AUGUST 2016 APM Activities

We had a wonderful August with family and APM activities.
We went to several receptions or sealings including Greg and Tegan McCuch.
It was just as much fun seeing the other RMs that were rocking out there too!

Here we are with our group of APM related friends!!
Angel & Genavieve Munoz, Us, Jake Parry, Jesus Castro and Greg and Tegan McCuch.

We loved being at the sealing for Nathan and Brooke Wainwright in Salt Lake this month too!
We love meeting the families of our RMs at these events too!

President T had to hustle back over to work, so I stayed for the pics!

And as I was leaving, look who I bumped into!
Aaron Johnson from the APM headed to a friend's sealing!
COOL!

We went to a work party at the SL BEES game and look who we ran into!!
Cameron and Adrian Colovich had moved to Utah and we did not know it til now!

We were so happy to see them and made plans for dinner soon!

We got a call the next day from CRYSTAL TURNER AND SAUNDRA JONES who were in town together this same weekend!

You should have heard the squeals of delight when we invited them to come to sacrament meeting at the MTC with us!

And we could not resist the traditional missionary photo by the big map!!
Idaho and New Jersey here they come!

This month Clark Livingston also got sealed.  We loved meeting his family and seeing Conner Dickson there as well!

We were thrilled that Alisa Baumgartner Hansen would take time during her brief Utah trip to come have dinner with us so we could meet baby Lincoln!

He is a master at NOT SLEEPING!  But who can sleep when there is so much to learn all around you!  Yup, Harvard, here he comes!

He did love his bath though!  Some pretty serious smiles and kicks in the tub!!


And better yet, Sam Stanley came to take her up to SLC that night so it was a two-fer!!

Lincoln's first taste of watermelon...it was a keeper, just too big a bite!

And some serious horsing around before pics!

Oh how we love you all now and FOREVER!!

OUR APM DINNER GROUP this month was really packed with a variety of RM's from all parts of our mission service!

Here is Cameron and Adrianne Colovich with baby Kimber.  They found Daddy's quilt block way down on the bottom of the quilt!

And we had a couple more Toole natives today...Matt and Abra Trussell and Mason & Erika Halligan with baby Griffin.

Andrew Pehrson made dutch over peach cobbler that was to die for!!!  THANKS FOR SHARING!!  Yummy!





Here's the group: front: Nolan and Faith Blackhurst, Adrian and Cameron Colovich.
Back, Taylors, Jake Parry, Breyton Barber, Zach Jensen, Caleb Brown, Abra and Matt Trussell, Andrew and Alex Pehrson, Mason and Erica Halligan.

JULY 2016 APM Related Activities

 July has FLOWN past but the summer has been full of great activities involving APM missionaries!


We held our monthly APM dinner and had some great guests!

Nathan Wainwright shows his fiance Brooke his square on the mission quilt.

Front:  Garrison Nuttall, Cody Hamilton, Whitney Welch, Jessica Turner and Emily Walker.

Back: Taylors, Mitch Peterson, Joshua Holmes, Andy Marble, Daniel Jones, Alex Beck, Nathan Wainwright and Brooke.

We were SO EXCITED to have a visit from the Gorham clan this month!  Zach and Megan brought baby Madison to see us along with Zach's Mom and sister.  We had a great visit and it meant a lot that they would take the time to see us!

 We had a DOUBLE HEADER this day at the Logan Temple!
One sealing at 8:30 and another at 9:15!!  We were SO GLAD it worked out like a charm!

First was Dustin Martinsen and his bride Jessica.
We were joined by Conner Albrecht there as well.

And next was Nate Nelson and his bride Alicia.  We were joined by Brent Empey and Conner Albrecht.

And the miracle was Conner's Mom got a photo of all 4 APM returned missionaries together!!

Here is Nate and Alicia coming out of the temple.  Nothing like the joy of that presentation after the beautiful sealing!

Some of you may have run the TEMPLE 2 TEMPLE 5K from Provo Temple to Provo City Center Temple on July 25.

It is a family tradition to do this run/walk.

Great way to get our exercise for the day going from one temple to another!

We had some RM visitors this month as well including Amber Harding who looks cuter every time I see her!!

And we met some friends from Phoenix in the MTC like SISTER CHERRY the granddaughter of Jim and Dee Cherry from our office there!

And to our big surprise when we met our new Romanian missionaries the Elder Lemon looked a lot like our Tyler Lemon so we asked if they were related, you know, cousins or something...

...nope, brothers!  We were so excited!!  Great to have another Elder Lemon!!

I was able to make another sealing this week for Christian Blake and his bride Megan.  Loved being there to see her grandfather perform the sealing for them!

