Eclipse!

Hi my favorite Missionaries!

Oh boy are we excited to hear from you both this week!  We are excited to hear about Mason's first week in Germany and I have more questions for Landon😆!

Well this last week started with the Solar Eclipse on Monday!  Don't know if you know much about it but it was all the hype here cause the path of totality was in Idaho so we were at 90%.  I'm sure you already know but a solar eclipse only happens very rarely (every 30 some years for the US).  We had heard about it, but didn't really make a big deal about it until Sunday (the day before), when we realized you needed glasses for the event and we didn't have any nor did any store.  There were a few being sold online from local people but they were going for $20 each and the price in the store had been .99!  So I did some research and found that the Spanish Fork Library was giving out 300 free ones at 11am the next morning.  We got there early and waited in line, and were lucky enough to get 3 pairs of solar eclipse glasses.

Gracie even liked looking at it

This is what it looked like at it's most coverage through our glasses!

We hear where the moon covered 100% totality, it was pretty amazing.  In fact it was spiritual everyone said that drove to it.  We were kicking ourselves a bit for not going to Idaho to see it but I guess in 30 years there will be one that passes through Mapleton.  And in 2 years there will be one in Santiago, so Landon might get to see it (it's in July, so I don't know)

So many people came out to see it that they ran out of glasses.  The glasses are very important cause it can be dangerous for your eyes to look at the sun during the eclipse.  We saw a family without glasses so I ran some over to them to share.  They happened to be Garrett Griffins family and he was with them.  They were so grateful and then after the eclipse we visited with them for a little while.  Garrett  asked about your guys and then told us he is really anxious to get out on his mission.  The waiting has been hard for him he told us.  I guess he leaves in two more weeks.  It was fun to get acquainted with their family for a little bit.  


The next day SCHOOL STARTED! Jacob is excited to be in 5th grade and Lydia had a great first week of 9th grade.  She is taking early morning seminary and has one of your teachers: Brother Hansbrow!  Which one of you had him?

Jacob started Flag Football.  He's playing on a Springville team this year, cause we missed the sign up for Mapleton when we were in Seattle.  But that's ok he really likes his team even though they are the Raiders!  Next week I'll get a picture of him playing or at least in his jersey, but today you'll get a picture of Gracie cheering for him.  The whole game she clapped and cheered "Good job Jacob" or "go Jacob".  It was cute but we did have to tell her to limit her cheers cause she was cheering even when he wasn't on the field.  

Kaitlyn threw a surprise Birthday party of Brett at our house!  

Brett turned 23 and Kaitlyn wanted to throw him a party so she asked if she could have it at our house.  

His whole family came, the Findlays came and a few friends.  It was a fun evening and he was surprised.  

Jacob had a summer piano recital.  Taking after his brothers!!!! 

He played Boogie Board Boogie and he got into it and even started to bounce to the beat when he played.  The audience got a chuckle out of it.  

McKenzie Smith was in town with her mom celebrating being done with chemotherapy with Sali Kai's sisters.  McKenzie spent the night one night and these two didn't go to bed til 8:30am!!!  Lydia has been making up that sleep ever since!    

Your weekly picture of Gracie!  She talks about you guys a lot and loves to point you out in pictures!  She prays for you and adores you! 

When she was all dressed for church she said "take picture"  "for Landon/Mason"

She knows we take a lot more pictures for you guys now! 

Tonight we had a fireside at our house.  Matthew Nemelka spoke and shared a little about his mission and also how to prepare for a mission.  He loved his mission and says it was the best two years of his life,  and also the hardest years of his life.  It was the hard that made it so awesome!

We love you so very much and know you are doing great things even if it doesn't seem like you are at times.  I find great peace knowing you are doing the Lords work and he is looking out for you at this time!  Continue to do your best and he will take care of the rest! 

Here's a little something I wanted to share with your that President Eaton (Federal Way mission president with Grandpa) put on Facebook after the Solar Eclipse.  You may or may not have time but I thought it was very thoughtful.  He lives in Rexburg so he was in the path of totality and he relates his experience  watching the eclipse to being converted to the Savior!  

I had read all the hype, and I had a hard time imagining there was any way a total solar eclipse could live up to so much promotion and praise. One account was so effusive that even my young nephew dismissed it by saying, “It had too many superlatives.” Surely nothing could be that good.

