Humidity Rising

Like many of you, this has been a really rough couple of weeks for us! It started with the unexpected death of a young sister missionary serving in our mission. She was NOT infected with COVID-19 but had a short illness that sounded like a typical GI bug.  So sad and so sudden. We were still trying to process that news when another young sister in our mission was in a bad accident and was life flighted to the hospital. She ended up having surgery for a broken back and is now paralyzed below the waist. We got to spend some time with her at the hospital before the mission president and his wife could get there, and we hope that we were able to be of some comfort. John was able to go into the trauma room where he was able to look at her CT scan and more importantly was able to help give her a blessing. Her parents were able to get there the next day before she came out of surgery, and just today, the doctors were able to give her some hope that she'll get some function back. In t...

I forgot to mention in our last blog that John and I were asked to speak in church a couple of weeks ago. We only had a few days to prepare, but I decided that I wanted to try to give my talk in Spanish. When I was set apart for this mission, I was blessed with the gift of tongues, so I tried to have faith in that blessing! I had help from our daughter Shauna translating my words to Spanish, and then I was able to get the scriptures and general conference quotes in Spanish from the church website. Then, I had to practice saying the talk in Spanish! I was nervous but I did it! John used a translator and gave a very good talk, but it takes a lot longer so it was good that we both didn't have to use him. As I was giving the talk I thought, "I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth!" I was definitely blessed to be able to speak beyond my ability. In our mission we have what is know as "bike Saturday." The missionaries ride bikes on that...