Bishop Potter

In our church, we receive volunteer "callings" or "jobs" within our congregation or area that allow us to serve our communities, neighborhoods, & church members in different capacities.  Over the years I've had many callings in the church . . . mostly working with the young women & teaching music to the children, but occasional new things like helping put on summer camps for the youth, teaching early morning seminary, & being over the adult women of the church.  Trek has also held many callings in the church.  Each calling has stretched us in ways we couldn't imagine resulting in lessons learned & talents developed that we are SO grateful for.

In December, Trek got called to be the bishop of our new ward here in Utah.  The Bishop is the leader of our whole congregation so it was a very humbling assignment for him.  It's a difficult assignment.  Nobody ever feels ready or good enough to be a bishop.  It's a very busy calling & can weigh on you emotionally, but it's also a very rewarding calling where you can help those that cannot help themselves, help listen to those who need a listening ear, & serve everyone around you.

It was a emotional roller coaster for both of us.  I was nervous about how much time this calling would take from Trek's already busy schedule & Trek was worried that he wasn't good enough or that he had enough time needed to put into the calling.  But with the Lord, all things are possible.

He is going to be an amazing bishop.  It will be a learning experience for him, but a blessing to so many.

As bishop, Trek has 2 amazing counselors who will be supporting him & serving alongside with him.  He picked 2 amazing men who I know will become wonderfully close friends to Trek.  They are wonderful wonderful people & we are so excited to get to know them better through this calling.

Both my family & Trek's parents were able to come to church the day Trek was put in as Bishop & it was wonderful having them there to support him in this new calling.  We love having our family so close.

Our family is excited for this new adventure with all its ups & downs.  We will be strong together to support one another & those of our community & neighborhood.  It's such a wonderful area & we are happy to be here.

 

Laying Wreaths at the American Cemetery

After visiting the Orem Temple Open House, we dropped the boys off at the Veterans Cemetary in Bluffdale to lay Christmas wreaths on each gravestone there.  Craiger's Civil Air Patrol Unit was in charge of the wreaths so it was a great service opportunity for them.

It was cold, but they had a lot of fun together for a good cause.

 

Orem Temple Open House

On December 16th, we had an opportunity to go through the Orem temple open house as a family.  I love temple open houses because anybody can go see inside the temple.  You don't have to be a member of our church.  They allow adults & children to go see it & it's wonderful to show the kids what we as adults have come to love & cherish.  Trek & I go to the temple as often as we can & we want to share that love the temple with our kids so that someday they'll want to come closer to Jesus Christ by attending the temple regularly.

The Orem temple is across the street from where Lorien lives so she was EXTRA excited to go to the open house.  This will be "her" temple while she's going to school at UVU.

The temple was beautiful.  Definitely worth seeing.  I loved the beautiful chandeliers & the pastel colors inside.

It was great because we got to share the experience with my brother's family & also with my mom & dad.  My mom is unable to get out much due to her health conditions, but she was able to be there with us that day & that made it even more special.

I love my family & I'm grateful families can be together forever.

 

Craiger's Christmas Concert 2023

Craiger also had a school band Christmas Concert (all of these concerts were all in the same week in December!  It was a concert every night.  It was craziness, but I wouldn't trade these experiences my kids are having for the world.

Craiger plays french horn in the advanced orchestra at the middle school.  He's gotten very good over the last year & a half.  I'm proud of him.  French Horn / Double Horn is hard to play.  He does a great job.

Rhythms & Riffs:

Arabian Dances

Angelic Celebrations

Polar Express Medley

Great Locomotive Chase

I'm super impressed with this band.  They are incredible for being middle school students.  Craiger has SO MUCH FUN with the band.  I'm glad he's involved.  It's good for him.

We are so proud of you Craiger.

 

Canyon's Christmas Choir Concert 2023

Canyon had an adorable Christmas concert for his school choir.  He was nervous to try choir this year, but he soon realized how much he loved it.  He enjoys singing & loves the friends he's made in choir.

