Is that You???

Gilbert Temple - Open house

He Said:We had a great visit with our niece Emily and Rocky and kids in Nogales. We went to church with them. It was different as they ran one meeting in both Spanish and English. Too bad I am only on lesson three of my Rosetta Stone Spanish lessons.  After visiting them in their home we headed off to Phoenix. We thought it was too close to Tucson, so kept driving. Ended up in Casino Arizona’s parking lot for free. We were actually turned away from Wal-Mart…go figure. Anyway. We are now in Desert Shadows RV Park in North Phoenix. It has all the bells and whistles, which is awesome. Who’d thunk that you can still get TV with an antenna?   Made contact with my first missionary companion Kent Lee. He is a Lawyer here and we had a visit in our motor home and at their house. It was great catching up.  Here is our picture taken at the LTM (the previous MTC). And here is us today.  Thus the name of our blog. I think I have changed the most. Kent’s wife Jeannie couldn’t believe it was me.

Before and after 38 years

Besides lots of shopping we did make it to the Gilbert Arizona Temple opening. What a beautiful temple….I was just sad they didn’t have cookies like the BC and Calgary temple openings.  Oh well.

We are going to be here in Phoenix for the next few weeks. Haven’t even begun to see the sights here.  More people to visit here too!

Outside the Gilbert Az Temple

She said:

Formatting this blog after John has written his part is perhaps become one of my biggest challenges!  It will come, I am sure.  Last Sunday was a very pleasant day, meeting with my niece Emily for the first time in many, many years and meeting her husband and children.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, I must say.  Emily has 5 children, two teenagers whom she adopted when they were younger and three - a set of twins who are around three, and a 10 month old baby.  Lacey, one of the twins, has cystic fibrosis - she is very sweet - it truly warmed my heart when she was in her dads arms, and whenever there was music, she got a beautiful smile on her face - she also responded whenever he or her mom whispered in her ear (we were at church).  Her brother Logan is a little power house - very active and full of energy, a typical 3 year old guy - he got into our RV and was ready to hit the road with us - he sat in the passenger seat, looked at Emily and said his goodbyes to her.  I do love that age group :)  Lacey is the baby, and is a beautifully baby, very well behaved while we were there.  The teenagers were typical teenagers, said their hellos, and went to their games :)   They live in Nogales, Az, which is right on the Mexican Boarder - Rocky teaches at the elementary school there.  It was interesting that when leaving Yuma people warned us how dangerous the Nogales boarder is; and in Nogales were was asked what was it like being in Yuma where the boarder was dangerous.  I will have to research that one!  

On leaving Nogales, we thought we would drive partway to Phoenix, but ended up driving it all, arriving around 9.  It is the latest we have driven.  After being told there was no room at the Walmart, we did go to a nearby Casino - I think I liked being there better as there was all night security driving around on golf carts.  We arrived at this RV park, about our 3rd choice as some of the less costly places were fully booked.  WHO KNEW???  I think perhaps we will have to learn to plan better than we have been so far.  It is a lovely park, with lots of grapefruit and orange trees, in full fruit everywhere.  We have picked from some of the trees that are on vacant lots - yum!  The people here are extremely friendly, from all over Canada and the US.  The scotties have certainly made us memorable to the local residents.  There are bunnies around the areas, which put them both in to full Terrier alert - ears and tails up, almost dancing in their effort to get at them.  We will be here for another 2 weeks before moving on.

As John said, we have met with his old mission companion and his wife - the Lee's.  they are very nice people and were kind enough to have us over for dinner.  We met a couple of their daughters, who were lovely!  We also made the trip to Jim and Jean Bensons place - they are in a phenomenal site, surrounded by a golf course, lots of green and grass!  We went for dinner and did some catching up.  For the next week we are going to get more focused(?) on seeing some of the Phoenix sights.  If anyone has a favourite place here, please let us know - open for suggestions!

Kent and Jeannie Lee