Millar Moments: OCTOBER MARKS ONE YEAR ON OUR MISSION

The last of the leaves to be
put into bags and hauled
to the dump.

October brings cooler weather, falling leaves, and Halloween. This October also brought the one year anniversary of our mission. It seems impossible that we have been serving this mission for a year. It seems like we were just in the MTC, a little while ago.

We have really enjoyed our mission so far but it has been hard. It is so against our natures to go knock on doors of people we do not know and talked to them about their church activity. It isn't very effective either. We reported in a Bishop's training meeting some statistics that show that 'cold calling,' as it is called, is not effective. We reported that we had visited, at least once, 86 households. Of these 86, we were able to have a return visit to 31. (Some households as many as 30 times.) Of the 31 visits, we taught a series of lessons to 17. The interesting stat is that we have had 17 visits arranged for, and usually accompanied by a Bishop, Mission Leader, or Stake President. One ward arranged 6 visits, with the mission leader accompanying us, and we were able to teach lessons from Preach My Gospel to all six. We asked the bishops to prayerfully consider who in their ward might be ready to return to activity and, then, arrange a visit for us. We will continue to visit anyone they want us to visit but the percentages sow that a visit arranged for us is so much more effective.

Along missionary lines, we have 3 new elders serving in our area. Elders Hill, Shelley and Bautista were all transferred and Elders Carpenter, Terry, and Lorado now join us at our weekly lunches. Elder Carpenter is brand new to the mission and Elder Terry is his trainer. Both are very sharp. We attended a sacrament meeting where they both spoke and realized just how lucky Heber East and North stakes are to have these dynamite elders assigned to us. We did have one disappointment, though, on one of the Tuesdays when we were to feed them lunch. We had texted them early in the morning on Tuesday to verify they were coming to lunch. They didn't get back to us until one hour before lunch was to be served to tell us they were in Provo and wouldn't make lunch. They don't realize that I start lunch preparations the day before especially when we're having something that takes a while to prepare. On Monday, I had made a lemon cream pie, the refried beans and tortilla shells. On Tuesday, I had prepared everything else for taco salad except frying up the meat when they finally texted us back to tell us they would not be coming. I had even set the table. I had to tell myself they were young and were just learning what they should do. Luckily, I could freeze most everything to serve to them the next week...which I did.

Elders Carpenter, Terry, Lorado, and Phillips

We teach 5 people most weeks with standing appointments. One of our favorites is presenting a family home evening to the Parcell family. We reported last month about this family having recently lost their mom to cancer and the father is raising this family by himself. We have come to realize that the children know nothing about their Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ. This month, one of our lessons was on being kind like Heavenly Father wants us to be. We read a story, watched a video, and played a game to help them know what they can do to be kind. We left them with a kindness jar to fill with pompoms as they performed acts of kindness to each other. When we returned the next time for FHE, the children were so excited to show us their jar stuffed full of pompoms. We will take them out to Dairy Keen as a reward.

A breakfast of Eggs Benedict
for General Conference Sunday

A lot happened at the first of the month. On general conference Sunday, Todd and Kailee brought Aria up. We had dinner and then Todd and Kailee left to fly to Athens via Paris, France. They left Aria with us for 4 days at which time we took her down to Lehi so her other grandparents could watch her at Todd and Kailee's home for the rest of the week. We loved having Aria with us. She adjusted quite well to being with us in our home, especially because Todd and Kailee would Facetime her every night. She is developing such a darling personality, especially when she plays upstairs with the Play Skool toy sets. It's fun to see her start to use her imagination when she plays. She also loved building towers with the different block sets we have up in the toy room. Aria is also becoming very independent, wanting to climb in and out of her booster chair by herself. Her favorite saying is, "Aria's turn." She loves being on the computer to type her numbers and letter - most of them she knows without any help.

Of course, we took Aria to Dairy Keen for lunch one day. She loved the trains and the ice cream, not so much her cheese sandwich.

We dropped Aria off on Thursday afternoon and immediately went to Provo to pick up Lily, a dear friend from Russia. Lily was one of our young single adults whom we came to love very much. In fact, she refers to us as Grandma and Grandpa. She had been living in Thailand but has been traveling for about 2 month, finally landing in Utah. As soon as she did we made arrangements to take her to lunch. She was so fun to visit with and we loved catching up on all her news.

