Missionaries!

We have good news! We just received some missionaries that will be serving in our Deaf Branch! Maybe you have heard that we now have a St. George mission. The mission president lives about five minutes from us. Rick has been trying for awhile to get missionaries here to serve in our branch and the news of a new mission here provided him with just the motivation to push things along.

Well, we have good news and bad news. The good news is...we just got missionaries!! The bad news is -- they are not deaf and do not know sign language. Well, one of them has had a few years of High School sign language (which is why they chose him to be transferred to our area) but he is a little rusty. His companion doesn't know anything beyond the alphabet. But they are jumping in with both feet (and hands) and we will be praying for a miracle of the gift of tongues (hands). We know the lord will bless them and this area.

I didn't know until the morning session of conference ended that they were coming over for lunch, but luckily I already had a big turkey dinner planned and so we had plenty of food. They also brought two other elders with them. Rick decided that our lunch should be "sign language" only -- no talking. I think he is really into this "baptism by fire" thing. As you can imagine, it was a very quiet lunch. . The nice thing about sign language meals is that our children are also very quiet. So after eating and struggling to communicate Rick finally announced that everyone could talk again. Suddenly everything became noisy. Then Rick assigned the elders the mountain of dishes. Thanks Elders! And thanks to Janika for lending them your aprons!

They stayed for the second session of conference and a yummy dessert of apple crisp and vanilla ice-cream. We also dove into Jenna's birthday cake (sadly she was asleep but we saved her a piece!) The missionaries were right down on the floor playing with the kids who lapped up the attention. It will be nice to have missionaries around. Rick has often bemoaned the fact that you just don't get to know the missionaries in Utah. He got very close to certain members on his mission and still maintains those deep friendships to this day.

Welcome Elders!!