Birthday Boy!



A Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy
Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Birthday to you from me!!


Happy Birthday to my favorite missionary and 19 year old and oldest son. I am so impressed with the man you have become and for the way you are serving the Lord. I'm excited to see the growth this next year brings you and the people you get to serve.


We had the worldwide youth discussion this week for our youth activity and it was really cool. I'm not sure if you heard about it, but what they did was they had a broadcast that we watched together and at certain points in the broadcast, we were supposed to stop the video and answer certain questions. Some of the questions were:


Where are your holy places? How do you find them?
How does gathering with Holy people strengthen you as a disciple of Christ?
When has that been true for you?
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, when have you had the chance to testify of Him?
Or when has someone else's testimony strengthened yours?


I loved all of these questions and we had some really great discussions with the youth in our ward with these questions. The one that caught my heart was: How does gathering with holy people strengthen you as a disciple of Christ?


Last week I went to lunch with Julie Srogus and Sandy Richins. Two of my best friends from the Liberty Farms ward.


Sandy was my ministering sister when we lost Conner, she was there to lift and support me through some really hard times. She also showed up on our doorstep when she found out about my cancer a couple years ago. She lives an hour away now, so that wasn't an easy thing to do, and she could have very easily missed us, but she followed a prompting and gave me a much needed hug and words of encouragement.


I was Julie's ministering sister for years, we had many gospel conversations in her home, and we have helped each other through some really tough times as well.


The reason we went to lunch that day was because Julie's mom recently passed away and Sandy and I wanted to spend time with her to help her know we love her.


These dear friends of mine are holy people. I hadn't seen Sandy in a little over a year, and I only see Julie every couple months, but as we sat down together in that noisy Mexican restaurant, we created a holy place. We didn't take any time to talk of worldly things, our conversation immediately went to the gospel. We talked about the Book of Mormon and quickly moved to the topic of the love of God. We talked about lots of hard things that all 3 of us have been through, and we talked about how God shows his love in the hard things. I glanced around a few times while we were there and wondered if the other people around us could feel the Spirit because I felt it so strongly as my friends bore powerful testimony to me, and I did with them in the little holy place of that lunchtime table in the Middle of a noisy Mexican restaurant.


I hope you have holy people in your life that will lift you up like these 2 friends have always done for me. If you don't, I pray for you to find them. When you do, make those people a priority and make time to spend with them. We need to create our own holy places and spend time with holy people. I hope you feel that our home is a holy place. We have tried to make it that way, I hope you can feel the Spirit easily and feel safe and loved with our family and with Heavenly Father as we all strive to live our covenants and return to Him.


Well there you go, you get to hear a bit of my testimony for your 19th birthday. Make it a great day! I sure love you and am so proud of you!!


Love,
Mom

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elder Pixton trainer letter

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS FLORIDA JACKSONVILLE MISSION 8663 Baypine Road, Suite 102 Jacksonville, Florida 32256-7530 February 27, 2024 Elder William Turrell Pixton 7184 Notah Court Eagle Mountain, UT 84005 Dear Elder Pixton, I am grateful for your willingness to accept this new and most important assignment to train a new missionary in the Florida Jacksonville Mission. There is perhaps no more important assignment in our mission than the training of a new missionary. So, as you approach this new assignment, remember that who the Lord calls, He qualifies. In other words, so long as you are willing and have a desire to fulfill this assignment, the Lord will bless you with the ability and capacity to fulfill this assignment, despite any concerns or apprehensions you may currently have about how well qualified you are to accept this new assignment. In working with your new missionary, emphasize the importance of being Christ-centered and Spirit- directed in all that y...
Read more

A cool old talk from when you were 1 -From Mom

  Hey William, The YW went to the provo temple to do baptisms today.  It surprised me a bit when we drove up, all the memories that came back from the day we dropped you off at the MTC.  It was also really fun to see all the missionaries there and think of all the people whose lives they will be blessing as they go out into the world to serve.    It's crazy to think that temple will probably not look the same for you again.  They are closing it soon to tear it down and rebuild it.  Kind of sad that it will be a totally different design.  But I guess that is just the way they decided to do it.  The fall leaves were so pretty at the temple today.  It was awesome.   Dad took Cohen to the BYU game tonight.  It's super cold and I hope they are staying warm.  It's a late game, so Cohen gets to stay up super late, probably till almost 1 by the time they get home.   We did some more yard stuff today. ...
Read more

Bread and butter 🧈 Tue, Jul 25 2023

Image
  Bread and butter    Tue, Jul 25 2023 Hey y'all welcome back to the weekly email! This week has definitely been a party, it's been awesome getting to meet my district and having all kinds of new experiences with them. (Sorry bout the long email) Here's the rundown On Wednesday my fam took me to p.f. changs and then dropped me off at the mtc. It was really sad but also exciting to start my first day at the mtc.  On Thursday we had the opportunity to go to the temple and do baptisms. After that my companion and I were able to do this thing called helping others. It's where you are able to teach a lesson to an actor who pretends like they don't know anything about our church. We didn't have much time to prepare for it because we had a meeting right before where they called me as district leader. Since we didn't prepare we had no idea what scripture to share during the lesson so we just shared a random one. Let's just say that lesson didn't go very well...
Read more