!  And just like magic, we have a perfect pie from the crust down to the filling, every last bite!

We invited our district leaders, Elder Welker and Elder Davey, over to join us for our feast.  We had a wonderful meal and we took the time to write down the things that we are grateful for.  It was a very special day.  It was made even more special when Nancy and Dale showed up around 3:30.  We had already eaten but they had been in NYC (spending time with their son, Adam, and his family) and had just driven back and were starving.  So we rolled out the red carpet for them and they enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner part 2.

We are grateful for our delicious turkey.  Don't let the bottles of gravy fool you, they were just there for back up in case the gravy failed, but, thank heavens, it turned out great!  Everything was perfect and we were all stuffed.  I felt bad for the elders and sisters who had to go eat again shortly after leaving our place!

Friday, was back to business as missionaries.  We had our district meeting and we all met afterwards for  some delicious turkey soup and bread provided by our other senior couple serving in our zone, Elder and Sister Foote.  After our meeting and lunch, we made a couple of visits to see our special babies, I mean families, that we have grown especially close to.

I'm usually the one in the pictures holding the babies, but I captured these of Elder Moore in Grandpa mode.  I think he's a pretty special guy and I love this sweet, tender side of him!

Thanksgiving is officially over and it was late this year, so we are jumping right into Christmas season!  We got this little tree as our only Black Friday purchase!  It was half-price at Whole Foods.  We grabbed some cute decorations in the dollar bins at Target and we are all set!  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I was talking to Mike from the kitchen and this just looked funny to me and then I realized he looked like a reindeer with great big antlers!  Haha!  So appropriate for the season, don't you agree?

 On Saturday night, we had a little going away dinner for Sister Roy.  We had the Chinese sisters join us as well as the Braithwaites.  We had Yucatano Delicioso which is a family celebration favorite and they all loved it.  Sister Jones made delicious chocolate chip bar cookies (hot out of the oven with ice cream).  Later that evening we found out that Sister Ng is being transferred to Amherst, MA and that Sister Hung (in the front) is going to be Sister Jones' new companion.  We are so sad to lose Sister Ng from our district, but so happy that Sister Hung will be our new sister missionary in our ward!

The Men in Black, Partners in Crime?  No just really great guys spreading the good news!

A couple of Mormon missionary thugs!

Our mission has really been united in hastening the work of the Lord.  Through much prayer and thoughtful consideration, our mission president, his wife and our mission leadership council decided to set a goal for the mission to try to baptize 70 people in the month of November.  It was a high number and yet they felt that we could do it as a unified effort and with the help of the Lord.  Every missionary in the mission was dedicated to this effort and we all worked extra hard at being the best missionaries we could be by being completely obedient and by striving to find and teach people the gospel. 

On Sunday night, November 30, the president sent out word that we had baptized 100 people in the month of November!  That's not just a number, but 100 real people entered the waters of baptism and have taken a most important step in their journey back to our Heavenly Father.  We are so happy to be here and to have been a part of a November to Remember!

This is Sophia and she was baptized on November 30.  She was so happy and excited and we were thrilled to be there.  It was our first baptism that was done all in Chinese.  We had headsets and a translator.  It was awesome!

Monday, was a beautiful day!  It was sunny and near 60 degrees.  I took a long walk down by the river.  This is a picture of the boats that have been shrink-wrapped for the winter!  I think that's pretty cool how they do that and would like to watch how it's done some time! 

Monday afternoon, we helped out at our church for about five hours at the Red Cross blood drive.  It was open to the public and it was a lot of fun getting to visit with lots of people who were kind enough to come in and donate some of their blood.  I'm always impressed with the selflessness of this act of kindness.  They didn't get paid and their only reward was a cookie and a bottle of water or juice at the end.  Gotta love blood donors!

Well another week has come and gone and here we are in December!  It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!  That's probably my most favorite Christmas song by Andy Williams and it was the first song I heard this Christmas season!  That's got to be a good sign.  We hope December brings you much joy and that we all remember the real reason that we celebrate!  Please check out this great little 2 1/2 minute video as a great way to start out your Christmas season.  http://www.mormon.org/christmas

We love you!