Category: Missionary

“Marked”

At the family cabin last summer, Mark hid and posed about 50 tiny monkeys for people to discover. I found one wrapped in twine attached to a plastic spider, as if it had been captured by the spider. When my mom found one in a funny place, she told me about it. I confessed to her that the whole cabin had been “Marked.”

Monkeys. Googly eyes on pictures. Funny scenes made with toys. Steadily, these things are spreading wherever Mark goes in the world. At home, I keep in place these little pieces of his humor. It is fun to be “Marked.”

Moving day

Daniel and McKenna are now Provo residents. We are thankful for all the pieces that came together so they could make this move. Daniel will no longer have that long commute to school at BYU.

We also had a video call with Elder Ross, so it was a bit of a reunion this afternoon.

Fun fact: I think that Tim is Daniel and McKenna’s landlord. 😄 Tim’s new adventure is that he is a property manager at my dad’s company.

Posting from the heart

Our kids didn’t have social media accounts until late in high school or after high school. This post showed up this week on Facebook from Mark, written in Danish. Missionaries in Denmark are having a lot of success on Facebook, which isn’t their generation’s social media platform of choice. So, despite being new to this part of the social media world, they post their hearts.

Delayed.

A winter storm in the South has caused a delay in my parents’ departure to Puerto Rico. Richard and I picked them up from the airport after a rough start to their journey and they are staying with us for a couple of days. This unexpected visit has been wonderful for me, a tender mercy from Heavenly Father, who knows my heart. My parents are anxious to be in their assigned mission, but they have taken some needed rest here before their big adventure continues.

Mark’s missionary plaque

I enjoy seeing these missionary plaques on display in the hallways of our church buildings. They are one of the cultural threads that make it seem like we are at home when we visit other Sunday services. These plaques are uniform in mood and size, but my mother heart sees them as representing precious children, loved and missed. I really like the scripture that Mark chose. I don’t think I have seen it on a missionary plaque before.

Scattered

“The Lord is hastening His work to gather Israel. That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty.”

-Russell M. Nelson

One paradox of gospel living is that if we want to be gatherers, we will need to scatter in some way.

This might look like spending time away from home, scattered about in service.

Elder Cook taught, “When we shine, we gather.” Abandoning old habits, scattering them in the wake of better choices and Christ’s grace, has an effect of making a person shine.

Our family may be scattered for now, but wherever we are, we can be gatherers. Each time we have sent a family member to serve a mission, I have felt the blessing of additional spiritual strength. This is another paradox of gospel living, that in feeling incomplete, I become more intact in Christ. Gathered.