Dear Family and Loved Ones,
This has been a very full and busy week and we still have a few really hectic days to get through before we can settle into a new transfer.
Tuesday we went to the Los Angeles temple with our departing missionaries. The temple grounds were extra beautiful. We are so spoiled to have flowers and trees blooming year round. It was quite a sight to see such a large group of missionaries, many heads turned as they walked by. I thought of Elder Anderson’s story from conference about the woman with a large family of children. When asked by the bus driver, “Lady, are these all yours, or is this a picnic?” The woman replied, “They’re all mine and it’s no picnic!” In our case the missionaries are all ours and it is wonderful.
Ted started interviewing the departing missionaries and still has nine interviews for tomorrow. It definitely makes things that we normally do more complicated to have such a large group leaving but somehow we are working through it.
We are looking forward to our departure fireside tonight, departure dinner and testimony meeting tomorrow and the arrival of twenty new missionaries Tuesday.
Mari sprained her ankle Wednesday on her way to dress rehearsal for her school dance program. It’s a serious sprain and she can barely walk on it and definitely couldn’t dance on it. She was so disappointed about missing the concert after practicing for months. Mari is on crutches for now and is hoping to get better before the new semester starts next week.
We had some cooler weather and rain over the weekend but after seeing the news reports from SLC we know we are lucky to be serving in beautiful, warm, Southern California!
This weekend the Stake Conferences for our entire mission were held. The Conferences were telecast from SLC and viewed in each Stake Center. It is a little disappointing that we won’t be traveling to each Stake one at a time to meet with the members. We really look forward to visiting the leaders and the members in each Stake. We did participate in our adult session of Conference in our home Stake last night. At our last Conference (six months ago) our Stake President asked the members of the Stake to choose the six chapters from the Book of Mormon they considered the most powerful passages, scriptures which someone read to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon. We were asked (Ted, our assistants, two of our Zone Leaders and me) to choose one powerful chapter each and to talk about it for one minute. They made a little movie of each of us talking about our selection and showed it at the conference last night. It was a little embarrassing but we got through it. Today we went to a new member meeting in the Long Beach Stake. It was great! There were some amazing testimonies from two new members, Ted and I each shared a few thoughts and the Stake President and one of his counselors spoke. We really love the people of Long Beach.
We were able to attend the teleconference in our own Stake with Shelly, Ben and Mari. The conference speakers were, Elder Snow, Sister Thompson, Elder Johnson and Elder Perry. They all did a great job but Elder Johnson’s talk about faith really hit home for me. I especially loved a story he told about his daughter. Elder Johnson’s daughter went Christmas shopping recently and purchased two beautiful jewelry boxes for her two daughters. The music boxes were the kind you open to find a ballerina twirling in front of a mirror while music plays. She was about to leave the store with her purchases when she remembered her nieces birthday was coming up very soon. She decided to buy her niece an identical but smaller jewelry box, which she did. A few days later she asked her daughters to help her wrap the gift for their cousin. She noticed that one of her daughters was very quiet and soon she saw that she was crying. Her daughter finally confessed, “I want this jewelry box, I don’t want to give it to my cousin.” The girl was so upset that she spent the next half hour sobbing uncontrollably. Elder Johnson’s daughter wanted to say, “You will be getting an even bigger jewelry box next week” but she kept the surprise to herself knowing that her daughter would be so happy with her Christmas gift if she could just wait a few more days. Elder Johnson taught that sometimes it seems like the Lord is withholding blessings from us when really He just wants to give us something better. We can trust our Heavenly Father, He will bless us with the best gifts, not always as soon as we want but in His time and in His way.
President Uchtdorf said: “We must learn that in the Lord’s plan, our understanding comes, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’. In short, knowledge and understanding come at the price of patience.”
“Often the deep valleys of our present will be understood only by looking back on them from the mountains of our future experience. Often we can’t see the Lord’s hand in our lives until long after trials have passed. Often the most difficult times of our lives are essential building blocks that form the foundation of our character and pave the way to future opportunity, understanding, and happiness.”
We shouldn’t give up what we want most for what we want now. If we patiently wait on the Lord He will bless us beyond measure.
We love you all,
The Long Beach Buberts
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