I was in the paper again!

When we leave on our mission there will be at least 4 people happy to see me go. Click on the heading above if you want to read the latest saga of our school board vs superintendent fiasco. I sure am glad I am retired as it is much easier to calm down after these meetings when you have the time to be able to call and email people with concerns and thanks. This town of ours has such the potential to be the greatest school district in the nation for our kids and yet we have four members of the board who can't see beyond their agenda to get personal revenge.

Mosiah 2:17 Learn Wisdom

Studying for Sunday School I liked the following from the Institute Manual - "King Benjamin's comment about service to fellowmen (Mosiah 2:17 And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.) suggests in beautiful simplicity the doctrine taught by the Savior: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40) The manual then goes on to quote Elder Ivins "The great value, I believe, that the Church has for us is the opportunity it gives us to serve, for, after all, the great benefits of life come from service. Generous, open-hearted, full service to our fellows, I believe, it the thing which brings us the greatest happiness. We can serve our families and gain happiness by it; we can serve our friends and gain happiness by it; but if we would be happy we must serve and serve generously, and I believe myself that the greatest happiness that comes to me from observing the standards of the Church and meeting my obligations to it is the spiritual values that I get out of that service." (CR Oct 1948 pp 47-48).

We had our final interview last night with President Spackman and he submitted our missionary recommendation to the Brethren. That event together with the blessings we received serving in Romania and the name of this blog made these thoughts have even greater significants to me. The photo is from when we entered the MTC July 4, 2005 but since we haven't changed that much we thought it appropriate to use for the required photo for the missionary recommendation.

I keep trying

We have an issue in our town where a group got together to get elected to the school board as a bloc. I tried to tell everyone it was a bad idea to vote for these individuals as they had a hidden agenda. Well they got elected and we found out the agenda - to get rid of our superintendent. After investigating what has happened under our current superintendent and finding out she has accomplished great things for our district and the bloc only wants her gone for personal reasons, I spoke before the school board and got others talking too. Last night I decided to speak to the issue of the poor performance of the superintendent that the bloc is planning to hire, but the speakers before me were all so great I stood and said I would not give my prepared remarks. I then said Amen to all the things said before me and then gave a personal reason why our superintendent was not one my favorites but now she is because of the successes of the district. I then asked the board to renew her contract and do it now. This issue has been the talk of the town since the November election and the bloc is still trying to get rid of her. I know the bloc will be happy when we leave on our mission. I just hope our superintendent is still her when we return. If you want to read the article in todays paper click on the title of this post.

Clarification on Mission Call

Just to clarify further the last posting since we have had questions. We submitted for an 18 month mission with the limitation that we have to be back the end of December 2009 for Grandma Connett's 90th Birthday. So if they do like our first mission we will not serve a full 18 months. Also we did not request a specific mission. He have however written to the email addresses given in the listing of current missionary opportunities for Family History and Perpetual Education Fund, indicating our interest in serving in those areas. Eileen of course would like to serve a Family History mission if that is the right mission for us and I would like to serve a Perpetual Education Fund mission if that is the right mission for us. There are many other missions we would also enjoy serving therefore we are excited to learn where the Lord wants us to serve.

Waiting for Mission Call!

Today we pushed the submit button on "Submit Electronic Recommendation" for our next mission. All our paper work, medical and dental exams and forms are done and even all our shots unless we go somewhere exotic! We now need our Bishop and Stake President interviews before the real waiting to hear starts. We are excited to go again and know we will go where the Lord wants us.

Annual Water Park Adventure

This year Lisa and Steven's families and Grandma and Grandpa and Paige and Amanda were all to go to the Great Wolf Lodge for an annual water park adventure. Grandpa missed last year with the flu which was fine because he didn't get excited about being in the water for 3 days. You will note in the pictures below several people missing but the only ones that didn't make it were Steven's family who had to postpone until the end of May. We also had the addition of one of the Bishop's sons. As for the others missing - it is hard to get good pictures when you are trying not to get the cameras wet too. Everyone had a great time - even grandpa who spent more time in the water this time than grandma. We are finally home for rest of the month of April. April 10th we have our dental exams and then our mission papers will be submitted electronically and we will start the wait to find out where we will go.