If I had not lived plop in the middle of the zone of totality in Rexburg, Idaho, I don’t know that I would have traveled far to see it. When I mentioned it to my brother a month ago, remarkably enough, he hadn’t even heard about it yet. But before I could even say anything about it, he said, “It seems like every eclipse that comes along is supposed to be the only time in the next 57 years you’ll be able to see something like it.” He hadn’t been that impressed with what he’d seen in the past, so he wasn’t interested in driving a couple of hours north to reach the zone of totality for this eclipse.

I don’t fault him. If I were him, I might well have looked at a map and figured, “I’ll just stay here and see 75% of the eclipse and get 75% of the benefits. Why go all that way just to see the sun all the way covered?”

But with solar eclipses, I learned vividly and personally today, there is a world of difference between even 98% of an eclipse and 100%. We watched with interest and amusement during the partial phases of the eclipse, but right up until a few moments before we witnessed the total eclipse, it seemed like not much more than a pleasant astronomical quirk visible only with special protective glasses.

But as the moon began to totally cover the sun and we witnessed the diamond ring and the corona visible only with a total solar eclipse, I was absolutely blown away. I thought I would remain calm, but I couldn’t keep the emotions I felt inside. And neither could most of the people around me. As one writer had predicted, it was as if it touched something deeply primal within us. No photograph or video I’ve seen of this spectacular phenomenon does justice to it. It is simply the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

Afterwards, my nephew volunteered to his mother: "Now I know why they used so many superlatives."Despite all the hype, we discovered a total solar eclipse had not been overrated.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, this experience has reminded me of three important lessons. First, heaven is not overhyped; eternal life will be worth every sacrifice we could possible make to partake of it.

In one of my otherwise favorite songs by Train, the singer asks of a friend returning from some kind of cosmic journey, “Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded and that heaven is overrated?” Just as my brother assumed a total eclipse had been oversold, much of the world today has come to believe heaven is not real or that it can’t be all that. They doubt the reality of an eternal existence with God so exquisite that Peter described it as becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). I believe that one day, everyone will be as convinced of the desirability of eternal life with God as those who witnessed the total eclipse today were of its stunning glory.

Second, I was reminded that there is a dramatic difference between the blessings that come from sort of following the gospel of Jesus Christ—being in the zone of partiality—and striving to following Him and His teachings with all our hearts—the zone of totality. One of the reasons my brother and I underestimated how rewarding the total eclipse would be is that we based our estimates on what we’d witnessed in prior partial eclipses. But a total eclipse isn’t just twice as beautiful as an eclipse where the moon covers half the son; it is exponentially better.

And so are the blessings that come from living in the zone of spiritual totality. I’m not talking about a place where we are perfect, and I’m certainly not talking about a condition we achieve through our own efforts alone. But I am referring to a state of mind and heart where we jump in with our whole souls, holding nothing back but relying on Christ to realize our divine potential. The blessings of spiritual coronas and diamond rings come not to those who merely go through the motions and occasional effort it takes to reach the zone of partiality; they come to those who yield their hearts and souls to God in the zone of spiritual totality.

Finally, now that I know what a rare and exquisite experience a total solar eclipse is, I regret terribly the fact that I didn’t try to persuade my brother and his family and all my siblings and children who lived elsewhere to join us. What a terrible waste it was to have a home located in the heart of the zone of totality with only 5 guests. I wish I’d been more like some of our neighbors, who had family members and friends stuffed into every bed and couch and spilling over onto their lawns.

For those of us who have lived the gospel of Jesus Christ enough to know just how exquisite its blessings are, there is a special responsibility to find ways to help others come to understand or even consider the possibility that it will be eternally worth the sacrifice to come to the zone of spiritual totality.

For me, in some small way, glimpsing the silvery brilliance of the corona today felt like a symbolic foreshadowing of what it might be like to dwell eternally in the presence of God—in a place with “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. 21:23). Even more than I will strive to persuade my loved ones and friends to go witness the next total solar eclipse visible in the United States in 2024, I feel inspired to do all I can to help others know that heaven is real and that moving to the zone of spiritual totality is eternally worth it. We cannot use enough superlatives to describe it.