You never know how you will be touched by the lives of others. Likewise you never know how you will touch the lives of others. Since this is the case, always live to touch in ways that you would want to be touched I suppose would be a something I would want my children to learn. I hope that is something that I am teaching my children by example.
We are blessed by elders in our ward the past few weeks. We had sister missionaries for the longest time. It is almost weird to have elders. I was saddened at first because it was going to be so different. With the sisters I could feed them any time I wanted to and have them over anytime they needed to stop by. I was not limited by “mission rules and policies” on there needing to be another adult male present with me if the elders are in the home. It kind of caught a lot of families in the ward off guard, I think. We were so used to picking the sisters up and taking them to their appointments and being their right arm of support so to speak. When they needed something we women in the ward stepped up and stood behind them. With the elders, we cannot do that without being backed up by our husbands. That is difficult when many of us have husbands that work until later evening hours. It is not impossible, it is just more difficult. For us in particular, mealtime has to be a bit later as we have to wait for Ben to get home from work unless we plan for him to work from home that day, etc. It is just more of a logistical planning issue in our ward than it ever was before. We were spoiled with the sister missionaries.
Like I said, however, we are blessed to get elders when they did transfers a couple of transfers ago. They whitewashed the area. They took the sisters out and put the elders in. It has been an interesting experience the past few months watching them learn to work together and especially watching Elder Backstein grow into the missionary he has become. He was fresh from the MTC when he came to our area and he has truly grown as a missionary.
Transfers are tomorrow. Elder Graves and Elder Backstein came tonight to get pictures with our family before the transfer. We all thought that it would be Elder Graves being transferred to a new area because Elder Graves said that it is usually the “trainer” that is moved once they have trained a new missionary. That is not what happened in this case. Elder Backstein is the one that is being transferred. As of tonight, they do not know where he is being transferred to.
Elder Backstein will do well no matter where he goes. He has an amazing spirit about him and he has grown so much since he has been here. He will touch some many lives while he is serving here in the Houston Texas Mission. There are so many lives to touch. He certainly touched my life and for that I am grateful. I wish him well.
PS. We do not always make the missionaries wear the rainbow afro wig. That is the non-sense that Elder Graves gets to endure at our house (for fun) left over from Thanksgiving. He lost the game of Risk and the deal was that whoever lost the game of Risk had to wear the rainbow afro wig whenever the elders came to visit. The kids came up with that (I think it was mostly Kyle) and they all agreed to it. It is only fair that we continue this one since another game of Risk has not been played to pass the title of rainbow afro wig wearer to someone else. I am thinking that Elder Graves was hoping we would feed them on Christmas so that he could redeem himself. No such luck as the bishop’s family had them that holiday. He has to endure longer. I hear that he has never lost a game of Risk. He has never met the Sansom boys. He met his match in Texas.
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