Farewell to Boise

Sunday, August 27th-Farewell Sacrament Meeting talks
Steve was assigned President Dieter Uchtdorf's talk titled , "You Can Do It Now" and spoke about our children's coaches in sports and the encouragement we all need at times. He told about Rosie's 60th birthday and said he was going to invite 60 friends. Rosie told Steve she didn't see him doing all the work at entertaining 60 people. Steve said, "They are really quiet friends!!" Steve did the research for 68 family names, where Bryce, Logan, Makayla, and Maddi performed temple baptisms with Grandpa and Grandma in the Boise, ID Temple. Rosie said, "60 were my friends and 8 were Steve's friends!"
Rosie was assigned to speak on President Monson's talk, "Be Thou an Example." (Seek truth, love and serve) Rosie spoke about her Great Great Grandfather, John Boylston Fairbanks and his family. John served 3 missions for the church, helped build the Nauvoo Temple and settled in Payson, UT. He returned after his death to communicate where some misplaced money was located. It saved his good name and assisted his widow carry on raising eight children alone.
Rosie is a fifth generation missionary and their children are sixth generation missionaries.
Natalie Ormond and AnnaLiesa flew to Boise to attend. Travis, Niki , Kaitlin, Halle and Josie Mix traveled also. Aimee and Lilly Barfuss with the Konewko Family also came. Ginny Fairbanks, Rosie's sister and friend, Joanna attended. Steve's 86 year old Mother, Ruby Barfuss and sister, Kari were brought by sister Connie with Larry Waters and some of their extended family. Blair(Steve's mission companion in Australia) and Christie Poulsen made the trip from Sugar City, ID also. Several friends and cousins also attended.
Steve was teased by ward members to get a cell phone for years. He hid a small ear of corn with a tassel inside his suit pocket while attending leadership meeting and told everyone he had a new cell phone number and to write it down. Almost everyone bought the joke and wrote down a bogus number he gave them, saying, "It doesn't get very good reception and you might have to leave a message." as he pulled it out of his pocket to the groans of everyone. Then when leaving town he took a very special garden pepper to Bishop Walker, "Please take my messages while I'm gone on our mission." For the mission he was forced to get a flip phone and we had our home number transferred to it.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zone Conferences and Missionary Miracles

Image
      Five Zone Conferences in Birmingham, Inverness, Mongomery, Tupelo and Huntsville happening over the next eight days.  Elder and Sister Barfuss enjoyed the Birmingham Zone Conference and were spiritually fed.       Missionary miracles shared by the young missionaries is always one of the favorite parts of the training.      Two Elders had a Sunday afternoon appointment cancellation and after consulting their area book, biked up and down tough hills to deliver a Book of Mormon to an investigator.  She had a dream the night before that her Book of Mormon would arrive and it happened!!  They were able to set up appointments to teach her and were excited about the opportunity!!      A "ministering angel" brother asked the missionaries to visit a less active family 10 miles away!  The Elders were only allowed 9 miles a day to keep within their mileage allotment after figuring in all the other meetings and service they had to drive to. The angel brother drove them and accom
Read more

Powerful Repentance Letter

Repentance Recipients: Alabama Birmingham Mission 27 Nov 2017 President Sainsbury Dear Sisters and Elders, A mission is a wonderful time to come to know God, to find out who He is, to feel of His love. And as we come to know God, we come to love God, to put him first in our lives and to seek His approval. One of His greatest gifts to us is the gift of repentance. The ability to repent and to be forgiven is one of God's greatest manifestations of love for us. And our willingness to repent is one of our greatest manifestations of love for God. How blessed we are to have the gift of repentance, to be able to joyfully repent every day of our shortcomings and mistakes and to be washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. However, repentance is not something to be taken lightly. To tap into the atonement and the forgiveness it brings requires a broken heart and a contrite spirit. Repentance requires that we yield our whole heart unto God. We cannot hold back when it comes to repent
Read more

Zone Conference with Elder Klebingat

Image
Instead of 5 Zone Conferences, we had two(Inverness and Gardendale) with Elder Klebingat.  President Sainsbury picked him up at the airport Wednesday night, took him to dinner and to his hotel.  I enjoyed sitting at his table and finding out he and his wife have three children and he served his mission in Colorado, but grew up in Germany.  He was a Mission President and a Stake President in the past.  He instructed President and Sister Sainsbury on the car rides to and from Tupelo's Stake Conference and had a very open and matter of fact style.      President Ballard assigns President Klebingat and delegates to him the Apolstolic keys to function.  He said, "The Lord does not waste time, He has high expectations and is focused. The Lord loves you and when we don't talk about things or address issues it is a selfish thing to protect ourselves.  We lack courage and say, "I was afraid to hurt feelings!" This is self preservation and not living the truth.  There
Read more