Waite's Window The happenings at the Waite House.
On July 6, 2021 sweet little Diana Felicity Cook made her entrance into the world at 6:45 in the morning. She weighed 6 pounds 7 ounces and made us grandparents. She is absolutely beautiful! Rebecca and Justin are figuring out parenting a newborn together. They are an amazing team.
We had a small miracle in our lives last week. I talked with the Church missionary department to see what the plan was for David and the MTC. I was told that because his original assignment was South Africa MTC and it isn't open yet he would do it all online in HMTC. He was disappointed, but understood,
A few days later we were talking and he said that he really wanted to go to the MTC in person and have that experience. About 15 minutes later my phone rang. It was President Jacobsen, he told us that David's MTC assignment had been changed and he would start on Monday, August 23 with HMTC for 10 days and then go to the Provo MTC for the remainder of his time. WooHoo! I love little miracles. The timing felt very much like a miracle to me.
In March David realized that if he wanted to go on his mission early in the summer he better get on putting his papers in. It was pretty fast and easy process this time around. His papers were submitted by President Davidson on April 2nd. General Conference was the 3rd and 4th so I figured it might take a bit of extra time to receive his call. Not so, his email saying his call was available came on Tuesday, April 13th while he was at school. He waited and didn't read it at school. It was super exciting to think about where he would be serving the Lord. We had soccer practice and Lydia had clogging Tuesday evening so we decided to wait until 6:30 to open his call. At 6:30 we zoomed with Rebecca & Justin, Bethany, Matthew and Grandma Karan. It took a bit for the email to open, but David finally got to read that he would report on August 26, 2021 to the South Africa MTC to serve in the Botswana/Namibia mission. I was pretty sure he would stay in the United States, but I guess the Lord had other plans for him. I always try to trust the Lord's plans. We were all a bit surprised by the assignment for sure. The rest of the evening was spent learning things about Botswana/Namibia. The call says English speaking, but I would count on him learning another language to teach and communicate in.
We are proud of David's worthiness and desire to serve. It is going to be an adventure for certain. We are excited to see how David grows in his experiences. I hope he comes home his strongest convert.
On Monday, February 22, 2021 our kids got their first ever weather related day off of school in Wyoming. The crazy thing is the day was much nicer than a lot of days they have gone to school. The week before we had frigid temperatures, but school carried on as normal except one day the buses didn't run. One day when I sent the kids out the door in the morning the feels like temperature was -44. That is crazy cold!! School carried on. On Monday when they canceled school it ended up being pretty warm and melting a lot of our snow. We did have high winds blowing most of the night Sunday night. It drifted snow and made the roads dangerous so they canceled school. Having an extra day off is always a good thing.
Yesterday the young men and young women in our ward were going sledding in the Bighorn Mountains. Friday evening Bishop Jeide texted to see if Neil could go and drive our van to help take youth up. We decided it would be fun for Lydia to go along. I wasn't sure how Aaron would do, but decided to take him and go along for the day. Aaron didn't like sledding, but it was still fun. He did like playing in the snow and eating hot dogs in the van. I gave him a chocolate chip cookie and told him it was magic. It would make anything he was doing be more fun. It must have impressed him because I heard him telling Emma about his magic cookie when we got home. It was a beautiful day up on the mountain, not too cold. We had a delicious lunch cooked by the Akins. It was fun to visit with members of our ward and be together. I am glad I went along.
