More pictures from visit

Scott sent me the rest of the pictures they took of their short visit with Elder Page & Elder Cunningham.

Elder Page loved visit from family!

Dallin said it was really awesome to see Grandma, Grandpa, Scott, Brandon and Will. He could not believe how tall Brandon has gotten. He said, "I guess I have to expect that every cousin I have has passed me in height". He also said, "I can not believe that it has almost been 6 mths, it's crazy how fast time flies, but not as crazy as Tyler loosing so much weight, is he not eating or did he get some kind of parasite."
This past sunday they had some investigators come to church. They only stayed for an hour, but they liked it and said that they would come again. That seems to be the hard part for people, They say they will come to church and then having them actually do it is the hard part. They have to make those key decisions on their own.
Grandma Peggy said that Elder Page looks great and is so happy! That makes me a happy mom. Thanks mom for giving him a big hug for me. This picture was taken outside of their ward building while visiting grandma, grandpa, Scott, Brandon and Will. (thanks for the picture Brandon)

HAPPY 99th BIRTHDAY GRANDPA CURRY

This weekend we celebrated Grandpa Curry's 99th birthday. Children, grandchildren and great-grand children we all there. We had a cookout, ate cake, and had good conversation. Here are some pictures of Curry, Tory , Grandpa Lindsey and Zach. Myra, Lindsey and their kids with Grandpa. Our family with Grandpa.

What people will do for free food!

Once they saw the word FREE there was no stopping them! Eat Mor Chikin!

New Pictures of Elder Page

We just got some new pictures today from Dallin. The first 3 are of him and his first companion Elder Song (he is now Dallin's district leader). They are @ the Newport Temple. The rest are of he and his new companion Elder Cunningham @ the Irvine Stake 4th of July Celebration. Notice Elder Page and Elder Cunningham's "power ties". The picture with the 2 woman are of Azita, a recent convert and Nazrene not a member, yet.:) They are both Persian. The other picture is of investigators, Enrique & Irma with friends.

Another productive week for Elder Page

Dallin sounded wonderful this week. "The language is coming along slowly, but it's coming and that feels great." Elder Page and Elder Cunningham are working hard together. Tonight I spoke with Elder Cunninghams' mother. It was fun sharing our excitement for our sons and their assignment together. They sound like a wonderful family. It will be fun getting to know them as time passes with news of our missionaries. Dallin shared a funny story this week I will past it in to the post. Again he is very appreciative of all the letters and support he is receiving.

We went to chic-fil-a on Wednesday b/c we didn't have a dinner appointment and while we were there we saw a flyer for an event that chic-fil-a was having on Friday. It said that if you dressed like a cow you could get a any free chic-fil-a meal. Now the key word in that sentence was "free". I have come to realize that the word free means alot to a missionary for some reason. No matter how rediculous something is, if it has the word free attached to it there will atleast be a considerable amount of thought put into whether or not it should be taken. So anyways, needless to say we dressed up like cows. We had some old white shirts in our closet that old missionaries had left so we took sharpies and drew black cow spots all over them and I found a rediculous skinny black tie in the closet too that I used for some type of bow-tie looking thing. Bottom line...we looked absolutely rediculous but we got free chic-fil-a sandwhiches, fries, and a drind so it was worth every bit of effort that we put into the whole event

Note about our nephew Tyler: he is doing great. He has a new companion and new mission president as well. He is a senior companion (hard worker:) ) It is good to hear that he is doing so well.

New Mission President

Elder Page got his new mission Pres. last week, President & Sister Watrous. Elder Page said that he got a great inpression about them, and that great things are going to happen in the mission. Here he is with his new companion ( and companion for the next 14 mths) Elder Cunningham.

Fun 4th of July in Anaheim

Sounds like Elder Page had another great week. He got a new mission president President Watrous. He says that they are very kind and loving, and says they are going to do an AWESOME job in Anaheim. Here is a small portion of his email...enjoy, and remember Elder Page and Elder Cunningham in your prayers.

