Week 11

My week was blessed with lots of family visiting! On Thursday night I braved I-15 and drove for an hour and a half to get to American Fork. Should have taken me half that, but it was worth the drive. I had dinner with Ann, Larry, Catherine, Rod, Lynda, Greg, Steve & Michelle at the Olive Garden in AF. It was great to visit and catch up. Everyone seems to be doing well. Ann & Larry are waiting for a mission call. Rod and Catherine are trying to decide about one - not yet for them. I think they would love it but they have to be ready. Saturday was fun too. I went to Jonathan's football game with Coray & Mindy. It was a nail-biter! They won in the last 30 seconds.

Caryn, Jon & Tyler came down for Hanna's dance recital and stopped at the game. It was a beautiful day for football - nearly 60 degrees. We left at halftime to go to Provo for the recital and listened to the rest of the game on the radio. We met Alyssa, Chad, Hanna & Mason at Brick Oven for dinner. That was so fun to be there again and eat my favorite mini feast. 

Then we went to Hanna's recital. She's in the Dance Ensemble. She danced beautifully, and of course the dances she was in were my favorite! 

We spent the night at Coray's and I left in the morning for my regular Sunday assignments. 

I'd like you to know about the Temple View Branch. I was asked to go there to play the organ for their sacrament meeting. It's a tiny branch in South Salt Lake and is served by the Inner City Mission, but my mission president likes to have service opportunities for our young elders. Two of them go there every week to help with the sacrament. One of the senior couples takes them, and I go to play the organ. The branch meetings are held in a little room that's part of their apartment building - low-income apartments for seniors. 

The room is about the size of a regular Relief Society room and is furnished very much like one, except there is an organ and a sacrament table. They are SO appreciative of my being there to play the organ. In prayers and testimonies I get thanked regularly, and the people are really sweet. Lots of walkers and wheelchairs, but it's not an assisted living. Just a place for poorer old folks. Last week was testimony meeting, and at the end of the meeting a man who had come in late and sat at the back walked up to bear his testimony - the last for the meeting. He had long hair and a scruffy beard, was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt with some sort of beer ad on the back, and two different shoes. He introduced himself - David I think - and said that he had been a member of the church, and thought he still was, that he had taken three of the five temple prep classes, and that he wanted to come back. After the meeting was over, I looked back to see if some of the branch members or Inner City missionaries had gone back to speak to him - I really hoped they had. I thought about him all week, that he would be the lost sheep that the Savior would ask us to find. I didn't see him at the meeting today until I was playing the postlude. There he was gathering up the hymn books. This time his shirt was plain on the back (inside out maybe?) and his shoes matched. 

I imagine that Adam, Abby, and Madeline are having regular experiences with lost sheep, but it's new for me. I love my mission. Most of what I do could be done by any church employee, but I feel like I'm serving and saving a few precious tithing dollars so they can be spent on better things.