Dear Elder

,

Hi.  How’s life at the MTC?  Thanks for sending us your schedule.  It’s amazing to see how hard you work!  It must be hard to keep up such a pace, but I can see the way it is blessing your life, and I am so glad that you are doing it.  Here are a few notes on what is happening around here.

I let Miriam drive the little brown pickup into work yesterday, but I followed behind her in the Sienna.   She had Thomas in the passenger seat, and I told him to avoid distracting her, and to help her drive.  She did a great job with the stick shift and only killed it once, and that was on a small hill in the parking lot.  It’s a good thing that I was behind her, though, because I’d forgotten that she had a brake light out.   Plus, the rear view mirror fell off when she hit a bump.  Anyway, Dad drove into later and had it all fixed up by the time she needed to drive home.  I hear she didn’t do so well driving home and that she killed the engine a number of times.  Still, I let her drive Thomas in this morning without following her.  I hope she does well.

Another bit of news about Miriam, yesterday she got promoted to assistant HR director.  This means she gets to sit at a desk in an air conditioned building and do paperwork.  She is very happy about it and so am I.  On Sunday she was talking about quitting and getting another job.  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea because 1) I don’t want her to have to work on Sunday, and 2) I don’t want her to have to work during the school year when she should be concentrating on getting good grades.  I’ve been praying that she wouldn’t have to do these things, especially work on Sunday, so I feel like this was an answer to prayer.

Thomas and Miriam worked very long hours yesterday and didn’t com home till almost ten.  I can’t figure out how we let that happen since last night was family home evening.  I just plain forgot about it!  Anyway, we are going to have family home evening tonight instead.  We plan on having a barbecue.  I am really looking forward to it.

Speaking of looking forward to tonight, Jonathan will be home tonight!  Who knows, he may even be home in time to barbecue with us.  He called last night to let us know that he made it safely to his hotel in Montana.  I am grateful for that.  Well, the job may not have turned out the way he wanted, but he definitely had a big adventure.  I hope he can get a good job soon and begin earning money for school.

So anyway, with Miriam and Thomas gone, Katrina and I had lots of time together just us.  We went to Macey’s to do our grocery shopping.  She talked me into buying lots of yogurt—some for last night and some for this morning.  Talking me into it was not hard to do.  When we got home, we put away our groceries, ran Katrina’s yogurt through the ice cream maker (I prefer mine unfrozen), and watched “The Legend of Kora” with Grandma while we ate.  I gave Grandma yogurt, too.  It was nice to spend time with Katrina last night.  We also made dinner—oven baked chicken and sweet potatoes. 

We didn’t eat dinner till about 9:00 when Dad and Thomas came home.  It was nice to eat together. 

When Miriam came home, we had scriptures and then Dad and I went on a walk.  He told me about how he got to talk to Cassandra on the phone.  He said they are doing good, and that she just called to shoot the breeze, so that’s nice.  I really like walking with Dad because not only do I get a bit of exercise, we get to talk.  Walking last night was not the only exercise Dad got, though.  He also hiked Y mountain.  He’s trying to get more fit.

Dad had a hard day teaching yesterday.  At Birdseye, two of the kids were sick, so the staff had them bring in their sleeping bags and lay in the classroom.  What’s with that???   At the blue house, sometimes the girls are hard to teach, and sometimes the boys.  They seem to take turns.  Yesterday it was the boys.  I suppose that one of these days it will be both the girls and the boys, poor Dad.

I am learning so much from my study of Preach My Gospel.  There is great power in that book!  I learn so much from the scriptures it assigns me to read. 

I love you, Matt!  Having you on a mission is such a wonderful experience for us.  We can’t wait to hear from you again.  Until then, “Que te vaya bien.”  What does that mean, anyway?

Love,

Mom

PS  Haven’t heard much Spanish from you lately.  How’s the language study coming?