Roller-coaster Emotions

Well, this weekend has been quite the experience.  On Thursday we had a sweet young couple and their two children over for dinner.  They have been learning about the church and the gospel.  Things have been slow, but he works for a member, with other members so he has been talking about the gospel in his daily activities a lot.  For her, the information is all new and foreign.  It is confusing.  We had them over to give them a place to ask questions without pressure.

On Saturday, we attended the wedding of our friends' children.  The wedding was so very sweet!  Both parties were older and had lived rough, unhappy lives.  They had grown up in member homes with the gospel, but chosen different paths as adults.  They were unhappy.  Things changed.  They renewed their acquaintance and romance blossomed and bloomed.  They were obviously very in love and very happy!  The wedding was themed around the movie "The Princess Bride."  How can you go wrong with that theme?!  It wasn't in the temple, but hopefully some day they will chose to be there. 

I didn't know either the bride or the groom, but we are friends with both sets of parents.  The groom is in his 50's.  I don't know how old the bride is.  But they are both so very happy and I am sure their relationship is closer to being eternal than the paths they were previously on.

Sunday morning I attended the other ward which meets in our building because a friend was speaking.  She did a great job.

After I arrived home, my sweet, bishop husband received a phone call.  We received the news that the husband of the sweet couple we had over for dinner on Thursday had been in a motorcycle accident early that morning and had been declared dead at the scene.  Our hearts broke.  We went over to visit his sweet wife and their two little sons (2 and 7) before our meetings.  Now we are helping her to plan the funeral and take care of the things she will need to manage over the next week and beyond.

All I have been able to think about for the last 24 hours is my dear friend and her grief and pain and the things she has to be thinking about.  When tragedies strike, the rest of the world stops and we see the things that seemed so very important yesterday, really do not matter at all.  Her little guy's birthday is next week and they were trying to get the backyard ready for the party they were having.  Now she doesn't even care, which is fine.  I just feel so badly for her.  My heart aches.

I am so very grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ, for our knowledge and understanding of the Plan of Salvation, for our understanding of life after death, for the blessings and peace that come from knowing we have made temple covenants that bind us to God and each other for eternity.  These are all things my dear friend is learning and searching for during this tragedy in her life---things I will share with her, when the times are right.

And if that wasn't enough for the roller-coaster ride, we also found out this morning that our missionary is finally going to be on his way to Brazil!!!  His visa has only taken a year (plus) to get!  But he is leaving at the end of this month!  He is so excited!!! I think Slim is more excited (returned missionary from Brazil.)  Now for my Mother's Day phone call/Skype, he will have already arrived in the country and have a couple of weeks under his belt to tell us about!  Life is good and hard, all in the same weekend------and so the ride continues!