Mission Birthday

One of our missionaries celebrates a birthday today:

Elder Gale turns 19!

Here he is with his current companion and a young man they recently

prepared for baptism:

And here they are at the Los Angeles Temple last week: 

These two remind me of Elder Kessler and Elder Green 

from Saturday's Warrior...

In his email this week, he told us about a new exhibit at the visitor's center

there at the LA Temple. It is all about missionary work and they

have all the name tags of the missionaries currently serving in the area.

Here is an experience he shared this week as well:

"We got  a phone call from Julio saying that he was taking us out to eat, and that he was there! We got ready super fast and went out to Pollo Inka with him, a Peruvian restaurant. It was such a cool dinner. Julio was telling us about how he heard stories of missionaries who would go to poor members' homes in Guatemala (where he's from) and give everything they had to the missionaries and not eat themselves. He said that he always wanted to give his all like that, and that even though he always gave us the same stuff to eat whenever we came over to his house, that today was a special day because we were eating good food in a restaurant and that he was finally sharing his best with the missionaries. I seriously just looked at him and his wife across the able and cried. I am so blessed to know as good a man as Julio. He is such an example to me of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. As we were walking out of the restaurant, the sun was starting to set and it was raining, and there was a beautiful rainbow across the whole sky, and we all looked up at it in amazement, it was seriously incredible...

We got home and grabbed our bikes and went to visit the Reyes' family since we couldn't last week. We watched "The Restoration" with Juan and at the end he looked at us and said "now I finally understand who Joseph Smith was, he was just an honest man looking for truth from God" and it was awesome. He said he was learning slowly, but that little by little he's beginning to understand our message. We answered a lot of his questions and he's coming along! He also said to me "What part of Argentina are you from? You're from Argentina, right?" Always an awesome compliment to get when you're trying to learn someone else's language! "

It makes my Mother Heart happy to know that my son is serving among such amazing, loving people there--and that he is learning and growing in that service. 

I still can't believe how fast time flies--I'm pretty sure our little Sammy was 

picnicking in the park with his sister just yesterday: