September 30, 2012

Obviously, I did not add to my post from last week and so I will  finish up my thoughts tonight.  (This is Sister Downs writing again) :)  I love Sundays and even though they are a day of "rest", they are filled with doing good things that bless your life and help make the coming week better.  This has been a really great week-end period!  We are getting to go to the Sacramento Temple once a week and it is such a privilege.  It takes us only 30 minutes to get there so we started our Saturday off by going to a session at the temple.  We love to be there and partake of the sweet spirit that exists only in
a temple of the Lord.  We went last Saturday with 20 members of our little branch of the church.  We admire them so much for their diligence in going to the temple monthly when many of them do not understand English well and the temple sessions have not been translated into Marshallieese yet.  But yesterday we went by ourselves (lots of others were there but we of course didn't know them) and then we headed to downtown Sacramento to observe the celebration ommemorating 150 years since Pres. Lincoln created the original Union Pacific.  It was very interesting!  It was also exciting for us when members of the LDS Church would greet us and stop and visit.  We meet a Bro. Beemun who knew our next door neighbor Courtney Carron when she served a mission in Santa Rosa.  Such a small and wonderful world. Last night we had the Relief Society Broadcast from Salt Lake City and it was incredible.  What a spiritual feast!  AND we had 10 sisters from our little branch there!!  We have done a lot ot visiting active and inactive members this week.  We have also held several "Daily Dose" (our English class we teach) classes this week and are so grateful with the turnout for them.We have 4 different classes going on right now and they meet twice a week.  It is so exciting to see their improvements in the English language! We hope this increases their gospel understanding as well as their chances for employment.  We will be expanding the Daily Dose to the Spanish and Chinese congregations soon.  The young members are fluent in English but the older members are struggling.  I can relate to that when we are at church and hear mostly Marshallieese.  We are well and happy but we still miss our family and friends.  We do so miss singing in Cantourm and Showboaters!  On Sundays we kind of belt out the hymns because we make up for the singing we used to do at home.  We have prayed for patience and humility and are slowly developing a little more of each.  We are blessed in our work and are so grateful for those blessings!