Carey Family

Sue

Celebrating

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So I’ve been slightly stressed because I want to have Christmas all done before our missionary comes home THIS TUESDAY! 

But in between all the stress, we’ve enjoyed some holiday fun.  We went to Celebration of Christmas by the BYU combined choirs & Philharmonic Orchestra at the beginning of December.  It’s always wonderful and is a great start to the season.  They had some really beautiful arrangements that just made me sigh.

I sang in the Alpine community Christmas concert last Sunday night, conducted by Marvin Payne, and got to sing with a bunch of my friends.  We had some lovely music choices and it really made me feel in the spirit of the season.

Tonight I’m sitting in the LDS Conference Center waiting for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert to start because we were lucky enough to get tickets. We walked around looking at lights on Temple Square after eating at Crown Burger, so it’s already been a fun evening.

Tomorrow we are at the Alpine Christmas show to see Todd McCabe & April Moriarty & friends, so that will be fun, too.

Monday is the Christmas book club lunch when I get to see my pals.  Can’t wait!

So it’s been fun with more to come.  Mark came home from BYU on Wednesday, Brian comes home on Tuesday, and let the party begin!

November updates from Elder Brian

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11-1-11
So, I am really excited about what is going on here.  I have been resorting to prayer, and counsel from leaders to know what the best path to take is.  We have been seeing tons of miracles too, in spite of everything, so that has been awesome.  I feel that I have finally figured out what true faith is and how to REALLY use it.  It is sweet.

11-8-11
District meeting, and I gave a really sweet training on miracles and faith.  It was one of my favorite trainings that I have given on my mission I think.  It was really powerful.  I called it, “Faith: Go Where the Miracles Are”.  It was sweet.

11-15-11
Miercoles:  We woke up at 5:30 to get ready for zone conference.  My last one.  I played piano, and President came over and whispered in my ear, “Elder Carey, we are extending your call for 18 more months”.  Haha.  They are really stressing out that there is no one that plays piano in the mission.  The conference was powerful.  It was strange being the oldest there.  Later Pres. used me in a training (on the fly), to come up and improvise some songs.  I had to play the same song different ways, it was an analogy for teaching.  After the training, the Assistants wanted to take video of me playing piano for some project that they are doing.

11-22-11
This week was the BEST week of my mission!  Really, it was. It was the best experience of my entire life.  You can’t put a price on missionary work.  I am so happy, the happiest that I have ever been in my entire life.

11-29-11
Thursday:  Thanksgiving!  It was so weird, because last year’s Thanksgiving seems like it was yesterday, and there we were celebrating it again.  Weird.
Saturday:  Rode our bikes down to Vista Village and did some really good contacting.  While we were there a lady contacted US and asked for a Book of Mormon.  For some reason, the only Spanish copy that we had was mine, this copy that I have been using for months, and I had been marking a certain way.  At first, I wanted to say that we would just come by her house and give her a new one, but she was leaving and getting on the train and it was pulling away, and so I just felt prompted to give it to her.  It is a pretty worn copy, but hopefully she will appreciate it.
So yeah, that was my week.  It all went really good, and it is really exciting!  Time is FLYING BY SO FAST!   I can’t believe it.  Missions are way too short.

