Elder Simms

 Here is a great post that Annie shared on Facebook about a tender mercy with Elder Simms. We are so grateful for his willingness to serve and for his testimony. We pray for him on a daily basis. And I included my favorite picture, so far. I am also including a couple of photo collages that Annie made, from when Elder Simms left for his mission. I already shared the pics of him and Nathan, but I love the way she put the photos together. 

"I've been updating my blog and remembered about a tender mercy I wanted to share from September.  As we were helping Jared make the rest of the preparations for his mission, one of the remaining things he needed was $160 in crisp bills for his Visa entry process when he entered Paraguay.  We ended up waiting until the last minute and were unsuccessful in finding what he needed.  We were basically supposed to find pristine uncirculated bills that didn't have any marks or folds.  Alex went to at least 15 different banks on this seemingly impossible task to find these pristine bills.  Since Jared was headed out the next day, we just had to send him with the best we could find.  All of the bills had a fold down the middle, and I was worried that they would be rejected.  At that point, I was just hoping and praying that they'd be good enough or maybe that God would be able to miraculously remove the fold.  I believe in a God of miracles, so it wasn't impossible.  Anyway, there was a bit of a miracle, but it wasn't in the way I expected.  It was better!  When he arrived in Paraguay, it turns out he didn't even need the money at all.  The church had been working with Paraguay to allow entry for the missionaries without that fee (or handling it some other way).  Instead they had a representative from the church who was helping them with the entry process, basically an advocate for them that they were who they said they were and serving a mission for the church.  So Jared not only made it through that process without any problems, but also was able to keep the money.  

As I was thinking about that whole experience, I couldn't help comparing that to us.  I feel like sometimes we're like the bills that aren't quite pristine.  We worry that we might not be good enough.  Sometimes we want a miracle to help with those imperfections.  And maybe sometimes we get those miracles, but not in the way we intended.  When the imperfections are still there, we might doubt God or why He's not removing those weaknesses.  But often, He had a much better plan all along.  We just needed an Advocate (the Savior) who knows us and can help us make it through whatever obstacle we were trying to get through. And even though those weaknesses are still there, we now can be used for a greater purpose than we had in mind because we had Jesus on our side.  

Jared is doing great, by the way.  He's serving in Ciudad del Este and his companion is Elder Ponce (from Peru).  He's already experienced some other miracles and noticing how the Lord is helping him with the work."

Some New Items

We have a few new things at our house. Ron does such a good job of managing our money, that I feel like I can buy a few new pieces of furniture or other things sometimes.  (Actually, for some of the items, I used Amazon cards that I got from our Visa rewards points and order from Amazon. I found some furniture there that comes assembled! 😃 That is always a plus.) The little white shelf falls into that category. (also, the two white book cabinets and the white end table.) We paid our neighbor to do a little work in the front yard. (The dark bricks along the sidewalk. That space was "my area" and the flower bed near the front window is Ron's area... we will see what he does with that 😉) I ran across a decorative box one day, that gave me the new color inspiration for our bedroom. I was going to do more gray... but I love the navy color with our "totally tan" walls. I found a new bedspread, that I love with the wall color. The color of the bedspread is a darker navy blue than what the pictures look like. (My gray wallpaper will need to go somewhere else... maybe the guest bedroom.) I figure that I used my recent garage sale money for that bedspread. I love the round table in the eating area next to the kitchen. (I may eventually order some different chairs for that round table.) And I decided that the black desk could go in the library room as a puzzle table. 

Favorite FALL Things

 Most of these are just pics that I grabbed somewhere. Some are things that I wanted to make, like the painted pumpkins. Other are decor inspirations. Others are just great Fall colors. 

A New Temple

 Christiansens have their very own temple now- lol. The new temple in Tooele had an open house recently. They are excited to have this one very close to them now.  

Other Smiling Faces

This is just a post of random pics that I collected in past couple of months.  

Ashley and her friend won a pickleball tournament. Audrey went on a Petco trip to San Diego. Enola and Jaxon. Darby and Aaron. Carla and her grandson. Hailey at a Houston concert. Savannah at a swim meet. Luke and Evie. Noah. Alison. Hailey and Mason. Hazel. 

First Week of October

 The first week of October, Sam and Audrey went on a trip to England with Sam's mom. Our "duty" was to spend each evening and night at their house and then get the boys to school each morning. Evie was there during the day and did most of the afternoon school pickups and gymnastics drop offs. That schedule kind of threw the cats for a loop- lol... but they survived. Since we are not used to getting up with an alarm clock, by Wednesday, we were beginning to feel like we were living the "Ground Hog Day" movie- lol 😀Each morning I got Luke up, he had breakfast, and then I walked to school with him. (Which was fine for me... round trip was about 1 mile. Which is a little less than half of what I normally walk each day.) While I was gone, Noah and Eli would get up, have breakfast, and we would drop them off at school about 8:30 and then come home. The first couple of days, I sent Audrey and Sam a text message saying... "Everyone is at school with clothes on". haha.  The third day, I said, "We are on a roll, three days in a row". And gave an update on a gymnastics schedule change. On Thursday, I said, "We are living ground hog day". And I said, "Luke has been happy to know that I can do the gate code and get back to the house by myself". (He even tested me on the gate code.) Saturday and Sunday was General Conference weekend. I made sure that I had a few fun things and bribes for that 😉😋 We went to What a Burger for lunch on Saturday and then we spent some time at our house for dinner. That let me get some things fixed for Sunday dinner at the Petes. My text that day was... The phrase "leaving children to their own devices" takes on new meaning in this day and age". The boys got way more device time than they were supposed to. On Sunday we watched the Sunday morning session of conference and then went to the Petes in time for the second session and dinner. Sam and Audrey got home about 7:30 pm. (The first picture is Dallin and Bethanie watching conference. The last picture is of a note that Evie put in the bathroom asking Noah to hang up his towel, his robe, and put his underwear in the hamper... The underwear is on the floor, right under the note and I usually picked up the wet towels from the bedroom carpet- lol 😂)