Great job Canyon.  We are so proud of you.

 

The Giving Machine - Salt Lake City

For one of our youth activities in December, we decided to take the girls up to the Salt Lake Temple area to look at Christmas lights & all the beautiful nativities from around the world, then stop by the Giving Machine at the mall there.

The lights were beautiful.

The Salt Lake Temple is currently being updated so it's covered in scaffolding right now.  They had to dig down & replace the foundation that was build almost 200 years ago.  Now they are updating each floor to make sure it's structurally sound.  It's pretty amazing that you can do that.  The temple is beautiful.

The church office buildings a couple blocks from the temple, they had some amazing large nativities around that you could look at.  I love nativities from around the world.

Then we ended the evening at the giving machines.  I've been wanting to see one of these vending machines in person for a very long time, but have never lived close enough to one to be able to.  Now that we live in Utah, we finally got to go to one.

The giving machines are vending machines, but instead of paying for a bag of chips or a drink, you are buying something for someone else in the world that needs it.  You can buy medical supplies, groceries for a family, chickens, a goat, school supplies & much more.  The money & items bought in these vending machines go to families around the world who need it most.

I bought 3 chickens for a family & Taya bought some medical supplies.  It felt SO good to serve someone else, especially during the Christmas season.  These machines provide life sustaining things for millions of people.  I think they're the greatest thing ever.

Cadence - Transfer #10 - 12/18/23

Сайн байцгаана уу!

How are you all this amazing week? It's been super fun and chaotic here! So transfers happened and I stayed in Jargalant! This is the first time in 5 transfers I've stayed in my area! I honestly hope I finish my mission here but we will see... 

My companion left and I gained two comps! First is my mission sister, Sister Narangerel (we were both trained by the same person) and I am also training our trio companion Sister Curtis. It's her second transfer in Mongolia. We are having a party here! We also still share an apartment with another companionship so there's five of us in one apartment. I don't have a bed and get half a closet but other than that we make it work pretty good!

We stopped teaching at the cute middle school and now we teach English at a big business college. It's crazy because most of the students we teach are 2 or 3 years older than me. They also hate learning English and are only in our class because they are forced to be there, which makes their classes hard to teach. It can sometimes be discouraging but that's okay. I am thankful for the experience to teach there 3 days a week, 3 hours a day. It is so draining though haha.

In terms of investigators, our sweet Munkh-Orgil is becoming more and more interested by the day. Although he's still in the countryside this week, he was willing to meet with us online (which used to never happen) and learned about the Spirit. He promised to pray and study the scriptures this week so he could feel it more. Our other investigator Bayrmaa has been a little ghosty lately but she was also traveling with her family so we're just letting them have some space for now. We lost the rest of our investigators so now we are on the hunt for new interested people! Our goal this transfer is to find and invite as many people and LA members to church as we can. With the elders, we are going to split up the whole ward list and divide and conquer!

Speaking of elders, Elder Tumennaimanjin is training a new Mongolian elder in the ward so we speak a lot more Mongolian this transfer. I honestly have never enjoyed speaking Mongolian as much as I do now. I just want to keep speaking it forever and I'm so happy to be in a ward with three Mongolian missionaries and a trainee because it pushes me to really communicate well and support everyone. I feel stretched and I am thankful for this opportunity. I'm also so thankful that I got to stay in this area because it's my favorite by far! Missionary work is just the best!

I wanted to end with a great verse I found this week in the Book of Mormon. I've been working on trying to reread and finish the Book of Mormon by the end of my mission and I've been highlighting all the verses that mention our baptismal covenant. In first Nephi 14, it says:

14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.

I love the doctrine that teaches us that through our covenants with God, we can be armed with righteousness! We learn this in the temple endowment. If we follow the teachings of the gospel and Christ's example, we will have power to do all things. This is a promise from our Father in Heaven. I love how simple and hopeful the gospel is. I hope you have a great week and enjoy the Christmas season! Merry Christmas!!

Love,

Sister Potter