Sunday, March 31, 2019
3/31 Taking a walk
I was upset the other day. I can't remember the very reason. But, Sarah offered that we go on a walk. It was amazingly grounding. We listened to previous Priesthood blessings. When I go outside on the porch to pray, it is just amazing as well. I notice the pigeons on the ledge, and notice they're love for me and they're gaze. It is great.
3/31 Letter #112, again
Hey Brother!!!
Life has been good. Very good, of late. Funniest thing, and great for our sister Sarah, is Gonzaga lost. Yep, #AllyosBracketsarebusted. Except for Sarah's bracket, which seems to be going strong. She has MSU as the winner, and they are in the final four, so there you go. Briana was out first round, I followed, and the rest of you were doing good with Gonzaga, but unfortunate to say, no go. Besides, Sarah had like 200 points over the next contender, so.....Yeah, it's quite funny. I didn't even know about MSU, and I have no idea how Sarah knew they were going to go so far. She really must do her research.
As we talked about, I skipped on last weeks letter because Sunday I wasn't doing too well. But I'm doing really good today. It was so nice to talk to you. Sarah, my wife, really loves you. I also praise your name to any single girl I know that is within your age-range. Ask Sarah. My friend, Savannah Hudrlik, just got back from her mission. I had to talk you up in our texts. It would've worked too if she didn't already have a love interest. But who knows. Anything can happen. She is so sweet.
Sarah and I discovered something a couple days ago. I don't know if you have heard about it. It's called Marco Polo. It's an app that lets you record video messages for people that they can watch on their own time, or practically live. It's pretty cool. We've talked to Sarah's brother's wife the first time. It was great. And then we talked to Sarah's sister Christina. I tried it out with Danny Parisi. It's actually pretty fun. The funny thing is that I actually knew of the app because I had been getting texts every Sunday from Uncle Kent, which I honestly thought was Spam, and I kept on deleting. I was wrong. Turns out, Uncle Kent and Aunt Kristen have been using this app to chat with Granny every Sunday, called Sunday Chats, and record her for the future. It's actually pretty cool. The good thing is that the chat is not erased. So you can look back at older chats. So, soon we will be able to watch the stories that Granny tells.
Speaking of the Payne Family, Granny's side, Mom's Aunt, Granny's sister, Mary Hartman, had arranged a mini Arizona Family Reunion of all the Payne side that wanted to come. We had been planning to go since we heard about it, which was a couple of weeks ago. Sarah and I arrived after we went to a quick sealing session at the temple, and boy was it so awesome. You know, sometimes when you meet some family you have never met before, it can be awkward, but honestly, it was cool just to be able to get to know those that were there and say, "Wow, you are related to me. We are part of one big family, and also, you have my back. And, we live so close to each other."
Sarah quickly embraced the loving nature of Aunt Mary. She is such a kind woman. Sarah was amazed at our history. One thing that was added upon my knowledge, which she found out was that Harry "Vearle" Payne was a judge, but not just any judge, a 10th circuit judge in New Mexico appointed by John F. Kennedy himself. Sarah had to explain to me the whole circuit judge thing, but I was like, this is so cool, I didn't know that before. We met some of her kids, and some of Uncle John's kids, and some of Uncle Roger's kids. All very cool. We connected really fast. One of my favorite things was that we were asked to wear name-tags. I went up to the serving table to get some pulled-pork Sandwiches (which were absolutely amazing BTW) and noticed a cute little blonde girl looking for someone on the serving tables. I say, "Hi Claire, are you looking for something?" She said yes, her water bottle, and asked how I knew her name in her cute little voice. I pointed to her name-tag. I find out later that she is actually the oldest kid of Mary's oldest son, but she was only 4 years old. I was amazed, because Mary's son and his spouse look older than both Sarah and I, and have 3 young young kids. Mary told me his oldest son was in the mid-single's ward for the longest time, and then that he dated his future spouse for and upsettingly long time. But look at them now. It honestly warms my heart now to see how these sweet spirits have come into this couple's lives.
All the Palmer side came to the reunion. It was pretty awesome. They took a large group picture of everyone that had made it, and later, we got a picture of the Palmer Clan together. Gracie, Kerry, Jesse, Steve, Janell, and Ann, with both Sarah and me. It was a nice time, really. And they gave us a lot of the left over pulled-pork.
As was mentioned, we made it to the temple for the first time in a while yesterday, and it was just WONDERFUL. We were in a time crunch, so they let us streamline and do three of our family name sealings. It's the first time we've gone to do sealings since the changes, and well, I was super touched by the beauty of the changes. It brought specks of tears to my eyes. It made me so grateful to be married to the person that was across that altar.
