Matt Sullivan's Mission Call

We were very excited to get on the phone with our daughter Shelly's family to hear the reading of Matt's mission call letter on July 11.  He has been called to the Las Vegas, Nevada Mission.  He and his Grammy and Granddad are all very excited about his call.  Grammy and Granddad had their interview with Bishop Reinhard today.  We think we both passed! He will send this on to President Carver with whom we will have the next interview.  It is taking us a bit longer than it took Matt, but they want to make sure we old folks can "cut the mustard."  One final thought... what are the odds that Grammy and Granddad will get sent to Las Vegas too?

Susie (AKA Grammy)

Family Visits

We are spending this summer before we leave for our mission visiting family who range from Texas to Illinois to Florida.  Right now we are in Florida visiting Susie's mother, brothers, and others.  It has been a wonderful visit, reading to "Ma" (91), whose eyesight is failing, listening to family stories, swimming, and working on things around her house.

Susie

Time Out for Women

Recently we had a “red-letter” weekend. Time Out for Women came to San Antonio. We got to spend a half day on the hallowed grounds of the Alamo and the rest of the time we spent in the company of wonderful speakers and gifted musicians. About 2000 lovely LDS ladies enjoyed a line-up of good, extremely talented folks who were willing and able to broadcast the hope and optimism of the gospel.
Not only were we spiritually nourished, but were able to spend some quality time with the missionary who made first contact with my family. In 1981 a young, handsome Elder Chris Stewart and his companion Elder Baxter were welcomed into our home. They were wonderful emissaries of Heavenly Father.

In about four months my sweetie and I will submit our papers to serve a full-time mission. We’ve been anticipating this moment for about a decade. We’ve saved a lot of cash and, and in the best of all worlds, we’ve allowed for the general maintenance of our home in our absence. Over the next few months, we will address several predictable needs in hopes of lessening a last-minute frenzy. Our passports and our driver’s licenses need to be renewed. We will have complete medical and dental check-ups. We will make Preach My Gospel a part of all our FHEs twixt now and our departure. We will read more scripture than usual and pray a great deal. Succinctly stated, we will seek out every ounce of spiritual enlightenment that we can find and seek the tender mercies of our Father

Preparing to Serve a Mission

Note: Since we are beginning this photojournalistic record of our mission six or seven months prior to departure, entries may be sparse. Nonetheless, we believe that our preparation for a mission is indeed an important component of your service to the Lord’s children. Let us declare, then, that the pre-mission has begun. This leg of our efforts will for sure feature commentary on all the things we have to do in order to make ready. Some very dear friends of ours (John and Natalie Arhets) have just left on an overseas mission to Belgium and France, and in their last e-mail to us they stated that the “get ready” process was much more time consuming than they had anticipated. We are grateful for their counsel and will heed it. We are also grateful for you and eager to welcome you to our chronicle. Ora pro nobis.

The Sexton Chronicles begin!

Hello to all our dear family and friends!

We have a friend here at TCC who is LDS and she loves to blog...she knows I love to write and travel and pontificate, so she told me I must have a blog. So here it is! With her help, we will go public and then have a hard-back book (slurp.com) made of this blog, our thoughts, our photos, our life, and our family at the end of each year. What a treat for us and hopefully for our grandkids. The wondrous Robyn got us going and even supplied the first photo! Que amiga!

BYU fans miffed

These were the t-shirts fans wore to the TCU / BYU game 2 years ago, here at TCU's stadium; but this year, the fans were there; the team was not, according to those who attended the game. We were not there, but heard that BYU fans numbered very high. The TCU coach told the community, publicly, a week before the big game, to get out in attendance as BYU fans usually out number the TCU fans even here in Texas on their turf! It was TCU's first win all season and BYU's first loss.