update 8-30-07

Hi everybody,

It’s so exciting to hear from all of you and everything that is going on in your lives. We love letters and emails! –Pictures are pretty great, too.

Did you get the letter that Jessica sent a few weeks ago? We were receiving some training that weekend, and so we received that email the same time you did. I knew that this would be a good experience for our family, but reading her expressions of testimony and faith sent a thrill through me. Isn’t that what we want for our children? -that they recognize and come to rely on the Lord? We feel so grateful for the opportunity to be focused as a family on Christ and His kingdom. To have that reinforced every day and in continuous conversations with missionaries and around the dinner table is such a blessing. We’re so grateful for this opportunity and so appreciative of all the support of our family and friends. We do miss you all very much-fortunately, life is busy, and we don’t have a lot of time to feel sad. Mostly, we just read your emails and look at the pictures and ooh and aah-and clap. Congratulations by the way to everyone that’s having a baby, getting married, and hip hip hooray for Rowan! What great news. I wish I had time to write everyone back, but just know we’re thinking of you!

            Here’s a highlight of some of the fun events that we had this last month:

·         A visit from Grandma & Grandpa Brasher (Wow-the garage and food storage room look great!!!!)

·         Amanda gave a talk at her friend’s baptism, and it was GREAT!

·         A trip to the wild life park & Montezuma’s castle

·         Kevin (A recent convert) received the priesthood Monday night-Taylor had an opportunity to share some feelings about the priesthood at that meeting

·         Nelson’s frozen custard-WOW

·         Taylor had his best mile time-6 minutes

·         We had a stake conference with Elder Oaks and another with Elder Hinckley

·         On splits with the missionaries, Taylor “TTI-ed’ some people for the first time, and handed out some books of Mormon and a Bible. It was a good experience.

·         Brandon’s read 3 of the Harry Potter books and is almost done with 4. He’s trying to catch up with Amanda

·         Mom went out with Sister Capone and Sister Hatch and taught 5 people in Spanish and met a bunch more

·         2 great mission president’s firesides

·         LOTS of baptisms

·         At a stake conference in Mesa, Elder Holland talked about Jeffrey Neal….and later we were able to met him.

·         Amanda won tickets to the Diamond Backs/Giants game….go Amanda!

·         Angie & Mark had training with the other mission presidents and their wives in our area (Texas, Arizona, Nevada, & Oklahoma) with Elder Anderson & Elder Holland and their wives

·         Taylor is almost done with his cycling merit badge-Jessica went out for the first time with he and Mark

·         Lucky is finally used to missionaries, and doesn’t bark when they come by

·         The kids had the day off from school and were able to go with mom to a zone development meeting while dad gave interviews. The zone leaders involved the kids in some interactive training about Captain Moroni and the title of liberty-it even included a battle and homemade burritos from Elder Endemano and Elder Mallory

·         Taylor can bench press 60 more pounds than he used to be able to. You can ask him about it.

·         Elder Johnson came down from the reservation. He’s our newest assistant. He’s awesome! We’re seeing a lot of him right now-he’s down a lot due to some serious back injuries and the necessary treatment. He tells the kids great stories.

·         Everyday we hear great news from missionaries about the work they are doing in their areas and the amazing experiences they are having.

·         Another farewell to some fantastic young missionaries who have finished their two years-and hello to 18 new missionaries! We’ve had another great set of Zone Conferences, and just love the enthusiasm of these great young men and women. If you see them out on the street or in the store, make sure to give them a big hello and shake their hands!  It makes such a difference to them to see a friendly face.

·         We babysat for Ben & Wendy Webster and a few of their friends while they all went to the temple. It was so great to have little kids around! We miss our cousins.

·         The kids really miss their friends (Especially Taylor) and hope they write!

·         We’re so excited for conference next week. It’ll be good to watch, knowing you’re all watching too-kind of corny, one of those, “When I look at the moon, I know you’re looking at the same moon” kind of mushy moments….but still….we’ll be thinking of you all on Saturday and Sunday.

 

Love you all! Take care of yourselves.

