What a blessing!

  Spring finally sprung but so did the rain.  The heavens are cryin! No wonder they call this the Garden State.  It is green and lush because we have torrents here.  You almost have to pull over when you are driving because you can’t see out of your windshield no matter how fast your wipers are going.  We continue to receive Emergency alerts on our phones because of flash flooding in the area. The raindrops are huge.  The clouds here seem so close to you because we don’t have any mountains to make them look higher in the sky so it seems as though they are right above your head.  We also have Jersey’s mists and fog.  They are beautiful, but it does not help the hair.  The humidity is on the rise.

It has been a blessing this month to interview 250 missionaries one on one.  Jon and I took 2 weeks straight from 9 to 4 every day to visit with each one of our fantastic missionaries.  Even though it was exhausting, it was a good tired because we so love being with them.  We will miss feeling their warmth and love and hearing about their experiences and opportunities they have to hasten the work here in Jersey.

As usual we are blessed every six weeks with another group of excited missionaries entering the field and missionaries who have completed successful missions returning home.  We will be blessed with 540 young men and women to have in our lives as we return home in the following months.

Every Sunday Jon and I have had the blessed privilege of seeing Heavenly Father’s children enter the waters of Baptism.  We love seeing families especially.  It is a tender blessing when you see husbands and wives hug each other in the font with tears and smiles and then hug their children who then were baptized. The diversity of new converts is amazing here in New Jersey.  People from Ukraine, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Phillipines, Saipan, Haiti is just a start of the nationalities we see every Sunday in one way or another.  In one of our baptisms recently a man from Russia, 50 years old, was baptized and asked President Jeppson, “Why couldn’t I have had this earlier in my life?”  He realized the blessings he had been missing all these years. There was such a diversity of nationalities in that room that Jon and I thought we were in the United Nations during this baptismal service.  We have rubbed shoulders truly with saints from all over the world. A huge blessing for two white Americans from Mormon filled Salt Lake City.  Today we attended a Spanish Branch where a near convert of two months baptized his friend and they both hugged in the font.  It is just sooo heart warming!  We love it and feel so blessed to witness this weekly.  You all better be hastening the work when we get home so we can continue to see this happening each week! Your life will be blessed as well!!

Our last month is upon us!  Bitter, sweet feelings are entering the heart! What an experience.  True blessings for a lifetime!

We love you you so! Thanks to all for being a blessing to us,  Dad and