I guess we should give you all an update. Since our last blog post in Jan. 2020, Chris and I have stayed busy with work. Chris worked as a therapist at Bloomquist Hale for a year and then decided to open her private practice back up and I drove Uber for a few months. But when Covid hit I stopped. I had been doing some marketing part time for a cabinet company while driving Uber and they asked if I wanted to do some estimating and project manageing. I said yes and primaraly worked estimating temple projects and then project manageing them. We completed the Cape Verde temple, a large remodel in Detroit and Rexburg and they are finishing up the McAllen temple. At the same time, I helped build out a basement apartment in the home of our daughter, Genevieve, and her husband, Sam. They moved from Pasadena, CA and bought the house in January of 2021. That was just over a years worth of going up to their house almost everyday after work and on Saturdays.
These were all of Sam and Ginny's basement apartment. It turned out very cute.
I have also completed adding can lights in Charlotte and Alex's upstairs bedrooms and installing new doors and moldings and I just finished building a sauna in James and Kirstin's home in American Fork.
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We have had some fun get togethers for family dinners and activities.
In April, after President Nelson's talk, we started to think about another mission. When our papers were ready to submit, I called Elder Kevin Duncan, who was the area president when we served in Guatemala, and asked him if there were going to be any opportunities to serve in any of the foreign temples. He asked what we would like to do. I mentioned that we would really love to serve in the Quito, Ecuador temple. I told him that Chris and I had met as young missionaries in Quito, Ecuador 51 years ago. He said he would check into things. Two weeks later we got a call from the temple department saying that our names had been suggested to serve on the start up committee for the Quito, Ecuador temple. Of course, we said we would love to, not even knowing what the startup committee did. They told us to submit our missionary papers and mark that we wanted to serve a temple mission in the Quito, Ecuador temple. About a month later, we received our call to serve in the Quito, Ecuador temple. We were to report at the temple on Aug. 1st. We have been waiting on our Visa for 5 weeks and we don't know when we will be leaving. We are packed and just waiting for one last document from the US state department to arrive. Everyday we run the mailbox hoping that our apostillized (certified) FBI background check will be there. We have weekly zoom meetings with the temple president and his wife and all the other members of the start up committee. Our primary responsibilites will be to train the workers and shift coordinators. They want to start training next week. We hope and pray that we will get our visa and be able to get there in time. We will stay through the open house and dedication, which is in October and November and then for a few months until everything is running smoothy.
In June, Chris and I took 5 of our grandchildren to Nauvoo to do baptisms for the dead. We flew to St. Louis and then rented a car and drove to Nauvoo. It was a great trip and we hope the grandkids will have fond memories of our trip to Nauvoo.
