May 12, 2015

Hello to all from beautiful Indiana

The weather has now turned to the hot humid days with a teaser day with cool breezes thrown in.  I love the sunshine but the heat just wears us out.  I can’t imagine what it is like where our daughter Kellie is living in Africa where it is 110 degrees.  They had the opportunity to go to Germany for a week and when I talked to their five year old and asked her what she liked most about the trip she said the hotel room with the air conditioning.  It puts it into perspective when we go from our air conditioned house to our air conditioned car to someone else’s air conditioned home.  We are so blessed.

I spent a lot of the last week working on Family Search.  I am teaching a class tonight and wanted to know all about the new changes so was going through each tab to learn what it did.  I knew there would be a lot of information on John Solomon Fullmer because of his prominent role in the church so I went to his person page.  I looked in the memories that have been put online and went through the pictures, documents and histories.  I noticed the name of Noah Thomas Guymon on one of the histories and I knew that name was from my family history.  I read the history and learned that Noah Thomas Guymon who is my great great grandfather and John Solomon Fullmer who is Evan’s great great grandfather were mission companions in England back in the early 1850’s.  We have been married for almost 45 years and never knew we had this connection.  It shows that even when you think all of your genealogy has been done there are still wonderful things you can learn about your family.

I have also been spending lots of time working on Primary trying to help our new presidency member.  We spent some time working up a sharing time with the help of some wonderful things our daughter Kimberly sent.  We only had the 3 Osborn boys to primary so it was a little different than planned but it worked well.  We taught them the abcd’s of repentance or admit, be sorry, confess and change and don’t do it again.  They wanted to come up with a word for each letter of the alphabet to do with repentance so we did.  It meant we didn’t have time for singing time or a lesson but it was them really thinking about repentance.  They came up with some good ideas of words to associate with each letter.   This wouldn’t have been possible in a larger Primary so I guess there are a few tiny perks in having such a small group.  Our little 4 year old had a hard time and ended up under his chair but was quiet doing it.  We have a challenge of keeping him interested unless we are really active.  Sydney(our new member) certainly has no hesitations when working with the kids.  She is a natural teacher and loves sharing her testimony so much. 

While I have been doing all this Evan has spent more time with the Elders or doing service with some of the members.  We both keep busy but sometimes not together.  I went and helped a family pack to get ready for their move while he was cutting wood which he so enjoys.  That is the wonderful thing about an MLS mission.  There are so many different aspects of what we can do to help.  Everything is in some way helping the members of our branch or the investigators we are working with.   This is also the way each of us should be helping in the hastening of the work.  We can do service, fulfill our callings, do family history and attend the temple.  Sometimes a service project which can involve a non-member or less active is just the thing for them to feel needed which we all need.  Family search is a great tool.  We have had several of our less actives say they are coming tonight to learn about family search which we hope happens.  They have expressed an interest in learning more about their families and as I have started looking into their lines I have found that lots of temple work has been done by members of their family somewhere.

We love you all and encourage each of you to share your testimony not only by your actions but don’t be afraid to speak up and tell people.  We know that the gospel is true and we are grateful for the opportunity to have a more active part in sharing it in our everyday life.

Love

Elder and Sister Fullmer

 

Yesterday for our preparation day we took the Elders and drove to Santa Claus.  They both wanted to go see what was there so Elder Fullmer graciously took us even though he would have rather done something else with his day.  We did manage to get him out of the car for one picture with Santa.  The other pictures are Elder Stewart and Elder Gould.

Also we saw this creature out in the woods and after taking his picture from a distance, managed to get a picture with him. We do see amazing things in this country.