Will, the missionary farmer

I feel like Will hasn't gotten a lot of blog time lately so here is a post to remedy that AND share about an FHE activity we did last month - getting the boys' missionary banks started.

Will has always been pretty psyched about serving a mission someday, but lately it's occupied more of his day-to-day ponderings. He has that blessed innocence about him that makes things so cut and dry - there are people out there that don't know about the church and Jesus and the Book of Mormon, and he's going to go tell them. He's so funny with the things he comes up with; we've had to clear a few things up. Apparently in primary or somewhere they talked about the early missionaries in the church that left their wives and families while they proselyted, because he told me the other day that he was going to choose a nice wife who would be a good mom while he was off on his missions :). Oh, and that's another thing - he's pretty sure he's serving more than once. Just today he told me he's going on ALL the missions. Not sure who's paying for that, but Godspeed little buddy!

But really - his future mission is constantly on Will's mind. He asked about the MTC (Missionary Training Center) the other day, so we looked at pictures online and talked about it a bit. He's psyched to see Unky Quinn tomorrow, since not only did he reside there while prepping for his mission back in the day, but he currently works there on the 'physical education staff' (at least that's what his shirt says). I love that Will has this sweet desire to serve a mission so ingrained in his mind - I'm excited to watch him continue to prepare himself and eventually fulfill this goal.

Hilariously, Will's other future plans are to be a farmer. We read this book a fair amount:

and I'm not sure if Will just thinks it looks really fun, or if he's somehow obligated because there's a book, or what, but he is going to be a farmer. For a while he called himself a missionary farmer, until we explained he'd have to do one before the other :). 

So, on a related note, we spent a Monday night in October readying the boys' missionary banks. This is something we've needed to do forever, and I finally made them a couple of months ago in preparation for our Super Saturday for church.

We had a HUGE ziploc full of change that my dad donated for their mission funds a while back. Now it's finally distributed (not at all evenly; we just shoved piles towards each boy), hooray!

And here are my incredibly goofy boys posing with their missionary banks...

And (just for Holly!) here are some pictures of the boys after church at different times this summer. Now that it's cold, they get to ditch the ties in favor of sweaters over their white shirts; I'm a pretty cool mom.

I'm really grateful for my three boys and what sweet spirits they have. They love church and primary and the scriptures and the articles of faith and I hope that they can maintain that love (maybe let go of some of the cheesiness, but keep the love, haha) as they get older and more jaded and have more activities competing for their time and attention. I hope that when doubts creep in or when they feel detached or unworthy, they'll remember the gospel principles of repentance and forgiveness that they learn about in primary. I hope that they'll remember how to recognize the Spirit and how to develop and strengthen their testimonies. And most importantly, I hope that they'll remember that the love their Heavenly Father has for each of them is unconditional.

Whew! Okay, I really wasn't planning for things to get so intense there (I'd blame pregnancy hormones, but I've never been exceptionally emotionally stable, haha). The main point of this post is that Will is still around and is darling and we look forward to big things from him in the future, both in the mission field and the, uh, potato field :).