Kelly Times Two

Lindsey arrived in Hong Kong on December 11 after spending ten weeks in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, and completing and intensive language course in Cantonese. Here she is pictured with her mission president and his wife. She is very happy to be a missionary in Hong Kong and is anxious to get more familiar with the area, the language, and especially the people. Christmas was lonely without her, but we got to talk to her for 50 minutes on the phone, and she sounded wonderful.

Since I kind of neglected my blog during and after my pregnancy with Isaac, there are a lot of gaps in our lives, many big and little events, that never quite got documented here.  I need to do some back tracking to catch up.  It is an honor to share with you one of the best things that is new and exciting in our family. Our oldest daughter, Lindsey, is now in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, rigorously studying Cantonese, and will be spending a year and a half as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the China Hong Kong Mission.  She will spend her time teaching people about the Savior, and helping to lead them to find peace, joy, and comfort that can only be found through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. She will be helping people in time of need, bringing good cheer to those who are sad and lost, who need to be lifted up.  We are so proud of Lindsey for planning on this goal for several years, and finall...

Lindsey has been helping me out in the kitchen since she's been home from college and it's a pleasant surprise to have her creating delicious meals for us.  She's turning into quite a fantastic cook!

Our family got to attend the monthly stake temple day at the Taipei temple on Saturday.   Lindsey and Christopher did their temple work, then waited outside on the beautiful grounds and at the chapel next door until we were finished with our session. After that, we enjoyed hamburgers at a place we heard about called California Grill, then did some exploring. Lindsey arrived last week from Rexburg, completing 32 credit hours and her first year of college at Brigham Young University-Idaho. We are so glad to have her home with us!  She will be with us until she starts school again in September and will be taking two classes online in the meantime.  In addition to Lindsey's arrival, we've been blessed to have the company of 7-year-old Nini (her real name is Yeh Min-Yu) with us this week.  She's so darling and we love having her around too.  It's kind of funny that when Lindsey was a little toddler and she could not say her name well, she called herself Ninnies...

About five years ago, Lindsey and I attended an information meeting at the stake center about some of the church schools including Brigham Young University where Kelly and I met, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, and LDS Business College. The representative made a few jokes about Idaho and their famous potatoes and the overall impression from that school in particular struck a chord with Lindsey. She made up her mind that is where she wanted to attend, regardless of my hopes and dreams for her to attend the Y. In fact, I even registered her for a summer camp session of EFY (Especially for Youth) a couple of summers ago because I knew she would fall in love with the BYU campus if I sent her there to check it out. She did like it, but her heart has always been set on BYU-Idaho, where she was accepted and just began classes for the fall semester. Here's my darling daughter outside her dorm at Chapman Hall on move-in day in Rexburg, Idaho. We flew in from Austin early that morning, hiked forever...