End of summer pics

At the young men campout JT discovered he loves fishing

I painted our family room wall

I had a birthday

Bananaphones are not dead!

Elder Watson's Letters - June-Aug

We have been greatly blessed that Hyrum is a faithful writer AND caller. Most every week since his departure, we have had at least an hour to spend on the phone or video with him. And first thing in the morning there is an email to his wide acquaintanceships around the world with some of the most creative and energetic titles and introductions. Among his favorite non-proselyting activities are eating Taco Bell and shopping Goodwill. Here are a few of his experiences and pictures from June-Aug.

A Goodwill success for a former
Stephenville Yellow Jacket

June 20 [TX] - “On Friday, I went proselyting with the local missionaries, and we made a new friend named B____. Now, I must point out that the missionaries I went with are English speaking missionaries. So I was quite confused when they drove into the trailer park where the Spanish missionaries get most of their work done. We went to talk to someone, and sure enough, they only spoke Spanish. So they handed the contact over to me, the missionary who had just began training. I stumbled over some words about prophets and the Book of Mormon ... So my first ever contact was in Spanish I'm never letting Elders Carpenter and Atuaia forget that one.”

In that letter, he also shared his surprise when Elder David A Bednar, an apostle, stopped into his district's classroom at the MTC for an hour of Q&A! His reaction was aspiratonal and inspirational: “As Elder Watson, it my fondest wish to teach with that kind of power and clarity. It is amazing to think that both of us are set apart servants of the Lord, full time witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The next week in the Provo MTC, after he spent a lot of time in the temple he said: “As I travel in Pittsburgh, I'm going to try to see every person for their eternal, glorious, potential. There really are no ordinary people, and I want to help as many as I can to feel how loved they really are.”

His MTC district

He arrived in his mission and his first assignment was to southern NY/northern PA. Very oddly, he lives a full half an hour away from his area and his district leader is an hour away! So they spend a LOT of time driving through the beautiful, lush trees along the I-86 that Joy and I drove when we were dating and living 5 hours apart. I was touched that he noticed the family significance of that road and said as much to his companion the first time they reached that highway.

July 6 - “My first day there, we went to meet some old guy at his house, and we find his wife instead, who notices our car has something hanging from the bottom of it. She goes into her house, grabs some duct tape, and lays down on the hot road to fix our car. She was super nice and already had lots of faith. She had even already read some of the Book of Mormon! We had a great discussion with her, and she is now one of our friends.”

July 27 - Among the many surprises to Joy and me was that he got permission to leave his mission boundaries because the Palmyra NY temple was closer than the Pittsburgh PA temple. “Thursday was the long-awaited p-day, where we got a ride to the Palmyra temple with our faithful ward member Wade. We got to visit the Sacred Grove and then do 2 endowments, which was super awesome. Afterwards, we went to an amazing sandwich shop, Byrne Dairy Deli, which costs about as much as Jersey Mike's, but they put like 7 times the amount of meat on there, it was sooo good.”

Wade, Elder Fraiken (trainer), and Elder Watson in Palmyra

During their planning, his companion and he decided to knock on doors on Washington St. They put Washington into their GPS and it led them to Washington in a completely different town! It was still their area, so they worked that street instead. "Everyone there was willing to talk to us, and we had some great converations. We did eventually find one person to teach, and I knew that was exactly where the Lord wanted us to be.”

Among his trainer's gifts is as a human selfie stick
With friend Casey and recently acquired Amish hat

21st Anniversary Murder Party

With everything going on in May, we didn't really have much time to celebrate our anniversary this year (a lot - I mean, we did honor each other and the day, but we never got to the Big Thing). Some years ago we got Joy a murder mystery social game, but we never ended up putting it together. This year she wanted to finally get to that. Pity we couldn't find it! So we bought another one, a murder in fairy tale land. Once Elder Watson was off in Pennsylvania and we finally finished sending our kids to church youth camps, we had a few brain cells to put on a big party on July 18.

Joy: Thank you for making it happen, Derrill!
You are very welcome, my love.

Short version: We had the Dummars, Heiers, Van Valkenburgs, and Johnstons over as the other guests. Each of us played a role from a fairy tale setting with very thinly veiled name changes (Ice White is Snow White; Rumble Milton is Rumplestiltskin….). It was really, really fun handing out the first clues a week in advance because everyone was so excited about the game and talking about getting their costumes together. It felt like a right proper party!

Joy: I felt like we were getting together a masquerade with how much detail everyone was putting into their costumes.
We did put in the invitations that folks could dress up as much or as little as they felt comfortable and fun, and I think we picked the right crowd for this.

Mike and Mollie Van Valkenburg as the Warlock of Osland and Ice White
Joe and Chelle Dummar as the Knave of Hearts and Queen Black
Sue and Jim Johnston as Scarlet Cloak and Magnifico
Joy and Derrill Watson as Pandella and Prince Edward Jon
and Shelby and Eric Heier as Bella and Rumple Milton