September church stuff

Kicked off September with ward temple night, always a good time. Every few months we do a 'chapel session' first, where we meet with a member of the temple presidency and his wife and get counsel or ask questions we might have. It's been a really enlightening and strengthening experience and especially fun for me when it's my aunt and uncle who talk to us - as it happened to be that night! 

 

It seems like there is a lot of misinformation and assumptions about LDS temples, which is a bummer because the temple is such a special place to me; there is no where else where I feel closer to my Heavenly Father and more able to receive answers and direction for my life. Here's a good reference if you're curious: https://www.mormon.org/faq/use-of-temples

Pack Meeting! Clyde and Andrew got some award... man, I'm a good Scout mom, eh? I promise I was a slightly better leader haha. But yay Clyde!!

Later in the month we went back to the Murphys' for an Elder's Quorum/ward activity: a dutch oven cook-off! Chuck made dutch oven jambalaya (bottom left) and dutch oven cornbread (top right) and dutch oven sopapilla cheesecake (center) which won for best dessert and is basically the yummiest, most fattening thing on earth.

The children ran wild around the yard and had a blast.

 Since this was the second church activity at the Murphys that month, I joked that we should just hold Sunday services there the next day as well. Our normal church building had some flooding/sewage issues (ewwwww) at the beginning of August so at this point we had been crashing over at the Happy Valley building for a month and a half on Sundays, and scrambling to find places to meet for other stuff, and of course Rich and Dee opened up their yard as often as needed. Once again, I just have to go on the record with how much I love these two!

I know I talked about this in a different post, but here are some more pictures from one of our evenings spending time with Sister Sherman. She and Will have such a great connection, especially with Einstein and the late Pretty Boy.

 One day I was scrolling through Instagram and this picture came up before I got to the caption and I froze for a second, legitimately scared that it was a post about President Monson having passed away - it's in the same format that I read about Elder Perry's death. Instead it was just a beautiful quote from the prophet, but it was such a good reminder to me to be grateful for his service and how the Lord has strengthened him and also to be ready for when the time comes for President Monson to be reunited with his sweet wife on the other side of the veil.

Have I mentioned how much I love my Sunday School kids? These pictures make me soo happy/sad because my class changed in January (I lost the 16yos and gained the 14yos) so I miss a lot of these cute faces! Anyways, with the building switch we were meeting at 3pm on Sundays for church which was SO crazy. This particular week everyone was a little nuts and Braenna had loads of fun with my phone the whole hour :).

Raquel and I had a little date night to see Bethany in such a funny play - Drop Dead Juliet. Bethany played Juliet's mom and was soooo good! I was seriously laughing the whole time. And then we realized Michael was there too, so I made them all be in pictures haha. And afterwards Raquel and I got ice cream and laughed at ourselves ;).

Okay, I promise I know that pride goeth before the fall, so I am more than prepared to fall BUT HOLY MOLY THE OFFICIAL CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS PAGE LIKED MY FACEBOOK STATUS. Oh and no big deal they commented too. Yes, I tagged the page in the my post so it's not like they were just scrolling through and saw it and Yes, I'm aware that it wasn't like Jesus Himself but more like a nice Church media employee, but I'm just going to bask in the moment anyways :).

 Anyhow, my cute friend Maren O. and I went together and the women's session of conference was obviously wonderful and I got a lipstick kiss from Raquel so that was pretty sweet. I think everyone at Walmart enjoyed it as I roamed the aisles that night haha!