This week seemed to fly by...on Friday we had a huge 4th of July get-together for the entire Irvine Stake. There was all you could eat Korean BBQ beef and chicken, rice, and desserts. There were even 3 local bands made up of some of the local members that played music the entire time. And after the party we all walked over to the park across the street and watched fireworks so it was a pretty fun 4th, although to be honest I didn't get much time to sit down and relax--we were just walking around talking to some of our investigators that came and to some of the Persian members and their friends. Our conversations were pretty basic..."Salaam, Haletun chetore?", "Hubam, miersee. Shoma chetorid?", "Hubam, khaily momnoonam."

EFY PICTURES

EFY Steadfast & Immovable 2008

This past week was EFY. "The most spiritual week of my life" said Abby. Thus the best week after as well. The kids come home on an incredible spiritual high. They got to spend a week with old friends, make new friends and catch up on life with some of their cousins who they don't get to see near enough! It is the best week of summer for them. This year was Matt's last year and Abby's first. Zach has spent the day looking at pictures of those he now calls "his 23 new brothers and sisters". Isn't the gospel great! Here are pictures of Matt, Zach & Abby and many of their friends :)

Farsi is coming along great, and He has people to teach!!!!

Well like last week I will just put in Dallin's email. It sounds like things are going well so far, please continue to keep Elder Page in your prayers.

Hey Family,
Well, the first week here in Irvine has been a good one and it has been quite different
from my previous 3 months in Placentia. For one we have almost 20 investigators which is
a huge switch from the humble 4(?) that we had in placentia. And we are on bikes which I
kind of actually enjoy. It hasn't been too hot here since we are pretty close to the
coast and i kind of appreciate the extra excersize.
Elder Cunningham is a great missionary and a really hard worker so I think that we are
going to do fine together over the many coming months that we will spend working
together.
Three days a week we teach a free english class at the church for anyone that wants to
come and a few of our students are persian so that gives us an oppurtunity to use the
little Farsi that we have learned. Speaking of Farsi, since the language is so difficult
to learn we try to study as much as we can every day which usually ends up being
somewhere around 3-4 hours depending on how many other appointments we have to go to. Our
studies right now basically consist of listening to these CD's that Andrew Ainsworth got
for us that teach us basic conversation and also we study the alphabet alot and practice
recognizing letters in words. (Andrew Ainsworth is the man that is helping us learn
Farsi--the funny thing is that he is an American who has only been studying it for maybe
3 months so he's not even that far ahead of us and by no means fluent but he is a great
guy and is helping us alot). Anyways, about the alphabet...it is completely seperate from
our alphabet of course and it consists of 32 letters with about 4 different ways to
rights each one depending on if it is standing alone or whether it falls at the
begginning, middle, or end of the word so you could say there are over 100 letter! Farsi
is written from right to left and is basically like cursive where all the letters run
together in one flowing movement and the biggest catch of them all is that they don't
even include the vowels in the words when writing unless there is a long "a" as
is the word father, then the letter "alef" is used. Anyways, so it is all kind
of complicated but I will send you some stuff that we have in Farsi script so that you
can see it for yourself. But amazingly enough we have already gotten to the point where
if we try we can sound out words pretty accurately about 75% of the time which isn't too
bad and we can even right our names. Not bad, huh!? Anyways, we still have a LONG ways to
go we're trying to make it a fun experience. Well, I will talk to you next week. I love
you guys. Please keep us in your prayers, even though i know that you do. :)
Elder Page

Youth Conference Dance 2008

YC Dance
Zach with mom and dad at the dance (chaperoning)
Zach & Matt line dancing with Emma.

Youth Conference 2008

YC 2008
Abby with her friends Aubrey, Celeste, Hailey
Matt with Thurl Bailey.
Our Stake Youth.
Thurl Bailey with abby and her friends.
Zach doing his signature handshake with Thurl Bailey.

