Today, we had one of the best sacrament meetings I have ever been to. It was Sister John's mission farewell. She is going on a mission to Salt Lake Temple square history center. Brother Gibbons spoke first. He said that Sister Johns and president Johns helped his dad and mom get to the temple and how often when he is in the temple or when he looks at his family he thinks of them with gratitude. He said the story of Ammon in the Book of Mormon was always his favorite. The servants of the king looked at the event of the thieves scattering the sheep with an earthly prospective. They greatly feared that the king would kill them as he had their relatives. Ammon looked at the same experience with an eternal perspective and had joy that the event would allow him to show the power of the Lord. When Sister Johns told Jeff that she had been called on a mission he reacted with at earthly point of view and thought the bishop was terrible to ask such a thing of her. He asked sister Johns how she could possibly handle the physical and emotional stresses of a mission. She told him "the Lord would have to make it happen"...Sister Johns is looking at the event of a mission with an Eternal perspective of an event that the Lord could show his power to help her through. Then Sister Johns spoke and she talked about the night before her meeting with the bishop she thought of all the callings in the ward that the bishop might possible be calling her to and she thought that she really couldn't do any of them. So in her nightly prayer she promised the Lord that she would say yes and try to fulfill any calling the Bishop gave her. When the Bishop told her the Lord wanted her to go on a mission she knew she could never ever do it. Her health has been so bad she can barely walk and she can't climb stairs and she has not been in good health. She will turn 85 next week!!!!! She asked the bishop how she could ever do it and he said lets ask the Lord so they prayed and during the prayer she recalled the words of her nightly prayer the night before and she told the bishop yes. Since that time the Drs. have given the OK for her health and she found a place to live with an elevator and she got a scooter (like the seat kind at Walmart I guess) to ride to the history center where she will work and she is ready to go. She found things about serving a mission in her patriarchal blessing that she hadn't thought of before. She still feels very frightened but she knows the Lord will be with her and she will "go and do what the Lord commands" I will miss her a lot. The meeting really strengthened my testimony.

"Happy Happy Birthday Debbie Dear"
"One year older and wiser too..."

I turned 50 on August 21! I felt a little weird about it for about a week before. Fifty sounds so OLD! I don't feel that old. Being 50 just doesn't make sense to me at all. Thanks to my great family and friends I had a very nice birthday. Terry and I rode bikes along the Boise Green Belt, went to "On the Border Mexican restaurant for lunch with Becca and family and saw a dinner play in Glenns Ferry with a group of friends that night. When I came home from Biking I found a new fridge for my garage waiting for me that Rachel covered with "Happy Birthday" wrapping paper and filled with my favorite sugar cookies cut into hearts and letters to spell "Happy Birthday Mom" I quite enjoyed that nice surprise. The dinner theater is a small town
production of a silly play called Wake Him for His Funeral. The ironic and very funny thing was that the entire play portrayed a guy having trouble facing the fact that he was turning 50. He would be "so old" and "so near death" that he felt depressed. His wife then, In I Love Lucy like silly plotting, decides to throw him a funeral so he can attend thinking that seeing lots of people sad and hearing nice funeral things said about him he will know how much he is loved... It was pretty funny but we really laughed and laughed every time they moaned and carried on about the woes of turning 50. The cast also sang Happy Birthday to me. Quite a fun coincidence

Chris's Eagle project

On August 8, We painted a fence and weeded playgrounds and stained tables for Chris's Eagle project. Chris wanted to thank everyone who came by giving them "Grandpa's famous pancake" mmmmmmm. Fifty people came to help. Chris has a lot of very nice supportive friends!!!!!

Mom told me to take out the rolls before church but I forgot. We were lucky to come home to a house not a fire. My rolls felt a bit crisp!!!1
We had a crazy week. I had to drive to Boise to get Chris the orthotic that he needs to wear in his shoes to help his crunched bones but it wasn't right so now he will have missed two weeks of soccer. They had 50 kids come out for practice and so I hope he gets to be on the team. I got his schedule for him and it might be a bit had. He has trig and calculus, ap history, English and chemistry. I wonder if he should drop something. Chemistry is the only one he has a choice about. He likes Mr Dickenson who teaches ap history so he is wanting to keep that and then he can take government from Bundy next year.