With that said, two major things of import happened this week. Well, yesterday was our 15th month-a-versary, and while I was a little apprehensive about that number, it really has been the greatest 15 months of my life. Soon, it'll be 30 and I won't even know where the time has gone. It's crazy! For Friday date night we celebrated that, and of course, My Beautiful Wife's birthday, by going to the Mormon Trail. You heard right, the Mormon Trail. Of course, it wasn't the well-known one, it was a hiking path in the South Mountain Preserve in Phoenix. It was quite a beautiful hike. We took in the beautiful vistas and nice pre-summer Arizona weather, and enjoyed about an hour and a half hike. We didn't finish the hike, meaning the loop, but we had a great time. We made it about 0.51 miles into it and turned back. One of the cool things we noticed is there were these cool looking spiders, and they were everywhere on the trail, like you couldn't go two feet without seeing another one of these spiders. We were engrossed in finding these creatures. Sarah also took some sunburst style photos, and I got some panoramics.
We then went to The Cheesecake Factory, which was a gift card given to us from Mom for Sarah's birthday. We had the cutest waitress that told us that the night before she was waiting a table that were crying as she was serving them and she didn't know why. We joked around with her a lot about that, saying we were thinking of pretending to cry while they sang to Sarah for her birthday, but of course, tears of joy. We shared the amazing Thai Lime Chicken Curry dish, and we had hot sauce breaded shrimp.
It was quite funny, as the teacher I work for, Eva Varela, asked me if I wanted to do anything for Sarah's birthday. When I said yes, she asked me how I wanted everyone to pitch in. I had told Sarah that day about that conversation. The next day, Eva was excited to tell me her ideas for the party and told me to tell Sarah that we were celebrating for another teacher's something else. Well, I didn't want to tell her that I had already told Sarah that we were having a party, so I just went with it and told Sarah to act surprised and go with the story. She did, and it was very satisfying for me to see Eva so happy that she surprised my wife. Also, Sarah knew about it because Eva had overtly whispered some secret somethings in front of Sarah. That said, the party was actually pretty cool. Eva bought a ? candle with three other ones. We had nachos and good cake and ice cream I provided. They sang to her and it was sweet. Also, a student wrote her a letter about how great she is that really was special, she even said stuff about possibly adopting, because her adopted parents changed her life. Teresa is so sweet.
We had a busy Tuesday meeting schedule in my Branch as President Castaneda had 5 first-time temple recommend interviews 1 Melchizedek Priesthood interview. We were there til about 10:30pm. It was pretty crazy. I had so much fun with Carlos though. He was filling out the five temple recommends for the President. It was funny because he kept on messing up. Of course, I would have probably done the same. But now he's prepared to be Bishop or President, haha. Afterwards, I asked him if he could give me a blessing. It was very nice and very powerful, and brought me peace.
That same night, I got Sarah some flowers from Walmart. It was pretty funny, as I was walking out of the store, the bag checker looked at me in church dress and with flowers and said Good Luck. And I was like, well, it's for my wife's birthday tomorrow. I unfortunately had to work on her birthday, but, we still did special things. I got her three presents this year. A picture of Christ holding a girl, our first real big Christ picture we have owned. I also got her a blue Yucatecan purse from a store in Tempe with a big sun on the front. And lastly, I got her a necklace that had the Young Women logo. I couldn't keep them a secret, and I gave them to her before her birthday, and she has loved them.
Interesting story is that as we went to go get our rent for April at Wells Fargo, as we were walking in, I hear a crash and then a large whishing sound of air leaving a tire. I said Oh no, and noticed that a women had punctured her tire on the curve of a handicap parking spot, trying to turn around the other way. She parked, and instead of us going in to get our rent, we did our best to help her change that tire. I actually correctly placed the jack underneath the car and began jacking the car up. Sarah wanted to help, but quickly said that the work was not as easy and she was surprised at how strong I was in doing so. All that done, our tire iron did not grip lug nuts. She found out that she had roadside assistance. So after everything we could do, we left her, because I had an eyeglasses appointment at Walmart.
My eyesight is the same. Period. Although, I have a slight astigmatism.
What was really cool is that we ran into our good friend Heidi Greathouse at Walmart, and just chatted away for a while, and she came to our house today to chat about her dating life. Then she came back for a blessing, which was really cool.
Last thing, we had our first FHE with our friend, Anna Martinez, a 14 or so year old recent convert. Originally we had invited our other teenager friend and recent convert, Valeria, but she couldn't make it. So we had Anna over for FHE, and it was soooooooo fun and powerful. We are planning to have biweekly FHE's with them. I'm excited. Also, we're having the sisters over for conference and the two girls, and Heidi. We are also going to be eating a breakfast before the first session. We're excited!
Love you to death man. Keep up the good work. I hope my message to E. Seeley helped. (and I hope I'm spelling it right). You guys are just amazing missionaries. I am so happy you are serving with him and he with you. Towanda never had it so good.