Youth Conference 2008

The kids just had their Youth Conference. It was great. Matthew was on the youth committee that planned it, I must say it was fabulous. Everyone had a great time. Thurl Bailey spoke at the friday evening fireside. He has a great conversion story. Matt had the priviledge of introducing him that evening. The kids could not get over how tall he is and the size of his hands, BIG! Friday was full of seminars that were really good, and there was the big dance. Conference was ended with a testimony meeting, there are alot of strong youth in our stake. It was a great weekend. Now it's off to EFY.

ELDER PAGE IS SWITCHING GEARS

I can't believe the news we received Sunday about Dallin, how exciting it is to be apart of such a great work. He is very excited and scared, but knows that the Lord is incharge and will help him to learn quickly. Here is his email for this week as he shares his experience first hand. Everyone have a great week and please keeep Elder Page in your prayers.

Hey Family,

Well, I'm glad that you guys were able to hear the big news yesterday. I am still kind of
unsure about most of the details but I will tell you everything that I know. First of
all, this all started this past Tuesday at Zone Conference when President Harmsen asked
if he could talk to me. All he told me when we talked was that he was he wanted to call
an elder to a new position in the mission and that it would be really challenging,
life-changing, and that it required good people skills and good language skills. After we
talked about me and my personality and school before the mission and stuff like that he
told me that he was going to talk to 2 other elders and pray about his decision and then
he would get back to me. So this past week I was kind of side-tracked wondering what the
new calling would be and if he would ask me. I just prayed for President every night that
he would be guided by the spirit and that if he asked me that I would be prepared to do
whatever he asked of me. And then on Friday night he called and asked me to come to the
mission home at 7:30 the next morning for an interview. So of course I couldn't sleep
friday night. And on Saturday morning when he asked me if I would be a Persian-speaking
elder I almost fell over. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed that I would be
asked to learn Pharsee. Anyways, he told me to go home and decide what I wanted to do and
then to call him back that evening. So I prayed about it and I just felt like this is
what I need to be doing right now. And so I told him I wanted to do it and so as of today
the CA Anaheim Mission has a Persian Program making it the 8th language in this mission.
It is going to be pretty different b/c I will be in the Irvine 5th ward for the rest of
my mission, I will be with my new companion Elder Cunningham for the next 14 months until
he goes home and then I will have one more companion for the rest of my mission until I
go home who I will help teach the persian language to. You see the problem is that there
is no Persian program at the MTC so until there are enough persian baptisms we are pretty
much on our own when it comes to learning the language. From what I know there is program
called Daily Dose that the missionaries do to help teach people different languages and
so we will use that to teach each other Persian and English and I think that there is also
a member here who speaks Pharsee who will be helping us pretty closely but other than
that I'm not really too sure what we're going to do. President might have already might
have told you when he called but he said that there are only 4 missionaries in the world
that have been called to speak Pharsee--me and elder cunningham and 2 elders in toronto,
canada so all this is extremely new as you probably already realize. Anyways, I am really
excited and even more scared. It is kind of hard to have to shift gears from Spanish to
Persian, especially since I am just starting to feel pretty good about spanish but I know
that this is where i need to be and so it'll all work out. I want to try and keep my
spanish up if possible but we'll see how that goes. Well, I've got a little more packing
to do before transfers at 3:00 so I better get going but know that I love you and that
you are always in my prayers. If you have any questions about all this just let me know.
I'll be getting more information probably in the next week so hopefully I'll be able to
tell you a little more later but that is pretty much all I know for now. Until, next
week, take care. I love you.

Elder Page

p.s. something pretty cool that I just remembered...Elder Song is going to be my new
District Leader down in Irvine and he'll be living in the same apartment as me so that
should be really awesome.

Elder Page Is doing Great!

Dallin is doing great. I love hearing from him every week and feeling of his love for the work he is doing. He was excited to hear about the Celtics, Go Celtics. He said that it was one of the things he missed most was sitting and watching a game or just doing something with us, just spending time together as a family. His companion was at Disneyland today, he heads home next week. He also has 2 others that live in his apartment who head home in a month. Hope that has not been tough on him. I have not gotten that impression. He appreciates all the mail, thanks everyone for your support to him. Till next week...

Elder Page has blisters!!!

