Time to celebrate!  Darin was sealed to Ashley Sloan in the Mt. Timpanogos Temple this afternoon, June 14, 2013.  She is a great young lady that the Lord has prepared to take care of Darin "forever and a day".  They have known each other for about two years at BYU where they both have studied to become marriage and family therapists.  They are best friends and seem to be so very happy.

One of the best parts of the day was that all 7 of our children were in the sealing room in the Temple with their spouses.  Talk about a great day!  I was overcome with emotion to think that they have all made good choices to live temple worthy and that they love each other enough to sacrifice in order to be there for each other.  We took pix outside and here it is, all 43 of us outside of the Temple.  It really gives meaning to our original family song that they all learned  as little ones in our home, "We're a Forever Family".

 

Darin has always been a favorite with his nieces and nephews and loves little children.

Ashlee quickly has become a favorite with her 27 new nieces and nephews!

 

The Call

 February 18, 2013, on Janet's birthday, I asked her what she wanted for our 40th Wedding Anniversary, April 20, she said that she wanted to have our mission call.  Well we met with the Stake President ASAP and got things moving with physicals, visits to the dentist, shots, and meetings with our Bishop, Wesley Frey, and submitted our papers on Fast Sunday, March 3. Whew!  We really had to hustle to get everything ready, but we had heard that calls take between 4 and 6 weeks, so in order to make the April 20 deadline, we pushed it.
 
 It was an awesome experience to complete the missionary application forms.  They asked us about everything including our family, our employment history, our church service, our debt, and what kind of mission work we desired.  We told them that we hoped to be able to work with members and use our Spanish.  We expressed our love for the Latin people having spent the last 7 years in the Spanish-speaking Mesa Branch, and crossed our fingers that we would be blessed to go back to Argentina.
 
 The weekend of General Conference we invited the Monsons to come to Idaho and on Friday afternoon, April 5, I sent Trey out to get our mail and he brought in a very suspicious looking big white envelope.  I noticed that the return address was from the Office of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I gave the envelope to Amy who squealed when she saw it.  Janet was not home from work, but when she walked in we showed her the envelope and she got really excited.

 We had not told any of the family about our plans or about our submitting our mission papers so we contacted them all and at 7:00 p.m. we were all connected (phone & skype) and ready to open the envelope.  I gave it to Janet and she opened it and started to read, but was so emotionally overcome, that she gave it to me and I was so excited to read that we had been called to serve in the Argentina Buenos Aires West Mission!  We enter the MTC August 12.  We will be doing Member/Leader Support work and needless to say, we are so happy to have our dream of returning to Argentina come true!  We are ready to put on the nametags once again, and serve the Lord fulltime!