Temple Worker

Mike and I work on the Tuesday shift at the Draper temple baptistry and when we heard we were losing the missionary on our shift since he was reporting to the MTC, we were quick to volunteer Alec as his replacement. He has loved getting in practice in the font and confirming. He also has now become a military aircraft specialist after chatting with all of the veterans on our shift. They have lots of stories to tell and Alec gets to hear them every Tuesday now from 12-6 until he leaves for the MTC in Bogota. Working with him in the temple has been one of the best Mommy moments ever. Between this and his missionary prep classes he will be totally ready for his 6 weeks in the MTC.

Looking Sharp

With the expense of Christmas done and the double missionary payments looming in the future, we decided that getting Alec’s shopping done sooner rather than later would be a good budget move. He cares about what he wears so we knew helping Alec chose his mission clothes would be a new experience after the anti shopping of his brother Braden. We spent several afternoons at Mr. Mac, Target, Distribution Center & Nordstrom Rack picking the basics and completed the few missing pieces with some online ordering. Alec is going to make one sharp missionary.

Temple Bound

Alec decided that he wanted to take his endowments out over the Christmas break but by the time we called the only appointments they had left were at noon. That announcement of the missionary age change has really made any place to do with missionaries super busy! We kept it intimate with just immediate family and the Grandparents. It was perfect! While we were upstairs, Lydia was down in the baptistry doing family names so we all were in the temple together. After we went to Smashburger. I guess its become a tradition now since Braden had chosen the same thing. So proud of Alec!!!

At The Temple

Celebrating At Smashburger

Called To Serve

It took almost 4 weeks for Alec to get his call, 2 weeks longer than we though it would do to General Conference but it turned out to be a good thing. With his parents being out of the country, he was going to have to wait until they returned to open it. Sitting on that official envelope would have been almost torture for him. It actually got delivered 3 hours after he picked them up at the airport, perfect timing!!! He also was lucky in that he submitted his papers before the big announcement in conference about the age change for missionary service. He could have been waiting an extra month after that.

As far as where he got called to, it was a place none of us guessed. We had put up a prize of $20 to anyone that guessed correctly where he would be going or to whoever guessed closest in the event no one guessed correctly. When he read his letter out loud, “You are called to serve in the Colombia Medellin Mission, you will be reporting to the Colombia MTC on March 13th 2012 and will be learning Spanish”, we all were really excited. Colombia was just not a place that was on anyones radar but we all felt it was exactly where he was supposed to be. 

Called to serve, wearing his souvenir fez from Turkey.