2nd Week in MTC

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Story of our week, here.

Our second week has been as interesting as the first week.
The best parts are the firesides on Sunday and the Devotionals on Tuesdays. When you think of tht 2,000 missionaries in the room all singing loud and anxious to serve, it humbles you and makes you realize how important the work is. When you look across the room and see all the sacrifice it took to get that many people on missions, then you realize that Heavenly Father is watching and waiting to bless those who make the effort to go.

Two nights ago, we listened to a Bro Johns talk about the 9 foot Joseph Smith statute at the Joseph Smith Building. It was the suggestion of a regular member which prompted the leaders to go into a warehouse and find the 4 ton statute that had been at the Independence visitors center.

President Hinckley was concerned that the cost of the renovation was more than should be expended and needed to stand for something. He had a flash of inspiration one day six months before the 150th anniversary of the martyrdom and realized that the building should be a tribute to not only Joseph Smith, but his father and brothers and famly. Once he realized that this should be the purpose of the renovation, he was much more at ease about the cost of the building. The placing of the statue was a problem as the weight had to be supported.
Pres Hinckley had looked at at the Blue Prints and realized that a major girder was direclty under the spot where the statue was to go and needed no further support. Nobody else had caught this. He didn't want the statue in the middle of the room and where it ended up
was exactly over the steel girder.

We are driving up to Heber early Friday if Alison is okay with that and we'll pick her up at Pat's house and then she can drive the car back to Pat's house and leave it there while we are on our mission, but we need to pick up some more things and do some tax work and then check out the new kitchen floor damaged by a leaky refrigerator water purifier.

We hope that works out with everybody.

We met a lot of people from Portland and all parts of the U.S, heading off on couple missions all over the world. The farthest away missionary we met so far is one going to Australia.

Last Night Jeffrey Holland spoke to a capacity crowd in the Lorenzo Snow building. As usual he was very good, but tired and told us that it had been a hard week at church headquarters. I gathered that it had something to do with the Proposition 8 problem and the fact that California itself has appealed the referendum to the California Supreme Court. I pity California if it succeeds in overturning the vote of the people twice, I wouldn't want to be on any of its earthquake faults when the Almighty decides to vent.

DAD