Tyler and Kelly Starr were sealed in California early in July and celebrated in Utah the last Saturday of July.  Great to see them and how happy they are!!

 Our newest missionaries at the MTC include front: Sisters Idiart and Anderson, Back: Elder Trottier, Sisters Lee and Dusenberry, Elder Lemon, Sister Gleason, Elders Perret and Jacobson (cousin to our own Clayton Murdock)

They are all headed to ROMANIA!!

And today we got a facebook call from ATAPANI MOALA!! Made our day!!

The cool thing was, he was calling this time with a REFERRAL from a former investigator who contacted him and wants missionaries again!
THE SEEDS ARE PLANTED!!

MAY/JUNE 2016 APM Related Activities

I will be adding the rest of June to this post as I finish up the month, but wanted to get out here what we have done so far this summer!!

May was spent mainly on our trip to Australia and New Zealand.

The people that we spent time with were the absolute highlight of our trip!

Elder and Sister TEMPLETON were our angels, allowing us to make their home, our home base to stay part of our trip!

 Does it surprise anyone that they got called to serve in the New Zealand Hamilton Mission Office?  Not us!  These two have the desire to serve in their hearts!!

We went to the Hamilton Temple while we were there too...beautiful place!

When we returned, we held our May APM HIKE...this time back to Stewart Falls, a favorite!

We had Joseph Barley, Nicole Barton and Amelia Johnson join our daughter Breanna and her boyfriend Elliot on this one.

As you can see, it was a beautiful day!  Started out a bit chilly, but we soon ditched the jackets.

This time we also hiked up to the top of the upper falls...a bit tenuous with slippery rocks, but we did it and it was pretty awesome!

We got some individual shots of our RM's

Joseph

Nicole

Amelia is hard to see because yes, she braved going UNDER the falls and it was freezing!!

Me??  Well, I got CLOSE but not soaked!

And the entire crew!
It was the perfect way to start off our Saturday morning!
As we saw crowds of people going up as we came down we realized that earlier really IS BETTER in hiking popular trails!
















And i love the random running into RM's...as I went to Zions Bank to make a deposit, who was my teller?
Alex Janzen!!
I was so excited to see him!

Early June I was on the road again for 2 more weeks and President T was on his own for one of those weeks where he got to meet up with some RM's...

Alex Harline was in town from Texas, so glad they got to meet up in SLC!!  Sad for me that I missed it!

And, I missed out on Alex Cordero's sealing and reception as well!
So glad President T made it to congratulate them!

And of course, he got to see other mission friends...John Kroeger, Kaila Harris and Dallin Anderson.
















Then I also missed out when Tyber Parsons was in town and went to the MTC along with Blake Mullenix to visit our Italian Branch with President T.

How cool is that to have them come share their testimony with our current missionaries!  THANKS GUYS!!

Our JUNE APM HIKE  was a unique place we had just been dying to go...ANTELOPE ISLAND!
We were bummed that Logan Longhurst got stuck at work in Idaho...he was our planned tour guide from the area, but we found our trail and really had the best time!

We were entertained by the sign at the entrance...

But we DID see a lot of buffalo there, and some pronghorn antelope (fastest mammal in N America BTW) and snakes and birds.


We actually watched a gopher snake for a long time up on top of the knob!

We were hiking Dooley Knob partway up the Frary Peak trailhead.

Me with Breanna and Elliot...we love our new trekking poles!  They were super helpful!


















Colton Robinson

Lexie and Shae Morgan











              Maria Garcia

                                           Julie and Jenny Greenwood(It was their birthday!)

Jesus Castro













             



                                                                                Chad Alvey

Conner Albrecht

And the whole group up at the top of the knob where the view was spectacular!

OK, when I posted earlier, WHO KNEW that I would run into 5 more APM missionaries before the end of the month??!!

Braden and I were at the City Center Temple ready to serve and ran into Dax Gerber and his girlfriend Kylie.  We ended up deciding to go do sealings together and it was really great!  Can't think of a better place to run into you all!!

Then, the next AM when I go back to my RIP class, who do I see but Rachel and Alex Ure ready to sweat.  Seriously kill that class!!  They are awesome!!

 Then on the last Saturday of the month, we got to attend the sealing of Parley and Heather Scott.  They were just so happy!!  And we loved meeting and talking with Parley's family, they are the greatest!!

That night I went to help our dear friends, the Thurbers, from Peoria with a wedding reception down in Mapleton and who do I see??

Dan and Alexis Jensen,  Yes, Alexis is cousin to the groom!!

So fun to see them there!!











And then Breyton Barber comes walking in as well...he was friends with Vanessa Thurber in his YSA ward!


SMALLEST, BEST WORLD EVER!!