Love,
John
P.S. As I told you, Mom doesn't like my beard. It's been three full weeks. Anyways, I sent Mom the pics of Tanner Mangun, very recent. She said his mom has disowned him and joined her club. Haha.
Life has been good. Very good, of late. Funniest thing, and great for our sister Sarah, is Gonzaga lost. Yep, #AllyosBracketsarebusted. Except for Sarah's bracket, which seems to be going strong. She has MSU as the winner, and they are in the final four, so there you go. Briana was out first round, I followed, and the rest of you were doing good with Gonzaga, but unfortunate to say, no go. Besides, Sarah had like 200 points over the next contender, so.....Yeah, it's quite funny. I didn't even know about MSU, and I have no idea how Sarah knew they were going to go so far. She really must do her research.
As we talked about, I skipped on last weeks letter because Sunday I wasn't doing too well. But I'm doing really good today. It was so nice to talk to you. Sarah, my wife, really loves you. I also praise your name to any single girl I know that is within your age-range. Ask Sarah. My friend, Savannah Hudrlik, just got back from her mission. I had to talk you up in our texts. It would've worked too if she didn't already have a love interest. But who knows. Anything can happen. She is so sweet.
Sarah and I discovered something a couple days ago. I don't know if you have heard about it. It's called Marco Polo. It's an app that lets you record video messages for people that they can watch on their own time, or practically live. It's pretty cool. We've talked to Sarah's brother's wife the first time. It was great. And then we talked to Sarah's sister Christina. I tried it out with Danny Parisi. It's actually pretty fun. The funny thing is that I actually knew of the app because I had been getting texts every Sunday from Uncle Kent, which I honestly thought was Spam, and I kept on deleting. I was wrong. Turns out, Uncle Kent and Aunt Kristen have been using this app to chat with Granny every Sunday, called Sunday Chats, and record her for the future. It's actually pretty cool. The good thing is that the chat is not erased. So you can look back at older chats. So, soon we will be able to watch the stories that Granny tells.
Speaking of the Payne Family, Granny's side, Mom's Aunt, Granny's sister, Mary Hartman, had arranged a mini Arizona Family Reunion of all the Payne side that wanted to come. We had been planning to go since we heard about it, which was a couple of weeks ago. Sarah and I arrived after we went to a quick sealing session at the temple, and boy was it so awesome. You know, sometimes when you meet some family you have never met before, it can be awkward, but honestly, it was cool just to be able to get to know those that were there and say, "Wow, you are related to me. We are part of one big family, and also, you have my back. And, we live so close to each other."
Sarah quickly embraced the loving nature of Aunt Mary. She is such a kind woman. Sarah was amazed at our history. One thing that was added upon my knowledge, which she found out was that Harry "Vearle" Payne was a judge, but not just any judge, a 10th circuit judge in New Mexico appointed by John F. Kennedy himself. Sarah had to explain to me the whole circuit judge thing, but I was like, this is so cool, I didn't know that before. We met some of her kids, and some of Uncle John's kids, and some of Uncle Roger's kids. All very cool. We connected really fast. One of my favorite things was that we were asked to wear name-tags. I went up to the serving table to get some pulled-pork Sandwiches (which were absolutely amazing BTW) and noticed a cute little blonde girl looking for someone on the serving tables. I say, "Hi Claire, are you looking for something?" She said yes, her water bottle, and asked how I knew her name in her cute little voice. I pointed to her name-tag. I find out later that she is actually the oldest kid of Mary's oldest son, but she was only 4 years old. I was amazed, because Mary's son and his spouse look older than both Sarah and I, and have 3 young young kids. Mary told me his oldest son was in the mid-single's ward for the longest time, and then that he dated his future spouse for and upsettingly long time. But look at them now. It honestly warms my heart now to see how these sweet spirits have come into this couple's lives.
All the Palmer side came to the reunion. It was pretty awesome. They took a large group picture of everyone that had made it, and later, we got a picture of the Palmer Clan together. Gracie, Kerry, Jesse, Steve, Janell, and Ann, with both Sarah and me. It was a nice time, really. And they gave us a lot of the left over pulled-pork.
As was mentioned, we made it to the temple for the first time in a while yesterday, and it was just WONDERFUL. We were in a time crunch, so they let us streamline and do three of our family name sealings. It's the first time we've gone to do sealings since the changes, and well, I was super touched by the beauty of the changes. It brought specks of tears to my eyes. It made me so grateful to be married to the person that was across that altar.
