Mark hit his 6 month mark (no pun intended) yesterday (November 7) on his mission. Already a quarter of his mission is over. In his first 6 months, he has been in two areas, Del Rio, Texas, and now the southwest part of San Antonio. He is doing great and enjoying his work.
We just got pictures from Mark. There is a tradition of burning a tie when a missionary gets to 6 months. So here is his tie burning!
Most of the leaves on our trees are still green and have not turned yet. This is because it hasn’t been cold enough yet to make them turn. But today the weather skipped over fall and went straight to winter, so I guess the trees are in for a shock. My roses braved the snow and kept blooming. Go roses!
Saturday, Sept. 27, was the General Relief Society Meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The music was furnished by a choir of sisters from the Alpine and Highland areas. I was fortunate to be allowed to sing in the choir and it was a wonderful experience. We have been rehearsing on Sunday evenings for the last 6 weeks. The singing was a small part of the rehearsal time as we were expected to learn the music on our own: what we really learned was to be better people and to strengthen our testimony. Every week the director said Aloha and gave us a gift, which was to sing a Hawaiian chant that partly says that “You are the precious adornment worn around the neck of your ancestors.” What a lovely thought and how wonderful for our self-esteem.
I was on TV several times and if you go to BYU TV and click on LDS Church Broadcasts. You’ll see a separate file under there for each of the talks and the musical numbers, so you can watch the 3 numbers and see me on TV (or the internet, as it were). Wow!
My sunflowers make me happy. I love them and have never had a good place to plant them at this house. But last summer, Scott re-worked sprinklers and dug out a new flower bed for me on the north side of our lot. We planted a few perennials for Mother’s Day to give the bed some structure, and the rest of the bed is seeded with all kinds of flowers, meaning we just broadcast seeds all over it. At first I was a little concerned about design, color schemes, etc. and Scott told me we can call this our “Joseph bed”, referring to his coat of many colors. So we just planted a bunch of things I like and let the seeds fall where they may. The only thing I was careful about was making sure the sunflowers and hollyhocks got in the back so they could grow tall and not block anything. Hollyhocks are biennial, so lots of little plants and no flowers this year, but next year we should have a tall forest of both kinds of flowers. But this year, we have many different sunflower hybrids. And that makes me happy!
Summer is over and where did it go? Looking back, here is what the Carey’s did:
Scott:
Sue:
Brian:
Together:
Mark: