A Church Focused Weekend

Josh and I went to the Las Vegas Temple on Saturday.  It is in North Las Vegas but not our area of North Las Vegas.  We drove past the Walmart that is nick named the “Stab-Mart”, past the tent squatters in an abandoned field, and up onto the hill where there are beautiful adobe style mansions.  It took us 15 min to go into a completely different tax bracket.  Amazing.  We feel that we are lucky being so close to the temple.  It is ironic that the farthest we have ever lived from a temple is when we were in Heber, Utah.  It took 45 min down either canyon to reach the Provo Temple or the Salt Lake Temple.  We were 20 min from the Denver Temple when we lived there and now only 15 min from the Las Vegas Temple.  We had a beautiful experience there.  We are used to serving in the Provo Temple, one of the busiest temples in the world.  So it was refreshing to notice the lack of people and the quiet atmosphere.  Everything seemed a little more laid back.  I do wish we could have been in Utah for the opening of the downtown Provo Temple.  That would have been our temple district.  We just left a little too soon.  

On Sunday Josh and I both received our callings in our ward.  Josh is going to be the Executive Secretary and I am going to be the Primary 1^st Counselor.  This is actually a calling I have never held.  After three times as the Primary President in previous wards, the 1^st Counselor sounds like a relief.  I was being really irreverent when our names were announced for sustaining.  Our membership records were just read in last week and now we both have substantial callings, one week later.  I could not stop giggling and I definitely embarrassed Josh, something that I do frequently and often while in church. 

That evening we had the missionaries over for dinner.  I had forgotten how great it is to have missionaries assigned to one ward.  In Springville, Utah, the missionaries are assigned to a Stake and it is rare that one congregation sees them more than once.  When we lived in Denver we were well acquainted with the missionaries as they lived in our apartment building.  They used to like to visit and I had to send them away many times because Josh would be gone from home studying.  So, I think it has been 10 years since we have had missionaries over for dinner.  They challenged our kids to invite them over for Family Home Evening.  I think that is a great idea but we will probably wait until we move out of TLF (Temporary Living Facility.)  I am starting miss all my stuff that is packed neatly away in storage.