With that said, two major things of import happened this week. Well, yesterday was our 15th month-a-versary, and while I was a little apprehensive about that number, it really has been the greatest 15 months of my life. Soon, it'll be 30 and I won't even know where the time has gone. It's crazy! For Friday date night we celebrated that, and of course, My Beautiful Wife's birthday, by going to the Mormon Trail. You heard right, the Mormon Trail. Of course, it wasn't the well-known one, it was a hiking path in the South Mountain Preserve in Phoenix. It was quite a beautiful hike. We took in the beautiful vistas and nice pre-summer Arizona weather, and enjoyed about an hour and a half hike. We didn't finish the hike, meaning the loop, but we had a great time. We made it about 0.51 miles into it and turned back. One of the cool things we noticed is there were these cool looking spiders, and they were everywhere on the trail, like you couldn't go two feet without seeing another one of these spiders. We were engrossed in finding these creatures. Sarah also took some sunburst style photos, and I got some panoramics.
We then went to The Cheesecake Factory, which was a gift card given to us from Mom for Sarah's birthday. We had the cutest waitress that told us that the night before she was waiting a table that were crying as she was serving them and she didn't know why. We joked around with her a lot about that, saying we were thinking of pretending to cry while they sang to Sarah for her birthday, but of course, tears of joy. We shared the amazing Thai Lime Chicken Curry dish, and we had hot sauce breaded shrimp.
It was quite funny, as the teacher I work for, Eva Varela, asked me if I wanted to do anything for Sarah's birthday. When I said yes, she asked me how I wanted everyone to pitch in. I had told Sarah that day about that conversation. The next day, Eva was excited to tell me her ideas for the party and told me to tell Sarah that we were celebrating for another teacher's something else. Well, I didn't want to tell her that I had already told Sarah that we were having a party, so I just went with it and told Sarah to act surprised and go with the story. She did, and it was very satisfying for me to see Eva so happy that she surprised my wife. Also, Sarah knew about it because Eva had overtly whispered some secret somethings in front of Sarah. That said, the party was actually pretty cool. Eva bought a ? candle with three other ones. We had nachos and good cake and ice cream I provided. They sang to her and it was sweet. Also, a student wrote her a letter about how great she is that really was special, she even said stuff about possibly adopting, because her adopted parents changed her life. Teresa is so sweet.
We had a busy Tuesday meeting schedule in my Branch as President Castaneda had 5 first-time temple recommend interviews 1 Melchizedek Priesthood interview. We were there til about 10:30pm. It was pretty crazy. I had so much fun with Carlos though. He was filling out the five temple recommends for the President. It was funny because he kept on messing up. Of course, I would have probably done the same. But now he's prepared to be Bishop or President, haha. Afterwards, I asked him if he could give me a blessing. It was very nice and very powerful, and brought me peace.
That same night, I got Sarah some flowers from Walmart. It was pretty funny, as I was walking out of the store, the bag checker looked at me in church dress and with flowers and said Good Luck. And I was like, well, it's for my wife's birthday tomorrow. I unfortunately had to work on her birthday, but, we still did special things. I got her three presents this year. A picture of Christ holding a girl, our first real big Christ picture we have owned. I also got her a blue Yucatecan purse from a store in Tempe with a big sun on the front. And lastly, I got her a necklace that had the Young Women logo. I couldn't keep them a secret, and I gave them to her before her birthday, and she has loved them.
Interesting story is that as we went to go get our rent for April at Wells Fargo, as we were walking in, I hear a crash and then a large whishing sound of air leaving a tire. I said Oh no, and noticed that a women had punctured her tire on the curve of a handicap parking spot, trying to turn around the other way. She parked, and instead of us going in to get our rent, we did our best to help her change that tire. I actually correctly placed the jack underneath the car and began jacking the car up. Sarah wanted to help, but quickly said that the work was not as easy and she was surprised at how strong I was in doing so. All that done, our tire iron did not grip lug nuts. She found out that she had roadside assistance. So after everything we could do, we left her, because I had an eyeglasses appointment at Walmart.
My eyesight is the same. Period. Although, I have a slight astigmatism.
What was really cool is that we ran into our good friend Heidi Greathouse at Walmart, and just chatted away for a while, and she came to our house today to chat about her dating life. Then she came back for a blessing, which was really cool.
Last thing, we had our first FHE with our friend, Anna Martinez, a 14 or so year old recent convert. Originally we had invited our other teenager friend and recent convert, Valeria, but she couldn't make it. So we had Anna over for FHE, and it was soooooooo fun and powerful. We are planning to have biweekly FHE's with them. I'm excited. Also, we're having the sisters over for conference and the two girls, and Heidi. We are also going to be eating a breakfast before the first session. We're excited!
Love you to death man. Keep up the good work. I hope my message to E. Seeley helped. (and I hope I'm spelling it right). You guys are just amazing missionaries. I am so happy you are serving with him and he with you. Towanda never had it so good.
Love,
John
P.S. As I told you, Mom doesn't like my beard. It's been three full weeks. Anyways, I sent Mom the pics of Tanner Mangun, very recent. She said his mom has disowned him and joined her club. Haha.
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