After lunch at Red Robin with Lily

That night, we dropped by the funeral home for the viewing of a dear friend, Tanya Radabaugh, who had passed away in the prior week. We had roomed together in college, toured 25 different countries performing with Curtain Time USA, as well as flag twirled on the BYU pep squad together. She was an amazing woman...talented, loving, and adventurous. I had just seen her at a mini Curtain Time USA reunion in April. She had won a battle with breast cancer and some severe back issues. We thought she would be with us for a long time but the Lord had other ideas. She died of a blood vessel bursting in her brain. So sad for her family and for us. We attended her funeral the next morning.

Sister Jailyn Shepherd

On the first Saturday of the month, we attended a Russia Moscow mission reunion. It was held at the Ottley's home in Woodland Hills instead of our home, as it had been the last two times. We were glad we went but were amazed at how many people we did not know. Of course, that is to be expected since we went home only half way into President and Sister Border's stay. There were lots of sister and elders and senior couples who served with them after we left. Also a few of the couples we served with are out on a second missions so were unable to come. We were able to visit with several of the sisters and elders who had been in our district. We made arrangements with Sister Hunter and Sister Simmons (now Brown) to come up to Heber to spend a weekend with us in November. Sure hope that happens. We will always hold a special place in our hearts for 'our Moscow missionaries.'

Sisters Hunter and Simmons (Brown now)

With our beloved President and Sister Borders

The whole group after the fireside at the church

We had a pleasant surprise when Mitch and Michelle Davis, our former neighbors and dear friends, called and invited us to dinner one night. They were going to be in Heber doing a radio spot for Mitch's new movie, 'The Stray,' which was playing in theaters all over the US. We loved being with them again and sharing a delicious dinner at the restaurant in the Homestead resort. We talked a lot about the movie which we had just seen earlier that week. It was good to catch up on their lives. We miss them so much as neighbors and friends.

Best neighbors and friends ever. We miss the dearly.

I mentioned going to the movie,'The Stray' that week. We invited Sandra Verbino and her daughter, Misty, to go with us so they met us there. We had mentioned to Sandra that the movie was filmed entirely in and around Heber so the whole movie she was determined to recognize the location of each of the different scenes. We both had a hard time getting into the emotion of the movie because of that. I was glad Paul and I had seen it earlier when Mitch invited us to a preview showing before the final cuts. It is a wonderful movie and was picked up by Pure Flicks productions which will be good for Mitch and Michelle's pocketbook.

Of course, there was more football games - BYU and Jaidon's. We attended Jaidon's next to the last game one Saturday. He is quite aggressive and with a little size could develop into a good ball player. Although he is only 10 so it may be a little early to predict. We were glad Jen had let us know of his schedule so we could support him at least once.

As to BYU football - so bleak this year that Paul has even considered giving up our season tickets. They were 1 and 7 until the last Saturday of the month when they finally won a game. Of course it was to a team who loses the ball a lot and is in the bottom of their conference. It is sad for the players, coaches and fans as this is the worse record since the teams in the 60's. They also played to the smallest crowd ever since the team started playing in the Lavell Edwards stadium. Hopefully next year will be brighter.

Leaving the house to go
trick or treating in
the neighbor with Daddy

Of course, we can't leave October without Halloween. It was on Tuesday this year so it was our day we to have the elders in our home for lunch. Because of Halloween, their P day was changed to Tuesday and both sets of elders canceled out on lunch. At least this time they did it early enough that I hadn't done much to prepare. That left the day free until we left to go to Lehi to Todd and Kailee's home while they went 'Halloweening' with Aria and her cousins. We needed to be there to hand out candy to all the trick or treaters that came. AsA it turned out, they got tired of the Provo city trick or treating so they returned home early enough to hand out the candy. We did take Aria around the neighborhood to trick or treat but she was more interested in playing with the a pink car left in one of the yards. After NIcole and Jake and family came, we had pizza and salad. We left soon after eating. A fun Halloween with Aria.

Our cute little 'Pink Lady,' from
the movie Grease.

The PINK CAR

By the end of the evening, we had heard from each of our children and learned about their Halloween activities. We loved seeing the costumes everyone had designed. Thank goodness for group texting - we felt like we were apart of everyone's holiday.