"..And what added more to (my) joy..."

One of my dearest scripture stories is when Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah meet up at the end of the latters' 14-year mission to the Lamanites: "Now these sons of Mosiah were with Alma at the time the angel first appeared unto him; therefore Alma did rejoice exceedingly to see his brethren; and what added more to his joy, they were still his brethren in the Lord."  I love running into people I have known through the years in various places, and my joy is always more full when I see that they are still holding on to the Iron Rod.

That happened this weekend - we had a visiting Area Authority come to our Stake Conference.  When I heard who was coming, I assumed there weren't two people with that same name, and sure enough:  Elder Robert Hymas was indeed the same Rob Hymas with whom I served in Student Government at Provo High.  He was a very good, kind, gentle person even in high school, and has become a powerful leader and incredible speaker.  He was very warm when he saw me and pretended that he didn't have awkward memories (only good) of me!  (I told you he was kind!)

Of course, our favorite place to run into people who we haven't seen for a long time is in the temple, which we did a couple weeks ago when we saw our son-in-law, Tia's, "Uncle Tia Purcell," in the temple!

We took a full P-Day this week and celebrated our anniversary - we have enjoyed reminiscing about the events that led to our coming together (thank you, Heidemans!) and the confirmations that we had letting us know that we were supposed to get married.  It's been an amazing three years, filled with a variety of experiences.  We highly recommend starting out a marriage out by going on a mission together - don't know if that could work for most people, but we are grateful that it did for us!  

We celebrated by going to the beach (totally approved for Senior Missionaries in this mission!) and a movie (also approved), "War Room."  We were happy to see a movie with such a positive message in a mainstream theater.  

We had the beach to ourselves!  YAY for mid-week P-Days!

We may have had Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster...

Though the weather is cooling off a bit, the skies are still incredible!

We love being missionaries.  The Gospel is True.  We love you!