His blisters are not from too much tracting, they are from playing soccer. Today for p-day his zone palyed another zone in soccer. He was in heaven. That was the first time he has gotten to play on a big field in 6-7 months. He said it was so much fun! So that's why he has the blisters.
It was a pretty low-key week for teaching. They did alot of tracting which can be tough day after day. They still are working with Jennifer and also a couple Jim and Kathy. They seem real interested in the Book of Mormon and the idea of a modern day prophet, which is great because that can be the hardest part to grasp for some people.
Elder Page is doing great. He says the work is tough but "loves being a missionary. It's a wonderful blessing to be here serving in Placentia CA."
Thanks for all of the letters and support!

Abby's Awards Night & Ashley & Matteson's Wedding

We had a very busy weekend. Friday evening was Award's night @ Abigail's school. Abby is a great student she recieved top 5 in her class. Her hard worked payed off. Afterwards there was a dance (Abby's first). She and her friends had a great time even though it was extremely hot. Congratulations Abby, we love you!
It was Ashley and Matteson's wedding, finally. It was the hottest day of the year to have an outdoor wedding, but it was beautiful and lots of fun visiting with family. We wish Ashley and Matteson many years of happiness.

Elder Page sends his love

Not too much news this week. He said he had a good week. He is still teaching Jennifer. His companion only has 3 more weeks till he goes home. He really likes him, too bad they are together for such a short time. He loved his package and getting notes from everyone. He said it is nice to know that when we all get together we are still thinking of him :)

A Weekend in the Country!

We had a great Memorial Day weekend. Our dear friends, The Schultz's (Dawn, Jaclyn & Kyle) and McKenna Weir came for a visit. Sunday we all drove to Caswell ot spend some time with Steve's family. We all had a great time and enjoyed great food...Thanks Myra! The weather was perfect for four-wheeling...FUN, a ride to the creek, where we found crawdads...lots of them. We took a trip to the past by visiting "Summer Hill" Tim Ross's homeplace. That is such a beautiful place. We all had our time visiting with Grandpa Curry...that man can talk, and sing! All the cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents sat around chatting a spell, while some of the cousins played soccer. There were late night sleep overs atleast for the boys (5:00 am what were you guys thinking!) It was just a very relaxing weekend with our friends and family. We need to do that again soon. Thank you Myra and Lindsey!

Elder Page gets a new companion

Elder Page is doing great. The time is going by so quickly. He says the days seem like weeks and the weeks seem like days. They have challenged the woman they are teaching to be baptised. Her discussions are going well. He said it really is a miracle to see the changes that have taken place in her life. On a sad note, he is loosing his companion Elder Song. He is going to be a district leader in Irvine. He is really going to miss him. He has been a great companion and a great teacher. His new companion is Elder Techlenberg from Ohio. He is coming from Newport where he was a Zone Leader. Only thing he goes home next transfer. Hope he is not trunky!!! Dallin is so happy and loving the work!

Abby receives her 10 year award in dance

Abby had her 10th ballet recital this past saturday. She did a fabulous job as always. We were all there to support her along with some of her friends, Celeste and Sebastian ( and the rest of the Anderson clan)and Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Jack (they have never missed one). Congratulations Abby we love you!

Good Bye to Elder Jenkins

Yesterday we said our good byes to Elder Jenkins. He has been with us for 10 1/2 months. We love him! He is like anoth son and a brother to our kids. We are going to miss him so much. We wish him the best and hope he comes to visit us really soon.

Mother's Day

What a great Mother's Day I had. The kids were so kind and got or made me great gifts. I got to Speak to Elder Page & Elder Song. He sounds so great. He said that he has been a little home sick. The work has been a little frustrating (people just don't won't to listen) but he is doing well. We even got to hear him play the ukulele and sing "some where over the rainbow". Our mouths were hanging open. He learned how to play in in the MTC from Elder OFA, So he bought him a ukulele in CA. He is pretty good. Thank you again everyone for making My Mother's Day soooo Wonderful.

