December 2014

December is a wonderful month. Our home looks beautiful and ready for Christmas!

We LOVE New York City at Christmas. President Morgan and I were able to go to the City for a day and see all the amazing decorations.

Rockefeller Center

Window's at Macy's

Christmas everywhere!

The Christmas tree at the Plaza hotel

We had a pretty successful day shopping for our kids!

The City is full of little Christmas Markets, at 59th Str, Bryant Park and Union Square. The shopping on 5th Ave. is always so much fun. You can see Christmas trees and lights everywhere. You can hear  choirs sing in many different churches.
We had a wonderful lunch with our new Employment Center Couple, Elder and Sister Ladle, and Sister Karen Findlay and Sister Flossie Spencer.

We are thrilled to have Elder and Sister Gardner from Alpine, Utah come and serve in the office.

Our Office Elders, Elder Moss and Elder Nelson have worked so hard this month to deliver the thousands of packages that have come to our mission.

The Church had a HUGE initiative in Times Square this month. He Is The Gift has been a real blessing to our missionaries and to the people of NYC. The church sponsored 2 large billboards right on Times Square and 2 very large video screens that showed a portion of the video every few minutes. Our missionaries have had great success in proselyting with "He Is The Gift" and asking how everyone will share this gift.

We created a Facebook page all about this initiative. He Is The Gift - NYC. We also had Elder Steve Allen, Managing Director of the Missionary Department and the Media Team from Salt Lake come visit our Mission Leadership Council meeting and talk about how we can be effective in sharing this message on Facebook, in contacting, and other social media.

We were happy to have Elder Tony Perkins, of the Seventy come to view the initiative in the City. He was able to stay and give some instruction at our New Missionary Training meeting.

We were so happy to have our family join us again this Christmas. Jared, Erin, Sawyer and Sloane came from Utah with Parker, Peter, and Ryan.

We missed our son Nate and sweet daughter in law, Duvae and Baby Grey. Even living coast to coast our hearts could still be together at Christmas.

After Christmas we all went to George's Diner in the Bronx for breakfast. Every missionary in the NYNYN tries to tackle the challenge of eating a George's Special!

Jared, Sawyer and Sloane couldn't finish the George's special

Peter completed the challenge today! Elder Smith, Elder Coleman and Ryan couldn't do it!

Parker and Elder Staheli finished all their breakfast specials, but President Morgan won't get his name on the wall!

 

Being with our family this wonderful time has year has been a great blessing. Sharing our mission experiences with them over the last three years has been wonderful. We LOVE our family. We are so grateful for their continued support!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!