Sunday evening

Journal entry May 31, 2009

Today is Lydia's 3^rd birthday.  Rick says she is the most athletic and coquettish of their children.  I'm anxious to get to know her.  In two months and we will be flying home for two weeks while the temple is closed!

I've now been in Mexico a long time as demonstrated by the fact that this morning I picked up a dead cockroach in our bathroom, something I never expected to be able to do (ugh).

I used to joke about flamboyant names, but wow we get everything in the temple from all over the world.  Some that I've seen recently are:  "Kaumeealanikeliiwaimakapoa", " Nits-ethan or winter woman," "Mrs. Marmaduke," and "Saveriaty (from India)."  I love to think of these women and what their lives must have been like.

Yesterday Benjamin  finished his goal of being baptized for 1,000 people before his mission.  His last five were some of our family names on the Porter line.  He is also getting his Duty to God Award and graduating from Seminary within a few weeks.  He has five siblings and the three older than him are returned missionaries (one served in Colorado).  What an outstanding young man.

Today we visited the Tampico Ward.  Seven year old, Keila (we've been in their home, and know Keila) wanted me to go to her primary class with her.  The class had all ages from 1yr. to 7yrs, and the sweet teacher certainly handled things beautifully considering the fact that the one year old was running around, one of the 7 year old girls kept telling jokes all the time the teacher was trying to give her lesson, and she had a visitor observing all of this.

The second hour I slipped into Young Women (I had asked the president permission first).  There were only two girls there today, Alva had just turned 12, and this as her first week in YW.  Cristina is 15 and is one of our faithful temple attending teens.  She is a beautiful young woman and led us in doing the YW Theme.  We sat knee to knee and the president asked me to share my experiences with the girls. 

I told them how much the Lord loves them, and that they can be a powerful influence for good in their family, school and among their friends.  I told them about Kathy reading her scriptures every night and how that example made a difference in her sister's lives.  I ended up telling two or three other stories, and challenged them to set their goal to marry in the temple, and to encourage their friends who are boys to serve missions, etc. etc..

Tonight our temple presidency was asked to speak at a Stake Fireside for the endowed members.  On the spur of the moment they asked Dad and I to sing a duet (without piano accompaniment) to a little known hymn about the temple "Turn Your Hearts."  We got through it, but it would have been better with practice!  After a group meeting we divided, and the sisters all went into the Relief Society Room.  I had Hna. Lopez address the subject of how to dress to come to the temple, and how to help their teens and husbands.  Hna. Briones spoke about taking care of our sacred clothing, and I spoke about the garment (of course, I was very careful to not say anything that isn't published by the Church, and can be purchased at the Distribution Center.  There is a beautiful magazine called "Temples" which is full of photos and has a wonderful article on the garment).  I also showed some examples of how to adapt their clothing to Church standards.  It all went very well. 

I came home and did Family History while listening to the Mormon Radio Channel.

  I have been learning the New Family Search program.  I love the fact that you can prepare the names for the temple at home, and to my surprise I'm finding names that still need to be done.  Slowly I'm plowing through trying to merge some duplicate records (unfortunately, our polygamist ancestors have so many people who have contributed records that when I try to merge them the computer tells me it is impossible because the amount of information is too large (so I'm trusting the Church to merge these).  The Whiting and Cook Family Organizations had cleaned the records up so beautifully just a year before we came to Tampico, I'm sorry to see that now there is a lot of wrong information thrown back into the mix.  I know the Church is trusting that members will weed out the mistakes,  and certainly, when we can, it will be a wonderful  blessing to the Church.  

Well time for bed.  It has been a good Sabbath day.