Temple Day

Today we all got up real early and went to the Columbia, SC temple. It was Tory's first time going. It was nice to be there all together except for one... Elder Page your excused! It was a beautiful day. We had a picnic lunch @ the near by park. We had 18 youth go this time. We did alot of great work. We are all tired from getting up early but we must go on... we have a ward activity to go to. No rest for the weary. Tomorrow's Mother's Day, so hear is a big shout out to all of the fantastic mothers that I know and love..."HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY". I can't wait to talk to Elder Page tomorrow.

Yesterday we had the missionaries over. It was their P-day. Once the kids got home from school they cam over. We really love our misssionaries. That evening we invited a family over for dinner and for FHE that they are currently teaching, The Knights. It was alot of fun, and we got to know them alittle better. Hopefully when they come to church they will feel like they have friends there, that can make all the difference. We are really trying to help out and do our part as members to share the gospel. Here is a picture of them.

Elder Page is doing fine and working hard. He is still teaching Jennifer and her daughter, and all is going well. She has been challenged to come to church, so plans on going this week. This week they will be teaching her the third discussion and plan on challenging her to be baptized. Dallin says he is pretty nervous about that and ask us to keep them in our prayers. He says "if they can teach powerfully and with the spirit, hopefully she will feel the importance of baptism and decide to be baptised. We can't wait for sunday to be able to speak with him. Thanks for all or you letters and prayers.

We had a busy weekend. We took a trip up to Virginia for the prom. Matt & Zach went with McKenna & Katie. We had a fun trip but we were pretty tired from all the late nights and the drive home. Everyone had a great time and they all looked fabulous. There are pictures on the VA prom album.

VA Prom

Photobucket Album

Photobucket Album

Miracles do happen

Well late yesterday we finally heard from Dallin, yeah!!!He is doing wonderfully well. He apologized for not writting last week, but he said they were very busy and ran out of time on their P-day. He really does apreciate all of the letters from everyone. We forgive him. He shared with us a story of one of the people they are teaching. I'll try to shorten it. They are now teaching a single mom and her 16 year old daugther. How they met was nothing short of a miracle. This mom has been going through some very difficult things in her life. She had decided that she would do whatever she had to do to change her life for her and her daughter. Let's go back alittle to the night they met. Elder Page and E;der Song were off to teach another family. They had been teaching them for a while now...Upon arriving to their home, they found that they were not at home. Which was unusual, they had always been home in the past for their appointments ofr had called them if they needed to cancel. They called their cell phone and received no answer and waited and waited for about 30 min. and decided to leave them a note that they had stopped by. They left there home alittle frustrated that their evening had not turned out as planned. They decided that they would go up to a store called Ralph's and make contacts there. Only after about 15 min they saw a woman leaving the store practically running to here car and Elder SOng called out to her, "hello how are you?" she kept going, at this point we would normally just say have a good day and move on, but ELder Song called out to her again, "Hello, how are you", she turned around with a funny look on her face, they introduced themselves as missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day-saints. After we said this she almost fell over. She told us of her difficulties and that she did not think it was a coincident that we met. "Honestly I never even shopped at this store." She asked if we could come and see her the next day. We have taught her twice now and she is praying daily and she can already see a hugh difference in her life. So the moral to this story is that God's hand is in this work and that is because it is His work. Dallin said that he is very glad that he was able to learn very early in his mission to never be discouraged or frustrated when everything doesn't work out as planned. If we have faith that God is truly at the head of this work then we can and will see miracles.

SEND MAIL

Elder Dallin Page
California Anaheim Mission
2500 N Bristol St.
Santa Ana CA 92706
(this is the mission home)

You can email hima @ dspage@myldsmail.net

Placentia, CA/first companion Elder Song

Hey family,

I just wrote a really long email and then somehow I lost it so this one is going to be
alot shorter, sorry. I will just give you the basics...

