Chicago, Illinois

Today was Missionary Sunday! First we had a mission farewell in our ward. Thomas Mogensen is going to the Alpine Mission. I think it covers Germany and Switzerland. It is actually the mission his dad grew up in, so that is awesome. Thomas gave an amazing talk. I loved it. He talked about the saxophone. There are two different bad performance classes at Alta. Wind Ensemble, which is the super hard class to get into and Concert Band, which is not as hard to get into as Wind Ensemble. Thomas was in Concert Band and he wanted to be first saxophone so bad. He practiced and practiced. He asked for advice from everyone he could think of. He prayed and prayed. When the chairs were announced, he was third chair. He was devastated. Then he found out that you could challenge and move up chairs if you work hard. He worked and worked, but he never moved up. Around November his band teacher talked to him. He said he noticed how hard he was working and that a spot just opened up in Wind Ensemble. Until this time Thomas thought there would be no possibility of him being in that class. If he had gotten first chair like he wanted, he wouldn't have put in as much work as he did and wouldn't have been able to have an opportunity that he thought was out of his reach. Anyway, he did great. The bishop remarked afterword about how far Thomas has come. His talk when he moved into the ward was about 45 seconds long and just a disaster. Big difference this time. We went to the Mogensen's afterwords. Mike and Stockton are their home teachers. Thomas and his dad have also been coming to my Gospel Essentials class. 

Speaking of Gospel Essentials, while we were there Stockton was looking at his phone. He was on Instagram and saw a story saying Brandon was opening his mission call. What! We didn't even know he had his papers in! Well, we knew he was working on them, so it wasn't a huge surprise. Brandon is two months older than Stockton, which makes it just a little bit crazy/scary. We went down to watch Brandon and make our guesses. Maysen even texted in her guess....and she won. She won when Taylor was leaving too. We brought home a giant bag of gummy bears as her prize.

Preston

 Preston, Stockton, Mike, Jorja

Brandon has been called to Chicago, Illinois and will be on a Spanish speaking mission. He goes into the Mexico MTC on July 24th. How exciting for him! I think he was happy with his call.

Stockton and Brandon

Stockton and Jorja also had another friend opening his call today. They toyed with the idea of going over to watch it, but there was snow and we got home late. They watched him open his call live on Instagram stories. Technology is awesome!