So after I got home from Boise we got Chris all ready to go to Heleman's camp where it sounds like he had a great time. He ended up spending a lot of time helping Eric a handicapped boy in our stake. When they were tubing down the river Chris told him to hold on so he wouldn't fall out but Eric told him he didn't care if he fell out because he had taken swimming lessons from Kyle Hall. Chris told him I know you took them from my brother Kyle. Eric got quite excited that Chris was Kyle's brother. Chris is also teaching an autistic kid in his City Rec lessons so he is getting quite a lot of experience helping with special needs. Good for him.


After I dropped Chris off and registered him for school I finally had time to get myself packed for our little trip. Becca, Rachel and Aiden joined us and we headed to Midway, Utah. Littlefield's met us there. When we walked into the motel Aiden almost cheered, his face lit up and he turned to Becca and said "Littlefields are here" Grandpa and I went walking Friday morning and a 4 point and 1 point buck came running at us about 20 feet away. It almost frightened me. We are seeing lots of deer this summer it seems. Then we walked across the street where we found some hot mineral pool with calcium deposits that built up into about a 3 story hill. They take people scuba driving in the pool and it goes down 65 feet. Crazu. All the times I have been there and I had no idea that was there. We did some hiking and shopping and we had a nice time. Terry enjoyed the LDS Dental conference at BYU during the day. I met him for the banquet.

Sunday, all the Littlefields got together for dinner to celebrate Grandpa's birthday. Mom made a chocolate cake for Grandpa and a pineapple coconut cake for me so I think it will be a birthday party for me too. Grandpa's actual birthday is August 17.

Mom, Dad, Rachel and I drove to Fish Lake for the yearly Littlefield reunion. We stayed in Loa, Utah in a barn which hs been turned in to a little motel. Rachel got sick at night but during the day we enjoyed visiting with the Littlefield relatives. We walked very near some deer and had a very nice time.

Our trip to Vegas was fun but also a bit disappointing and very very HOT. The night we got there we all went to to the lazy river swimming pool and even grandma got in and went around the water on an inner tube. Rachel and I were pretty angry with ourselves for not bringing a camera to get a photo of that. Grandma liked it but she didn't go again. The second night there we went to see Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian. I love Phantom I could see it many nights in a row and still enjoy it. I love the colors and the music and the special effects. The second day we went to the temple. Wow it is so pretty. It feels really good to go to the temple away from the bad things so easy to find in Vegas. We hurried back from the temple in time to go see Donny and Marie. Every place in Vegas is so far to walk. Mom had to walk all that way to the Flamingo stage and we found a sign saying the show was cancelled. Boy I felt bad. Grandma really felt bad. Luckily, though they had a few tickets left to the Lion King It was great. I enjoyed all the interesting artistic costumes and sets. We didn't get to sit together since we bought the tickets right before the show started and things were sold out except for single seats. Rachel preferred seeing that over Donny and Marie anyway. It was kind of cool during Phantom when they had the fireworks and loud music her baby jumped around. I'm not sure if she liked the noises or hated them. The drive home from Vegas to Mountain Home felt like it took forever!!!!

Well this week was pretty crazy. I went to Boise every single day. Wow that is hard. I think it must be pretty hard for people to work a full day and drive so far every day. I think maybe I would have done better if I had worked in a nice airconditioned place but I was outside helping with the diabetes day camp. It was pretty fun I guess but Chris couldn't help because he was at youth conference they had in Boise State. I didn't like doing it by myself so much. It would have been better if it had been a bit cooler. 103 degrees again all week. HOT HOT HOT!!! We did activities and went to the zoo and learned how to wash hands well and how to eat healthy foods. One little boy got down to 40 blood glucose and I have been having nightmares about that ever since. I should have recognized he was low! He had a cookie and was fine but it upset me a bit!

Grandma and Grandpa Littlefield stayed with us Thurs and Friday nights. They came up to go to Nicole Durrance's wedding reception. Saturday we went to Tiffany Robbins reception. IT is weding time around here I guess.