My companion is Elder Song. He is from korea and he has been out for almost 1 year. He is
a great trainer and I am learning alot. I am in the Placentia area and we cover two wards
(P1 and P3). In this area there are very few hispanics so we don't have the chance to
speak much spanish although sometimes we run into some while tracting but it is very
rare. As for the work, it is very tough here. We only have one investigator right now and
he is not really progressing. He is from the Phillipines and he a little bit slow b/c of
some medications he is taking. Anyways, I am not sure how much longer we will be working
with him but that is pretty much it for now. We are mainly working with some of the
less-active members in the ward. We are working hard but this is just a tough area I
think. In the past 5 months that Elder Song has been here he has only had about 4
investigators and not one ever came to church. We are trying to tract for atleast 2 hrs a
day but it isn't really the most effective way to find people. We really just need the
help of the members. That is why I think that it is so awesome that you all are helping
the missionaries in your area. I really can understand just how important the work you
are doing is in missionary work. Well, we have some other errands to run today so I will
talk to you next week. I love you all. Keep up the good work!

Love,

Elder Page

p.s. Mail all my mail to the mission office and i guess they will just make sure that I
get it.

Elder Page is in CA

We spoke with Dallin yesterday. He is doing great. He is so nervous about the language, but we assured him that it would come along quickly. Elder Ofa's family gave them a send off at the airport. There were 10 elders and sisters heading to Anaheim, that's a large group. We assume he got there alright, and that he is with his new companion. Can't wait to hear all about things there in CA.

Wow what a great conference

General conference was so great. It was pretty cool that only Abby and I were home on Saturday night this year. All of the boys were at the priesthood session with their Dad. Tory said he really did enjoy it. He felt like they were speaking just to him. I heard alot of wonderful and funny stories about that session. I look forward to reading it in the Ensign. I feel renewed and ready to take on the world again. Abby and I did enjoy the YW conference last weekend (Matt watched it with us) It's nice to have a special night just for us. We spent another P-day with the missionaries today. We love having them in our home. We know the Lord will look after our missionaries and bless them with families that will love and take good care of then while they are away from us. I can't wait to talk to Dallin on Wednesday!!! Hope everyone is well and happy.

Last MTC Email

Dear Family,

Well, I don't know really what to say right now about how I am feeling. Of course I am
really excited to finally get to go out to CA and put all this knowledge I've learned to
good use but to be completely honest I am pretty nervous also. It is kind of scary to
think that in less than 2 days I will be teaching people who I have never met before in a
language that I have only been speaking (or should I say "trying to speak") for
2 months. It is definitely humbling for me to think about. But all I can do is just try
my best, keep studying hard, and pray for help as I go about the Lord's work. I'm sure
everything will work out alright. Although I would be expecting some sort of rediculous
spanish slip-up story within the next few weeks.

Well, what about General Conference?! It was pretty amazing wasn't it. I'm kind of
disappointed that I am not going to be able to read it's highlights in Dad's GC book.
Some of my favorites were definetly Elder Holland who once again layed down the law and
gave a great talk about the latter-day revelation and scripture. And I also really
enjoyed listening to President Monson speak. The spirit bore witness to me on a number of
occasions that he is truly a prophet of God leading Christ's church here on earth in
these last days. I just feel sorry for all the women who weren't at the priesthood
session to see him tell one of the greatest stories ever told over the pulpet. A the
climax of the story when he paused and then wiggled his ears I laughed so hard. Pres.
Monson's great since of humor was shown once more in his closing remarks at the end of
the last session as he was talking about his beloved wife and the fact that 1/2 of their
household appliances are off limits to him. Bottom line...He is simply an amazing man who
I was proud to honorably sustain as the prophet, seer, and revelator of our church.


Thank you also for the phone card and for Elder Ofa's CD's. Jaclyn sent him some CDs too
so he ended up with about 8-9 CDs. So thanks so much for that. He appreciated them alot.

I have one random question...can you figure out how much money I have on my debit card
and let me know on DearElder tomorrow. I haven't used it too much but I was just
wondering. Thanks. Oh, and if you want, feel free to fill me in on the UNC basketball
situation. :)

Tell Elder Gillette congrats on his promotion to AP--he will do a great job.

All for now.

Love,

Elder Page

MTC