August 14 - 21

Photos for the Week

Terry calls this group the "Fearsome Foursome".  We met these people on our first day in the mission as we were all in the same small area waiting for our interviews with the Mission Presidency.  They are, from left to right:  Louise Goldsberry and in the black shirt on the far right, her husband, Kent Goldsberry.  They are from Bountiful and live at home.  Next is us - then Craig and Maggie Pace from Eagle, Idaho, and finally Lana and Pat Fanello.  Fanello's are from Gilbert, Arizona and are also our "June Bug" social group leaders.

We had a GREAT weekend and it all began with Cannon.  He was baptized and confirmed here in Salt Lake in their old ward on Friday evening.  After his baptism, everyone went to Collett's home and had a nice dinner.  They had lots of friends and family come to support Cannon.  Lynzi gave a really nice talk on Baptism, Autym, Norrah and Haleigh sang "I Love to See the Temple", and all the cousins sang, "I Am A Child of God".

This is the shirt we did for the reunion this year.  We all wore them to Lagoon on Saturday.  It was fun to see everyone in their shirts, and it made it easy to find everyone at a quick glance.  Each family had their own back with their own family names on them.  The one here was for Terry and me.  We even included Beatrix and "Eggbryo"!

Deacon wasn't sure at first if he wanted to go on the rides, but after seeing how much fun Brighton was having, he decided it was a good thing.  She was a cute big sister helping him to have fun.

Here's the big question however:  Who is the random person behind Brooke sneaking into the picture!

Fun pictures of Gregg & Mar and Ron & Lynzi.  I took these while we were waiting to go on the ride that shoots you into outter space!  (Ron's favorite ride)  The one problem is that the ride was having "issues".  We waited and waited AND waited to get our turn.  The ride before us had some problems, but FINALLY it was our turn.  We got on and waited and waited and waited!  I'm pretty sure the problem was on Terry's seat belt because they checked his several times.  Finally they made everyone get off the ride so they could do a "test run".  OK - that doesn't give one a lot of confidence in the ride, but after the test run, we were all more than willing to sit back in the seats to be shot into outter space!  KNOWING that there was a problem on the ride, when we hit the top and hung there for what seemed like forever, I was pretty sure we had shot right off the base and everyone would be taking us home in body bags, but we eventually came down and all was well.  It was AWESOME!   I'd definitely do that ride again!   Thanks for making us do that one Ron!

This is a picture of Tami and Heather.  You can easily see Tami,  but what's with her hand in the middle of Heather's face? ! ?   Tami - where's the love?!?!?

Tami and Norrah on the kids version of the ride that shoots you into outter space!  Norrah LOVED that one too.  She is totally fearless!  

I wish I had pictures of everyone else, but we were all running like crazy to rides.  Autym, Haydn and Tyson were pretty much on their own going from BIG ride to BIG ride.  We got to Lagoon at about 11:00 a.m., and in true Hale tradition, closed the park at 11:00 p.m.  I am sure if they had been open till midnight, we would have closed it at that time too.  We were on rides till the last second.  We stopped at about 2:00 for lunch, and after that some went swimming for a while while others kept going on the rides.  We (sort of) met up again at about 7:00 for some dinner.  Lynzi and Ron left Michael home with Ruth, Ron's mother, so they couldn't stay as long as everyone else, but it was fun to have them there most of the day!  Sunday was the day everyone had to go home  :'' (    Terry had a wonderful idea for that morning.   We all decided to meet at Gregg & Mar's house and have brunch so we gathered everything we needed and went over at about 11:00.  We made breakfast burritos with hashbrown potatoes, scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese - you get the idea.  Anyway - we didn't stay too long because everyone leaving had to get on the road.  We did eat and visit for a while.  It was so good to be together again before everyone left.  Gregg took all the "crackers" out to his studio and made a recording of them all singing "I am a Child of God".  He gave us a copy and gave another copy to each family.  What a treasure.  It sounded so good and the kids LOVED it!  I think that's one of my favorite songs!  After that we all knelt in family prayer.  Terry led us in that and then everyone had to go.  It was the best weekend we've had in a very   L   O   N   G   time!  I truly love being with my family.  This morning I was thinking how we are on this mission because Terry's Patriarchial blessing tells him that he will be blessed in his family history.  I was thinking about what mine says.  Mine distinctly says that I will be blessed with my family!  They are the greatest blessing in my life. 

OK - On to Mission News

We had a really good week.  As I said last week, we have finished our England/Wales portion of the Journeyman Manual, but weren't scheduled to be on the "floor" helping patrons till next week, so we had a whole week to begin learning the country of our choice.  The choices are, Ireland, Scotland, or Australia.  Obviously, we chose Scotland.  It's been hard changing from the England thinking to the Scotland thinking.  You'd think they'd be the same, but au contraire mon frere!  (OK - I had to Google that to see how to spell it!)  They are anything but the same!  So now Scotland is kicking us around instead of England!  But it's a good thing - the more we study, the more we learn, and the more we can help people who come in to the library!  I'm anxious for next week because that's when we'll start working on the floor and hopefully helping patrons.  My biggest fear is that when/if someone asks me a question I won't have a clue what to answer, but the good part of that is I will know who to ask to get the answer - - - anyone around me! 

Here's a little news that Terry sent out to some of his e-mail friends:

Mission report.  We have had our noses in books since arriving here the first part of June.  It has been literally... study, test, study, test and study.  We passed our apprentice book some time ago and we passed our journeyman book 10 days ago.  That is like advanced research in England and Wales.  It was very complex for two, shall we say advanced missionaries, but we did it.  That is both good and scary in that we are now considered prepared to work on the floors and help other people do their English and Wales research.  We start Monday morning, doing what we came here to do.  Our studies are now in Scotland, which is Elder Hale's first love.  We have been working on Scotland for the last 7 days and it is totally different that England and Wales, so it is like starting over in some ways.  We will continue to work on Scotland while we help on the floors.  We are scheduled for an hour or two a day to study.  After we pass Scotland then it is on to Ireland.  They say that is the killer as many records were destroyed and a lot of Latin, etc.  We will see. 

We have been enjoying our own personal research as well.  It has been very exciting to do research and have some successes.  That is something we will just keep on doing.  Pretty addictive.  As you can imagine, there have been some very spiritual experiences as the Spirit of Elijah works in so many ways to get the work done.  The veil is incredibly thin in our library. 

We have met some wonderful missionaries here and continue to make a lot of new friends.  That is one of the fun parts of the mission.  We have also been able to have all of our children and grand children here on several occasions and this last weekend we had all of our children here.  It has been great.  These senior missions are pretty awesome in that regard.

OK - there you have it for this week.  Onward and upward!  We love being here and truly feel blessed - which is weird, because so far, it's not a huge sacrifice like missions are usually said to be.