Today was the day for the Stake Friends' annual Christmas lunch--that's our holiday get-together for the old Sunset Heights Stake YW presidency: Marie Duncan, Kathy Diederich, Connie Allen, Sue Olson, and myself. We've been doing it for a lot of years now--probably at least 17 years. It was fun to see everyone and to catch up on all the news. Connie now has 25 grandchildren! We are all turning, or have turned, 59 this year. Boy, we're old! Marie gave a report on her sister-in-law, Helen Duncan, who was diagonosed with lung cancer a few months ago. Helen was told that she was in Stage 4, so she wasn't expected to live long. She had surgery to remove as much of the cancer as they could, then she went to see a specialist at the Huntsman Institute who said her cancer was different than had been first diagnosed. It's a very rare, slow-growing cancer and she can expect to live at least 10 years more. So, that's better news for her than before. I saw her yesterday at Deseret Book and she looked really good. Marie said she's still recovering from the surgery which was pretty horrendous.
Richard started back to work at the temple today after having had two weeks off while the temple was closed for cleaning. He was glad to have some time off to get things done around here that he wanted to, but now he's glad to go back to work.
Tonight Steven and I had dinner in the cafeteria at the MTC before the devotional. We visited with a nice senior missionary couple, the Binghams from North Ogden, who are going on a mission to Scotland. We admire the senior missionary couples who leave their families behind to go serve missions, often not knowing (as in the case of the Binghams) what kind of mission exactly they'll be serving. As we were leaving the cafeteria, we saw Bro. Rampton, one of Steven's former counselors, who said that his daughter Jennie will be on Martha Stewart this Friday demonstrating her fake food that she makes. Hmmmmmm. That should be interesting. He didn't know what day for sure.
The devotional speakers tonight were Elder and Sister Craig C. Christensen. Sister Christensen said, "You can be made stronger through the power of the Atonement. Let God work with you, let God change you, let Him make of you what He wants you to become." Another thing she said, which I think is a good reminder to all of us is: "President Hinckley gets up every day and he works hard. If he can do it, so can you."
Elder Christensen talked about Prayer and four aspects of prayer, which are: preparation, knowing what to pray for, how answers come, and how to teach others about prayer. We always get to hear such good talks at the MTC it would be nice to be able to remember everything. He also talked about principles of being a good missionary from Alma's teachings. The principles (which are quite similar to Elder Walker's of last week) are: obey, trust God, work hard, exercise faith, love everyone, keep a diary, endure to the end. (I like mentioning what the talks were about in my blog because it helps me remember.)
Afterwards, we met with the missionaries in District D. They are some of my favorites. Especially Elders Tadd and Skinner and the four sisters. Their whole district sang in the missionary choir, which I think shows they are trying hard to do all they can to be good missionaries.