It is so HOT here. It was over 108 degrees hot yesterday. That makes it so hard to be outside in wow. I just can't really stand it at all. I am going to help at the diabetes day camp so I will be outside all day. Chris has youth conference at the same time so he can't help with me so I feel a bit sad about that. It would be way more fun if he could come with me. I didn't help a bit with the cub scout day camp because we were in Mexico at that time. I must admit that I didn't miss it. These three days will be plenty of day camp for the summer. Diabetes camp is great because companys donate materieals and activities. I do have to check the boys blood though so that part isn't really great but I guess I will do fine. I will have 6- 5 and 6 year old boys

We had a rather pleasent time celebrating Becca's birthday. We shopped for some clothes for her and Rachel (Rachel has grown out of all of her's with her baby belly. ) Then we ate Mexican food and went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. You will have to catch that one when you get home. It was pretty good. There was a bit of humor I liked but less action than the book had. There sure haven't been a lot of must see movies lately. Aiden didn't go to the movie with us but he did go to dinner. He does love Mexican food.

This week I got to go with Rachel to see her dr and I got to hear the baby's heart beat. That was pretty cool. I got to go to the dr. twice with Chris. He has complained ever since 9th grade that his right foot hurts when he runs. We got it x rayed but did not find anything so they had him use a shoe insert but it never really went away, Last week dr. Bledsoe sent him to see the orthopedic dr. who focuses on feet. He took an x ray from underneath so they could see that some little foot bones were a bit crunched. So we went to physical therapy to learn to tape and we will go get a shoe insert again so hopefully it can heal. Chris was glad to see something on the x ray finally so he could say see mom I told you something was really wrong......So now hopefully, it will be able to heal ok.

Happy 4th of July. Ours was pretty good. We worked all day to get the yard and house just right so we could have people over. There still isn't a lot of shade so we put umbrellas up and a shade tent up and it was still so HOT but I think everyone had a good time. Jacob had to work so they didn't come and Chris missed the first couple of hours because of work too. I got a picture of the 3 pregnant ladies trying to stay cool in the shade (Rachel, Jeff's wife Danielle and Nicole Bundy Wiser) Natalie and her husband were sealed in the temple a few weeks ago. She bore her testimony today for maybe the first time ever in her life and it really touched me. she was sometimes far from the gospel during high school and it is so cool to see how the Gospel is helping her and to hear her testimony. Church was good today. I had to give the lesson in Relief Society again. Usually it is pretty easy for me because I can just follow the outline or choose a conference talk but this time I couldn't find a conference talk to go along with what I wanted the lesson to be about. Saturday night I stayed up until after 1 in the morning trying to find something to use for the lesson. ON the first Sunday of each month the Relief Society presidency chooses the topic and I felt like I wanted to talk about Luke 12: 48

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required

I have been thinking about that a lot since we got home from Mexico. We have been so BLESSED! But I couldn't find scriptures and quotes to go along with my thoughts at all. I printed a bunch of stuff up to take with me but they sure didn't come together before I went to bed because I couldn't stay up any later. So I prayed and I told Dad and Chris to pray for my lesson during our family prayers and every prayer at church blessed the lesson givers with the Spirit so Terry told me I would be OK because there were many prayers for me. It might have been one of my best lessons ever. It really went well. I really know that the best way to teach is with His help and with His Spirit because that is really the only way you can teach the Gospel. Sometimes when the subject is easy I forget to pray very hard because it seems easy and I am not scared or I should say nervous so I don't pray so hard. Sometimes I think it is good for us to feel a bit nervous or to have things not come so easily because then we remember to rely on the Lord. I hope next time it seems like an easy lesson to me I will remember I need to pray just as hard because of course we always need His help!!!

 

 

 

From June 11 to June 19th, Terry, Chris, and I joined the high school Spanish teachers, 6 other great students and our friends John and Julie Vogl to tour Mexico. We LOVED it. We loved the Pyramids and other ruins, the history, the WARM beaches, the friendly people and our lovely tour guide Maria. We got a bit sick to our stomach and it felt like a hundred degrees hotter than home because of the humidity. We learned a greater appreciation for the USA. It was a great trip.

 

 

 

Mexico City 2009

 

 

Two things I didn't really like about Mexico!

 

 

 

Playa del Carmen

 

 

 

Beautiful, warm, Playa del Carmen Beach

 

 

 

Merida, Mexico! Becky helps a man make music on his award winning saw in the Merida town square. The LDS Merida Temple

 

The view from our motel in Villahermosa

 

 

My favorite City Campeche