Elda!!  

You can't imagine the joy Thursday morning when we woke up to a letter from you!  It was better than Christmas! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME! Every tiny bit of news from you we eat sleep drink and breathe it every second. 

We've been researching Kadavu. The pictures are breathtaking. Is the IPAD picture you sent us inside the house where you are living? PLEASE TELL US EVERYTHING! I am tempted to write a short letter so you have more time to write to us. You are the one with all the news!  We hang on every word, reread letters over and over and over. 

Here are some highlights from our week:

LETTER FROM YOU!  LETTER FROM YOU! LETTER FROM YOU! 

• Seth is double digit man this morning!  He is such a fun darling little man.  We had a murder mystery party for 20 guests last night.  They all came in costume. It was FUN, went great.  Annie and all her friends were the maids.  Annie wore like 9 inch high heels she got from Bailey.  That girl is growing up way way too fast.  The maid did it. It's always the maid or the butler, right? He really wanted all the stuff to be a blacksmith in the backyard for his birthday, the little blacksmithing shop, the anvil, bellows, hammer and fireplace.  So cute.  

• Sunday's meeting at the Roberts got us way pumped for Mexico.  This year each branch member chose a fellowshipping family to also receive gifts.  There's are a few newlywed couples going.  The wife of one also is majoring in ASL. I hope that's fun for Coy and Haven.  Previous to the meeting we all went to Coy and Haven's house to play Coy's new game, eat our fast Sunday meal together, and for Mckay to karate chop Seth and Annie in the stomach lots of times.  

• I taught seminary Monday and your cousin Zack walked in to class. I'm trying to imagine what that was like for him to have his weird middle-aged aunt teaching his seminary class. Is it like Sister Jaba the Bobafet Chewie saying, "give your auntie pantie a big hug in front of your friends!" I told him he didn't have to tell anyone who I was. He didn't .  I brought Grandpa Jello to teach the class Friday, my ultimate secret weapon, and he told everyone. Poor Zack.   
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• Monday night for family night we worked at the Zimbabwe project. It was an amazing night. We hung out right with the women golfers who started it all.  They needed the empty boxes taken half a mile it seemed to the other side of the warehouse. Seth had his heelies on! He gathered them up and flew . It was so fun.  It's so amazing what they do. They sort and bail all the donations,  then just take one of everything like girl clothes, baby clothes, blankets, shoes, etc. etc, and just go out "into the bush" and give it all away, over and over and over and over again. There are 16 million people in Zimbabwe.  
• Monday we also got our sweet Grandma Raspberry home from Texas. She had a fun, long trip. 
• Tuesday was cool. Linda Robertson organized an awesome fireside about the family. Steve Hardman, Nick Neilsen and I dressed up like Captain Moroni,  Jacob and Rabecca.  We taught the doctrine of the family. What is Heavenly Father all about? Making and saving families!   Boyd K. Packer taught that the ulitmate end of all we do in the church is to that parents and children are happy at home, sealed to each other and linked to their generations through the eternities. The most important roles we will ever ever have are those of mother and father. Even a calling as prophet is not as important as a calling of Father.
• Wednesday was a gender reveal party at Jeni and Smitty's!  So exciting! I'll let them tell you the news.....  We had fun grocery shopping for a finals survival kit for Coy, Haven and Mook.  We loaded up on corndogs, Pringles, noodles...the good stuff. They have finals now until the 20th.   
• I was blessed to serve/teach (I just can't call it work) at handicap seminary three days this week. It's like being in the celestial kingdom. One boy, he's so cute. He just says a few words. He's legally blind, has cerebral palsey and several other challenges, but he loves to be a friend. He says hi to the other kids with so much inflection and passion.  We were reading the scriptures this week and he heard the word friend and repeated it. Very precious. He has such a cute smile. Our down syndrome boy came in with a tank top on showing everyone his muscles.  Our teacher got flummoxed and started teaching the wrong lesson and our sweet little boy in a wheelchair just wouldn't stop teasing her. He can't really laugh, it's kind of a hum, but he just wouldn't let it go.  
• Thursday night Joseph freakin rocked his jazz band concert. He's so handsome up there. It was a fun night. Missed you so much.  Now he's up there I'm pretty sure in the same pair of pants you always wore.  
• Friday Nic and Nate and Savannah, the incredible violin player had their first Christmas concert as "Big Bright Sky". It was super awesome.  They did it at the Riverton Community Center.  Such fun arrangements.  
• Our ward Christmas party was SO AWESOME!  Breakfast, darling nativity with the precious little primary, then we packed food/gift boxes for the ten families in the Swahili Branch downtown.  The families are from four different places in Africa. People were so generous and we filled the boxes right up with roasts, carrots, onions, potatoes, beautiful soft blankets, handmade treats, ornaments from the primary kids, cards from the young women.  The Overson/Lynton family came, they are not members. They helped deliver a box to a family with 9 children from the Congo. In that home they met a  man that had MOVED FROM AUSTRALIA TO AMERICA JUST TO MINISTER TO THIS FAMILY FROM THE CONGO. HE MOVED HERE JUST TO HELP THEM AND GET THEM SETTLED. He is not a member of our church, but our nonmember was so touched by this man's willing sacrifice.  Amazing. Tammy Rasmussen's cute little family learned how to say Merry Christmas in Swahili and their family was clapping and cheering when they said it to them.  Sweet times. 
• My students were pretty super awesome at their piano recital on Saturday at our favorite little rest home.  There was someone yelling in the back that she wanted to go home. It was great. 
• Last Sunday, today and next we are going to all the wards inviting people to audition for the youth conference plays.  You should have seen the look on TJ and Cody Morse's faces when we were pontificating excitedly about how they could dress up in costume and perform in front of the whole stake, and then there's Hunter who just learned every song from Singing in the Rain to try out for the school play, and he's not old enough.  I think I'll remember those Morse boy's faces forever.  
• Today Seth wants taco soup for his birthday dinner.  Joseph is silver rushing his little face off.  He's working so hard.  
• This next week Mr. Silverrush is the exact same night as Annie's orchestra concert...AGAIN!  She is sounding so good and playing super hard music. I think it's the TransSiberian Orchestra arrangement. Joseph is practicing the accordian, playing Tetris in short shorts. Hard to imagine something better than that, except maybe your middle aged weird aunt teaching your seminary class :).
• My soul burns with the fire of the Heavenly Father and the Savior's love for us.  I feel exquisite joy at the chance I have been given to be paid to study the gospel deeply and to teach it. I have so much to learn, but as I keep learning it seems that the beautiful colors of individual doctrine weave together into this beautiful tapestry and I am seeing patterns and colors blend together into patterns of God's efforts and love in our lives like never before.  
• Did you know that Jupiter is a space vacuum?  It's huge gravity force pulls meteors and asteroids out of earth's orbit and protects us.  Things like that. Things that may have looked random before just keep weaving into God's love, and I think as we continue to learn every single word will be part of His wondrous work, every color part of his painting of perfecting us, every sound part of his symphony of Salvation.  

I love you more than any word in the English language could ever say. We think of you twenty times a second and pray for you always.  Annie did a post when we got your first letter from Fiji. It read "My world is on the other side of the world". Couldn't have said it better. Amen.  

God Bless you Son! We pray for your health, happiness and success.  Please remind Gilbert Heuffer about the contract he signed regarding drinking clean water and plenty of it!  Thank you for sharing the living water with the people of Fiji.  

Your letters are better than any Christmas present ever! 

Love, Mom. 

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.