Nov 17 07

November 17, 2007

At 9:00 this morning Robert started helping set up the chairs for a funeral at the church. The deceased was Riley Lee, a brother to Grant Lee who used to be Branch President here before President Bonito. The funeral started at 10:00. We talked about moving our truck out of the driveway so we wouldn’t get boxed in, but didn’t do it, and sure enough at 12:30 when we were supposed to be picking up Byron and Juliet, we were trapped.

At some point during the morning Robert checked our e-mails and found out that Ronnie Bauer passed away last night. The funeral will be next Wednesday.

We finally got to Byron’s at 1:00. Even though we were a bit late, we had a wonderful day at the temple. Byron and Juliet were so excited and seemed to enjoy the temple. They made arrangements all by themselves to come back next Saturday and be sealed. Thelma got sealed to her parents today, also, and I was able to be the proxy for her mother.

On the way home Byron said he sometimes thinks about us living clear up in Idaho and Utah. And then he said it’s so amazing to him that one day we got in our car and drove all the way to a little place called Cibecue that we’d never heard of before and found him. He said it seemed like finding a needle in a haystack. And Elder Itri came all the way from Philadelphia to teach Juliet and get her baptized. Isn’t that amazing?

Elder Itri was in the temple with them today, too. He’s AP now and they were up in this area for Zone Conference, so President Craig gave them permission to stay and go to the temple. That was really nice for Byron and Juliet.

After the session Byron just stayed and stayed in the Celestial Room. By the time we got downstairs everyone else was gone. President Bonito actually picked up all the others. He brought Maxine, Betty Lee, Murphy and Cheryl with him. Miracles never cease. Not that they all came, but that President actually picked them up and brought them. Anyway, since everyone else was gone we took Byron and Juliet to dinner at Eva’s. They told us that one day they were shopping and Brionna, who was 2 in July, wanted to go down the Christmas aisle at Kmart. But Byron and Juliet were talking and didn’t hear her. Finally she said, “Hello! Anybody home up there?” She got to go down the Christmas aisle.

I hadn’t asked Betty if she was coming to the temple until at the funeral this morning. When I asked her, this lady who rarely says anything and only nods or shakes her head when you ask her a question, said, “Yes, I do. I do want to go to the temple.” That was unbelievably emphatic for Betty.

We didn’t get home until almost 10:00 and we were exhausted. But it was a great day. Words can’t express how precious it really was.