"And He will bless and protect His missionaries"...

On Saturday we took a longer walk and headed down to the Monument State Park....the furtherest point south and west of the United States. For the area being quite dry there were so many flowers growing along the side of the road.  Nasturtium (the orange flower) was growing all over and up the bushes and trees...amazing!!  There was also a Calli lily growing right there in the middle of no where...I couldn't believe it.  I decided I was going to get some seeds of the Nasturtium plant, so I started for the edge of the road checking out the plants.  Just before I stepped off the road, I looked down and there watching me was a rattlesnake!!  I screamed and my husband standing a few feet away, looked at me as I yelled "snake" and back away quickly.  He came over to check it out and having a hiking stick with him, had to poke the snake.  Luckily it heading into the bushes!!  I have decided I am going to walk in the middle of the trails and keep my eyes on the road from now on!!

It is always fun to see the other side of a tradition.  The great anticipated Mother's Day missionary phone calls!!  Here is the San Diego Mission (and I don't know about other
 missions) missionaries from out of the United States can skype their families...the other missionaires use a cell phone.  Because we have a i-pad that you can skype on, Elder Beazer from Canada asked  if he could come over and use it.  We gave them a key, because they got out of church before us.  We came home to see one missionary on the cell phone (each set of missionaries have one), one skyping and the other dozing on the couch!!  I loved it!!  I gave the other missionary my cell phone so he didn't have to wait for the other missionary to finish.  It was fun hearing the missionaries responding to mothers who were wondering if they were okay and how everything was going. The missionaries didn't quite know how to get back into the 'mother taking care of the son mode'...I loved it!  We have such great missionaries, really hard workers.  We love them.

As we continue visiting, we are getting to know more members of the wards.  In each ward, we are able to watch for those who we are working with and visit with them in church.  In fact, one of the sisters we met this week, I spent working in the nursery with today!!  It is great to greet many as friends now.

The Imperial Beach Ward, has a Relief Society activity every month.  This last one was so fun.  They told everyone to bring the oldest thing they had in their closet and tell us about it.  We had a wedding dress, a little costume for a dance recital 50 years ago, a dress made for one of the Church Dance Festivals (you have to be old to remember those!), a doll over 60 years old, old hats, old pictures, clothes...it was just a fun night of remembering, getting to know each other and laughing.  If you are in charge of an RS acitivity, try it out!!