HHEEEELLLLOOOOO BAAABBBBEEEEYYYYYY!!!!

How are you you amazing incredible awesome valiant dedicated hilarious consecrated obedient noble and true to the very end missionary?

How has your week been? Ally's baptism? Fan Jiemei? Deng dixiong?Debbie, Xin Yu, and Debbie's friend? Chris? Zha family? And My mookie tookie tabie a a a rina? My aw is winging?

And now an update on my potential converts, our weekly shares and contacts, goals, hopes and plans: :)

I bore my testimony today and basically said  "The best way to live life is to live life in wonder. Be amazed by miracles, seeds growing into trees, cornia's and retina's sending light-waves as sparks that

register to a pink brain, a magnetic field around the earth that deflects solar flares, like WHAT. life is too good. God is too good."

Okay, not just exactly in those words, but the general idea :). I said "Thomas Edison said there are only two ways to live live. One is that nothing is a miracle, and the other way is to see everything as a miracle. I said I came up to just say I feel like I'm in the second group.  I told everyone how much I love love love having my very own testimony and what a sweet gift every tiny little speck of life is, even the suffering is a gift.  You are a miracle to me.  

A part of my testimony that has grown a ton lately is that suffering is a blessed privilege, and when we plead as did the Savior of the world in the Garden of Gethsemane for the bitter cup to be removed, in his great mercy, great and tender love and infinite wisdom, He asks us to drink of the suffering and trust Him. I love Him for loving me enough to help me suffer and learn.  This is a sacred gift made of pure pure love and nothing else. 

STRANGE week.  Monday was perfect perfect perfect. We picked up Coy and Haven in Orem and were in Fairview with Slichta's by about 10 a.m.  We read the conversion stories of our ancestors all the way down.  Okay, I read to Coy, Haven and Dad while the back seat slept. :).  I was amazed that our Christensen family has been in Fairview since 1860, 40 years after the First Vision, and we never left until Grandpa Roger came home from his mission.  We have an amazing story of a family who was in the Martin and Willy handcart company, and their son and brother came back as one of the rescuers. We decorated graves and heard the wonderful stories, had lunch at the Fairview park, played sports at the new park, went to Moroni and Fountain Green and decorated graves. We saw the house Grandma Raspberry's grandma grew up in, and the house Grandma Mabel Walker was courted in by Grandpa Coy. Apparently he came to take someone else ice skating but when he saw Mabel he took her instead.  So precious.  We hung with the Hunts that night.  Ridiculous splendor, that's what I say.  

Tuesday was yearbook stomp, but Joseph couldn't go because he had to get a purple paper signed by all his teachers but had stayed home to help Linda Turner put compost in her yard as a good home teacher.  It was crazy. 

Thursday your brother graduated from high school! Jest bearly, jest bearly. His two a minuses really had us worried. What? Crazy. We're off to seminary graduation in a few minutes. He wore a dress, walked, and then it was over, and now he is GRA JEE A TUD!  He had parents, 5 grandparents, MOST of his siblings, and then Jeni, Smitty, Ella, Big Spencer met us at the restaurant. Don't smile because it's over, cry because it happened. :).  

You are not going to believe how grown up Annie is.  She is an incredible young lady. Also, I love your Dad so very much. He is my boyfriend. 

He's really feeling the adultness. He didn't come home Thursday night, and come to think of it DIDN'T COME HOME FRIDAY NIGHT EITHER! He says it was a total accident Friday night, oops fell asleep.  I worried for five seconds then went to a garage sale.  I am so so so excited for him to remove the weight and pressure and let his own heart inform his decisions instead of every single thing in his life trying to tell him how he might please them. He is Shiblon. He has done everything asked of him.  Talk to him today, see how he's doing.  

We went on an epic hike up Stairway Gulch, it was breathtaking. SO FUN! It was the MOUNTAINS!  GLORY EVERYWHERE!  

Verse Concepts

Shout for joy, O heavens! And rejoice, O earth! Break forth into joyful shouting, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people And will have compassion on His afflicted.                                   Isaiah 49:13

Cheradee was getting a talking to from her loving primary teacher today and she finally put her hands to her head and said, "Oh, I just wish I was shy so I could be good!" So cute.  I love primary so much. Today they were talking into cans with a string between, saying things they could pray about and they said things like "I love Jesus".  "Heavenly Father loves me" "I love my family".  It was so sweet. 

I told the story of us having to come up with $500 right before your mission for your bike and how we found an envelope with $500 from Shauna Llewellyn as a "graduation present".  I'm working on our family small plates, the things of God. By the grace of God go we.  

YOUR MAMA LOVES YOU MORE THAN WORDS CAN EVER SAY. 

History of that phrase of you have time: It is often claimed that the familiar expression of compassion “There, but for the grace of God, go I” is based on a quote by the 16th Century English Protestant clergyman John Bradford.

According to tradition, he was a prisoner in the Tower of London when he said it.

Bradford had previously been a prominent supporter of the religious reforms imposed by King Edward VI, which essentially banned Catholicism in England and established the Protestant Church of England as the country’s official religion.

Part of this “reformation” involved jailing or executing Catholic clergymen who weren’t willing to go along with the change.

After Edward died in 1553, Mary I (a.k.a. “Bloody Mary” Tudor) took the throne in England and forcefully reimposed Catholicism.

That involved jailing or executing Protestant clergymen who weren’t willing to go along with the change.

One of them was John Bradford, who refused to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and was convicted of “trying to stir up a mob.”

Queen Mary had Bradford locked up in the Tower of London with other notable Protestant leaders, such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

One day while there, legend has it, Bradford looked down and saw a criminal being led to execution. (In some versions of the story, it’s a group of criminals.)

Simultaneously feeling compassion for the criminal and relief that he was better off, Bradford allegedly uttered the famous quotation “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”

This quote has long been cited as the origin of the proverbial saying “There but for the grace of God go I.”