Kisakye Maria and Benedict Kairu tie the knot!

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Benedict Kairu
married on March 28 in the Bugembe Ward in jinja Uganda. What an amazing couple.

We have been communicating back and forth for a few months with Benedict about their plans to get married. Many things kept delaying them, but we were so happy to hear that everything finally went through. Sending all our love to this amazing couple.

The Lord of the Ring

On March 24, 2020, Elder Dunn gave a devotional message for LDS Business College. Due to the Coronavirus, the devotional was given to a virtual audience.
Check it out here:

What is your COVID-19 Mantra?

COVID-19

Try This at Home: Choose a COVID-19 Mantra.

We love mantras. Each year, we choose a mantra for the year, as we discuss in episodes 57 and 59, and we also might choose one-word or one-phrase themes for the year, as we discuss in episodes 26, 151, 201, 208, 254…we love this exercise.

We’re now doing daily Instagram Live "Coping with COVID-19 Conversations" Mon-Fri at 4 pm ET. (If you miss one, you can watch the replay for up to 24 hours. Follow me on Instagram—I'm @gretchenrubin—and click on my profile image to join once we’ve started.)

In one of those conversations, we started talking about our COVID-19 mantra, and we continue that conversation here.

Elizabeth's mantras: "Closer, Stronger, Lighter" and "If not now, when."

My mantra: "Put down the clipboard." I mention being an Upholder in my "Four Tendencies" personality framework. If you want to know if you're an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel, you can take the free, quick quiz here.

A listener wrote us that her mantra is "Don’t treat a gift like a burden,” an idea that we've discussed before.

On Happier in Hollywood episode 153, Elizabeth and Sarah also talked about COVID-19 mantras.

Coronavirus connections

March 2020
We send our love to all of our beloved missionaries. We are concerned about the health and safety of all our SAJM returned missionaries across the globe. This s one situation that we are all involved in, no matter where we live.

We have the world in our prayers and feel blessed to rely on our faith to comfort us and prompt us to the right actions during this time of quarantines and lock downs.
We were blessed to have a chance to have South African visitors in the month of February and March.

WE will add pictures here on Lynne and Tyler Van der Hoven, visiting from Centurion, South Africa.  We had them with us for a week and the time flew by.

Later in March, Andy and Charnell de Kock visited and we had the pleasure of having Corbin, Nate and Andy and Charnell enjoy an evening and dinner with us.

Pictures coming.

Taft Asay gets married

On Saturday November 2, 2019, Taft and Makinley are married. It was so wonderful to be able to attend the sealing and reception. What a great couple they are and we are so happy for them.

It was great to see Camron Wood and Tyler Carpenter at the sealing. Tyler has a brand new son, named Grayson, born just 3 weeks ago.

It was wonderful to meet Taft's mom, Eunice. What a gem she is. I enjoyed communicating with her on the mission and it was so wonderful to meet her in person. Taft's parents are as wonderful as I knew they would be. Such a pleasure to be part of it all.

Congratulations to Asher West and Sarina Song

We were blessed to be able to greet and congratulate Asher and Sarina West on Friday October 18th at their reception. This great couple will be moving to Australia soon and we were honored to meet their parents and see them at the very end of their reception before they took off.

Asher's parents came from Australia for the wedding. So fun to meet them. Sarina's parents came from Bulgaria. We wish them the best.

A London SAJM reunion!

I have been fortunate to spend a few days in London and able to connect with missionaries. I am sad that President Dunn was unable to accompany me, as he was finishing a business trip to France. He did FaceTime in as often as possible however.

I was able to travel out to the home of David and Jayd deKock Ryan and meet little River. It was splendid to see their home and go out to dinner.

My friend Serida Foss was so wonderful to accompany me and also host a lunch gathering for Zach and Amber Louw the next day. On Wednesday evening, October 16th, I met up with 3 missionaries at the Hyde Park Visitor's Center. What a treat to connect with returned missionaries that we love.

It made us reflect on each and every one of you and think about the special opportunity to serve together in a choice land. May you all feel of our love and most importantly the Savior's love for you. The gospel is not only a blessing for each of us to navigate this earthly life, but an eternal blessing for all that is ahead. We love you and loved being with such special people over the

Matthew Adams brought his cousin (who he baptized) and his girlfriend and also another friend from his ward. This group added to our meaningful connection.

We then went out to dinner at Nando's which was so fun and a little deja vu for all of us.

Meeting up with Jayd and David Ryan on Tuesday was also a huge highlight.

Meeting little River was so fun. Their house is darling.

last few days.