Angie

 

Jessica-hey everyone. I don’t really know when the last time was that we did this….so I don’t know what I have said already. We went to a stake conference last week that elder Holland presided at. It was a really neat meeting. He spoke directly to the youth. He asked us to commit 10 percent of our lives to the church….age 12 to 22. he said after that we could do what we want but we needed to commit there. If we commit those 10 years then he knows we will be attached to the church. He told us that president Hinckley gets up every day and works for us…it isn’t so he can get higher up there in the celestial kingdom, he does it for us. Afterwards we got a picture with him and that was a lot of fun.  I am reluctantly going to homecoming this Saturday, I tried to get out of it but here it’s a little different cause all my friends are in student council so they are forcing me to go, back home no one ever wanted to go. The dress is black and white and I got a dress with my mom earlier this week.  It will be fun to dress up and stuff…maybe I’ll just go to dinner then go home J  just kidding I’ll have a good time.  This past week hasn’t been to busy. Not too much homework which is nice.  Last night I got to talk to my cousins…faith and grace and it was so much fun!!!!!  i really enjoyed talking to them I miss all my little cousins!  Their moms and dads need to bring them to Arizona to visit J I love you all! thanks for all the letters I got recently I really enjoyed reading them. Take care!! Love, jessica

p.s. sorry I accidentally wrote my wrong email address on the last letter I sent. Its jessbass91@gmail.com

 

Taylor-Hello everybody!! School has really made me busy lately…in fact there is homework right now that still needs to get done….ugh….so anyway I am kind of getting used to all of my teachers. My Spanish class is my favorite class…and honors biology is REALLY hard. We have gone through two sets of transfers. It wasn’t too bad the second time because we only had about five missionaries going home so there was a lot less doing dishes afterwards. The testimony was really great and the spirit was strong. We are getting ready to do the shotgun shooting merit badge. My dad and I went cycling for about twenty five miles yesterday and about twelve miles in it started hailing and pouring down really hard which was really muddy…but also refreshing at the same time. This has been the week that our parents kind of got to take a break…which really isn’t that much of a break at all. They are really busy and have been working hard. The new waffle record is 8 waffles and I challenge each one of you to come down here and see if you can beat it. This week the scouts are going to hike Camelback Mountain and then go swimming so that will probably end up being the highlight of my week. Ummmm I play basketball a lot now because all of my friends do nothing but play basketball so they get me to unlock the door and come with them to the church. We play this game called eraser football where you turn the lights off and someone throws an eraser inside the room and you have to find it crawling the entire time and touch it to the opposite corner that you started in. When somebody else besides you has the eraser….you do whatever you can to get that eraser and bring it to your corner. The person doing that threw the eraser turns the lights on every once in a while and if you move when the lights are on you are out and if you are on your feet or off your knees when they are on you are out….so basically you have to stay on your knees or you will get caught. You cant through arms of legs…you just tackle and kill each other for the eraser…..so that is what we do when we are done playing basketball. We have a missionary who hurt his back and he is wearing brace thingy and he cant sit down for like two weeks so he has to come down from the office a lot and lay down on our couch because it hurts him so much. He is really nice and he tells lots of stories when we are bored and he should heal soon and he is doing really well working in the office. So now we have three assistants…he tried to beat the waffle record but wimped out at six…..I wimped out at four……haha. Well we miss you all and if you are reading this then reply and send lots of pictures to willtay93@gmail.com. Send a message to my email and I will know that you actually read this…and if you don’t I will know exactly who doesn’t read this and I will call whoever doesn’t and ask them why they don’t read our family email because I am betting that you guys just delete this or it goes straight to spam…so if you don’t care about us don’t email me..  if you do then email me.…. Anyway I love you all and miss you lots…come visit. -Taylor

 

Amanda-     Hello everyone I miss you all so much how are you guys doing Well a lot of things have happened this week well the last couple of weeks we have been going to different stake conferences one elder Jeffrey R Holand was there he gave a great talk it was fantastic school has been going well I have been meting new people and having a great time doing projects and having fun well I wish the best for you all     Amanda