Just for Me

Dear Family and Loved Ones,

   We had a great week and an especially wonderful weekend! 

     Tuesday we had a tune-up with some of our new missionaries. We served Popeye’s chicken, baked beans, corn bread, fruit and ice-cream sandwiches for lunch. They are always excited about lunch and are hopeful for seconds or thirds. It’s amazing how quickly they learn to pitch in and help with setting up and taking down tables, serving the food and cleaning up afterwards. They are helpful and appreciative which makes serving them a pleasure.

     Tuesday night was our ward Relief Society birthday dinner. As always the Relief Society did a great job putting together a special evening for all of us sisters. One of the counselors spent hours making a game of matching old photos of some of the sisters in our ward to their names. To reveal the answers they showed the photos in a slide show and told who each sister was. It was so much fun to see the older sisters looking so young and glamorous, many looked like Movie Stars. They also had a talk and a beautiful musical number. I especially loved the talk a former Relief Society President gave about service. She explained that we need to get our good intentions to serve “from our heads, to our hearts, then to our hands”.

     Friday we had a very quick meal here in the mission home with our Assistants. They serve in our ward and we take a turn to feed them whenever their dinner calendar isn’t full. We picked up some cheeseburgers, shakes and fries from our new neighborhood In and Out Burger (it opened last week). They ate in a hurry then went with Ted to the baptism of a beautiful family of five.

Today was very special. We attended the Atherton Ward with many of our great relatives who were here in Seal Beach for my cousin’s son’s missionary homecoming! My cousin and his wife moved to Seal Beach from Apple Valley while their son was serving in Argentina. Their missionary returned home to a new ward so I think he was pleasantly surprised to see so many of us there to celebrate his return. My Aunt Ila (my Dad’s youngest sister), his sister and two of my cousins traveled from Utah, another cousin came with his wife and four darling children from Hollister, California. Several of his friends came from Apple Valley. He thought he might just have his parents and sister there but it turned out that there were about twenty of us to support him. The Sacrament Meeting was great and then we all came to the mission home (their apartment in Seal Beach is tiny) to eat and visit. It was so much fun to catch up and reminisce with family. I especially loved seeing my beautiful Aunt Ila, she is truly angelic. Ben said he wanted to cry when he gave her a hug good-bye because she made him think of his Grandpa.

     Mari and I attended the Young Women’s Broadcast tonight. The stake young women’s leaders recorded it Saturday and rebroadcast it Sunday because there were a lot of school activities this weekend that would have prevented many of the young women from attending. All of the talks were amazing and the music was really, really beautiful. Mari loved the music video presentation. Mari was not too excited to go to the broadcast but ended up loving it. She told me, “every one of those talks was just for me!” I really appreciated her great attitude and thought about how often when I hear a message I think that it is perfect for someone else. I’m going to follow Mari’s example when I listen to conference this weekend and take each message to heart realizing that they are just for me.

   We love each of you,

The Long Beach Buberts