Thanksgiving

This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, but we will be celebrating Thanksgiving this Monday at President and Sister Burks home with all the temple missionaries. There will be 32 including the MTC President and his wife and the nurse and her husband from the MTC.

Because we have been counting our blessings, I thought I would name a few of them.

T - Testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He lives and He loves each of us.

H - Heavenly Father. It is wonderful to know the many many ways that He has blessed us. Especially the blessing of His Son, our Savior and Redeemer.

A - Ancestors. Those who went before us and taught us many lessons in life.

K - The kindness and love that we have received from the Guatemalan people. 

S - Safety in the knowledge of the Gospel. If we keep the commandments and our covenants we will be blessed.

G - Grandchildren. Each grandchild is a son or daughter of God. Each is an individual. Oh how we love each one of them.

I - Individual choices. We can choose for ourselves what we want. There are consequences to each choice and we can learn from our choices.

V - Valuable lessons in life. Sometimes we learn from our successes and sometimes we learn from our mistakes. Hopefully we can have more successes than mistakes. But, this is the plan, to learn.

I - the Internet, so we can communicate with our families while we are in Guatemala

N - No one is left out if we do the temple work for those who have past on before us. They will have the opportunity to become members and accept the work done for them so they too can live with our Heavenly Father again.

G - The gifts of the beauties of the earth. The flowers, trees, waterfalls, lakes, rivers, streams, clouds, sun and stars and the moon at night. Everything was made by Him for us to enjoy, and to make the earth beautiful.

Who would have known that in our beginnings, born in Colonia Dublan in Chihuahua, Mexico and in Pocatello, Idaho, that we would have the opportunities of visiting so many places.

We have been in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, Indonesia, Taiwan, Africa, Spain, Portugal, Panama, Columbia and Peru. Well, Blair has been in a few more places than Joan, but that is amazing that we have seen so much of the world without even wishing it to be so.

Who would have known when we began that we would have been blessed with five children who are wonderful sons and daughter of God. He loves them and so do we. I remember praying that I could have help to raise them to have faith in the Lord, and He has helped us. They each learned to pray themselves and we have seen them teach their children (our grand children) to pray and have family home evening to learn the Gospel plan for them. What a blessing that is.