Bethany's Farewell, Again

 This past Sunday, March 13th was Bethany's mission farewell (again).  So much love, so many smiles, so much music, so much joy in the gospel, so much goodness.  It was a day filled with the fruits of the spirit and it was about as good as it gets here on this earth.  Thanks to Abe's thorough picture documentation, there is a lot to share.  And lest I get overwhelmed with trying to organize it all, I'm going to just go for it!

Bethany and Camille were very shortly to share a birthday and Misty is the day after-- so we all sang Happy Birthday to them.

Our Sacrament meeting was at 8:30 am ON DAYLIGHT SAVINGS day.  So our loyal friends and family showed up at what felt like 7:30 am!  Talk about devotion!

Love

We had a cereal bar and yogurt parfait bar and muffins and donuts and basically every delicious kind of breakfast sugar.  The children (and dare I say, many adults) were very happy.

Sunny, Kate, Aliyah, Nixon, Rosalie, and Peter.

Bethany with Rachel and Kara.  I love this picture.

Abe did such a nice job setting up a tent space outdoors with heaters so it wouldn't be too cold.  Thankfully, the weather was fairly cooperative and I think it was relatively comfortable outside.  This was good, because while the magic house is good (really good!) there are limits to how many people can be crammed inside.

Foxy cousins.

Abe, Daniel, and Chris.

With Noah-- one of her closest friends up at Utah State.  I just loved all the genuine smiles on the day.

Bella, Zach (shortly headed to Texas, San Antonio Mission in May), Cannon, Jakob, Clark Bryson.

Misty, Allison, Brig, and me.

I spy three missionaries:)

Elinor and Savannah

Stephanie-- another beloved Young Women's leader.  I am so thankful for the influence these wonderful women have had on my girls.  Seriously-- they have been instrumental.

And now for one of the absolute highlights of the day-- so many of the Nauvoo performing missionaries that Bethany served with over the summer came out to support her and share their talents.  They sang two musical numbers in our ward and they were jaw-droppingly beautiful.  As Daniel said after the first one, "It's hard not to clap!"

It's so beautiful to see how they love each other and have so much fun together.  It is a joy to be around them.

So many things about this mission will be different from her mission in Nauvoo.  In Nauvoo the Elders and Sisters behaved, but their rules about interaction were very different from Fort Worth will be:)  No walking down the street arm-in-arm or sitting or putting arms around each other.

I think, even more than missing family, Bethany will miss her Nauvoo friends.

Heck, I'm going to miss her Nauvoo friends.  

Then they came inside and filled the house with music and it was like having a choir of angels in my living room.  I loved every second of it.  

Click here for a compilation video of some of their singing on Sunday-- including a video I took of them singing "Nearer my God to Thee" at church.  I suppose it wasn't really the thing to do and I tried to do it so as to not draw any attention to it, so you can't really see anything.  My apologies-- I couldn't help myself.  Not that I tried that hard.

Sister Fonseca, Sister Fox, Sister Foote

Papa Fox, Mama Fox, and Missionary Fox

To wrap up, I wanted to briefly highlight a few things Bethany shared in her talk.  She shared how humbling the week of Home MTC was, and how that hurts and is uncomfortable, but it's so good.  She was asked to speak about a talk President Nelson recently gave entitled "Make Time for the Lord".  She made the comparison of making time for the Lord being like going to the rec center, or the Lord's gym.  You go there and the rec center manager doesn't question you and criticize you for not coming more often.  He doesn't remind you of how weak you are and why even bother (that's the grouchy old man a.k.a Satan) sitting outside the Lord's gym.  He doesn't love the rock-hard triathletes more than the water aerobics people.  My favorite line from her talk--- "The Lord loves the water aerobics people too".  The rec center manager just welcomes you and says, "I'm so glad you're here".  

She talked about us choosing to come and do something that is the best, sure investment we'll ever make.  Anything we choose to sacrifice for the Lord is 100% promised to bless us far more than we ever gave.  It was a wonderful talk full of Bethany's personality and joy for living the gospel.