Matt the Missionary

Matt spoke in church on August 31st.

He did a great job.  He was vulnerable and honest about his feelings and spoke beautifully about his mission and covenants.

Afterward, family and some friends came over for breakfast.

The other speaker in sacrament meeting just happened to be Jeremy Young.

Their family had just taken Claire to the airport that morning to embark on her 4 month adventure in Mexico.  Then they hurried back for church :)

 

When it was pretty much just family left at the house Ben entertained all the cousins (and adults) by deciding to bring his whole library out to Tom.

Then something changed his mind and he decided Hailee was the better recipient so Tom handed them all back to Ben and he gave them to Hailee.

Then he sat himself right down in the middle of Hailee and Jaden and expected to be read to.

Preston and Josh were good buddies since Josh spent the night at the Andrus house one night between his BYU-I FSY stint and Macy's mission talk.

Some Abby loves...

Merill and Nancy had to leave before the setting apart but we were so glad they had been able to come and support Matt.

Then, mid afternoon we all headed over to the Stake President's office.

He was very kind and spoke to Matt for several minutes...mostly emphasizing how this mission will be whatever he chooses to make it...it will largely be in his hands.

Then Matt was set apart.  We were in the large high council room with a fan and some other somewhat noisy thing running and Ben wasn't the quietest so it was hard to hear our soft spoken stake president but what I did hear was beautiful.  And just like that, our Matt was a missionary!

We then walked back to the house and snacked a little and played some games...

...and read some books...

(I know this next little bit is a whole lot of pictures of the same thing but I love seeing the sequence of Ben's face/emotions/interest...)

And then Matt interviewed everyone asking them for their two favorite animals and why.

(It was a game that Dan had played a few days before in Park City with everyone and Matt wanted to do it with our family)  The first animal ends up being how you view yourself and the second animal is how you view your significant other :)

It was a fun way to end our evening as an extended family.

That night as we were relaxing from the long day, Bruce and Kaziah Chang dropped by to say hello since they were in the neighborhood.  They had no idea that it had been a big day for us :)

We had a pleasant visit outside on the patio though and then it was time to get our missionary to bed.