Girls' Hiking Trip at Capitol Reef!!

I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend last weekend with these amazing ladies during our hiking trip at Capitol Reef!! It was so refreshing to disconnect from technology for a few days and enjoy God's beautiful creations!! Thank you to everyone who made it happen!! Here is a little breakdown:

Sunrises: 3

Car breaking down: 1

Hikes: 6

Miles hiked: 24

Miles driving: A lot!

Highest step day: 30,757

Friendships: 12

Memories: Countless!!

Goodbye to Meredith Poole

Meredith Poole is moving to Oklahoma this coming weekend and so we had a Girls' Night to gather and visit and say goodbye. Her sister, Melissa Julien, and her family are also moving to Oklahoma (which is what inspired Meredith and her husband, Dave, to move also. We will miss them! Near the end of the night Meredith said that we should all get together every couple of years and we threw out ideas, including a cruise. So stay tuned!! 

ASL Temple Tour

Tonight was out last ASL temple tour! We had groups scheduled for 5:00, 6:00, and 7:00. This was smaller than the last two times, which was expected since it was on a Monday night. We still had a good turn out though! We had about 35 people come at 5:00, 4 come at 6:00. and 10 or so come at 7:00. We had lots of interpreters volunteer also: me, Cassie, Amanda, Andrea, Kelly, Ben, Allyson, and Macie. 

We gathered each group together in one of the language rooms at the stake center and then Cassie Riding and I brought the first group through the temple. Ben Ballard brought the second group through and Cassie and I brought the third group through It was fun to meet new people and to see some old friends that I knew clear back from Utah State University! Saturday is the last day of the open house!! 

ASL Temple Tour

We had our special ASL Tour this afternoon for the St. George Temple Open House in between the afternoon and evening conference session. I am on the language and translation sub committee for the open house and had been working with the branch president of the ASL branch to put this together. The temple open house was closed today due to conference, but the open house coordinators arranged for it to open for a special guided tour for our Deaf/Hard of Hearing/ASL population. We had a great turn out! The entire big room in the visitor center where they show the video was filled to capacity. I welcomed everyone and then they all watched the temple open house video and then we divided the group into two smaller groups of about 50 people each. Each group had a tour guide and a few interpreters. We were hoping to finish in an hour and a half, but it took two and a half hours! The first group finished a while before ours did. 

We had several people in wheelchairs and so it took a while with them because the wheelchair and elevators were so slow! One of the ladies got sick (motion sickness or something) and said she was going to throw up. Rick was asking if anyone had a bag and then one of the interpreters told him to grab his shoe covering (they are pretty heavy duty, ha ha!) and so he grabbed that and it caught everything! So the interpreter's quick thinking saved the day! The lady who got sick sat out of the tour for a bit and then ended up going home early. So that is too bad, but everything else went pretty smoothly! A lot of the visitors were members of the church, but there were also several people who were either not members of the church, or inactive. They all had a lot of questions and were very appreciative that we offered this special tour for them. I am grateful that I could be a part of it!  

We took a photo of some of the group afterwards. Most of the first group had already left and some of the second group too. This is the same group, but a few more jumped in for the second picture. I really wished I had thought to take a picture of the entire group in the visitor's center before we went on the tour! Darn it! Oh well! I am glad that we got a picture with some of us! 

ASL Board of Education!!

Rick was recently in the Church News. You can read the article HERE! 

L to R: Elder Mella (Area Seventy), Emmalee Christensen (S&I Teacher/ Chair of FSDY & Deaf Symposium), Bishop Hodson(SLV 2nd Ward), President Sutton (Mesa Branch), President Merrill (DC Branch), Elder Peter M. Johnson, (General Authority Seventy), Bishop Ballard (Provo Ward), President Hancock (FL Branch), Rick Jensen (S&I ASL Coordinator), President Stringham(Provo Stake)