Adventures in mentoring

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So I’ve recently become an unofficial reading mentor to some girls in my neighborhood and it has been fun and satisfying.  I posted earlier about my involvement with the Utah Women and Education Project, and one of the research outcomes showed that a young woman with a caring adult who is also a female college graduate will be more likely to attend college.  So I’m putting research into practice. 😉  Right now I’m trying to come up with a perfect Christmas gift for each one and that has been a very interesting experience.  I had no trouble deciding on the first and after mulling over the second for two weeks and re-reading a book to make sure, I’ve decided on her gift.  But the third has been tricky.  She is a young teen and wants to read some mysteries but her trip to the library with her mom yielded adult mysteries that the mom thought inappropriate.  So I figured I’d give her an appropriate young adult mystery.  Merry Christmas!  I thought of one and started re-reading it but found a mild expletive around page 60 that I’d forgotten.  So no go with that choice.  I racked my brain for days and finally Googled some young adult mystery lists for inspiration.  I found several possible titles that seemed to be repeated on all the librarian’s lists so I headed to my local library to do some research.  I ended up coming home with a stack of nine YA books, only two of which I’d previously read.  Scott looked incredulously at the stack and asked me if they were to solve my problem and did I plan to read all those in the next week?  Ha ha……then he reminded me that I was already feeling stressed about all the stuff I needed to to do, like finish the half-decorated tree in our living room.  Yeah, right.

I started on the stack, glanced through one that I’d read and saw language I’d forgotten, glanced through the other I’d read and wondered why it was on everyone’s mystery list and now I was down to seven.  I discarded another as boring-seeming and was left with six.  Two were from a series and a cursory glance found language so those were out; two others were from another series and I found an extended passage detailing a keg party with lots of drinking so those were out.  What’s up with these novels?  Now I was left with two.  I was really frustrated and Scott asked me, “Haven’t you read any other YA novels you could give her?” Well, yes, but I want to give her a mystery since she’s interested in that right now.  I make my life hard.

I need someone to write clean and absorbing young adult mysteries for teens with strong characters, preferably female.  Who’s up for the challenge?

In the meantime, I’m reading frantically before making my Amazon order……

Festival of Trees 2011

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This is the 12th year we have decorated a large tree in honor of Scott’s deceased brother, Paul, for the Festival of Trees which provides charity care for patients at Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Each year we have tried to pick a theme that had something to do with his interests, so this year we did a classical music tree and called it “Joy to the World”.  We are in our customary spot on the east end of aisle C in space C-21, in honor of the planes he was flying when he died.  We got it all decorated yesterday and it came out very nice.  In addition to our family tree, the Fazulyanov’s did a small Fairy tree that’s very pink!

click on a photo to see them all in a gallery

October updates from Elder Brian

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10-4-2011
Lunes:  So we went over to [an investigator] in the morning and they said that they weren’t going to be able to have the baptism on the 22nd, so they wanted to see if he could do it on the 15th!  We were so stoked!  We have SOOO much work to do before that, but we are putting our faith in God and letting him do the work.  We are really excited for it.  Then we had some crazy finding experiences where we literally found Israel, God’s chosen people.  It was sweet.

10-11-2011
We had a killer week!  We were really, really stoked.  This one should be really good as well, and so we are really excited for the baptism on Saturday.  We decided to put forth our faith, and we sacrificed some stuff!  No music, no mail, 20 min. lunches, and God pulled through!  (He usually does).

10-18-2011
Alright so for the big news:   I AM LEAVING!  Yep, you heard it, I am being transferred again.  I don’t know what it is with me, but this will be my 8th area!  Crazy, huh?!  Most missionaries have 4-5 areas, but me, nope, I get bounced around a lot.  Also, the other news with this is that I will be training!

Second big news:  [Our investigator] GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!  It was sooo awesome.  The service was very nice and very powerful.  Very emotional. I played a piano solo of this arrangement that I wrote of “This Is The Christ”.  It was a debut, and it is way good.  I like it a lot.  Afterwards, we went over to their house and we had a little party with the whole ward (it was big), and that was fun!

10-25-2011
So….I am in VISTA!!!! I am back in San Diego County.  My area covers 1/2 of Vista, a part of Oceanside and a sliver of San Marcos. My companion has been out for 6 weeks, but serving in English, and so now he will finish being trained in Spanish. We were whitewashed and so that has been an adventure just getting around and finding everything.  We have a part-time car (first time in a year), and so that has been fun, pulling out the bike again and riding around.  I am also the District Leader of the Vista Spanish district, and so I will finish off being a district leader.