Mother's Day call from Elder Huston

Sunday was Mother's Day, the day all missionary moms await so they can talk to their little boys. My kitchen had burned the previous Friday and I had no electricity or phone service so I emailed Tres to let him know to call me on my cell phone (his P-day is Saturday), but didn't tell him why so he didn't have to hear about the fire by email. He emailed back saying he'd call at 8am (Dan checked our email at Krispy Kreme). Sunday came and no call. I even took my phone to church, which I never do. I kept checking my home phone messages to see if he'd called there (Qwest kept the service on until it was tranfered the following week). Sure enough about 4 oclock he left a message saying he'd been calling all day and that he couldn't remember my cell number. I took the kids back to our temporary home, then went back to our stinky smokey house and ran 5 extention cords from my neighbors outside electical box to an old phone I found in our closet. Then I waited. I cleaned a little, went through some important papers I needed to take, I even tried calling his mission president who was, of course, out of the office. Finally... finally he called. He asked where we'd been all day. I told him about the fire, and he was shocked, but ok. He told me how great his mission was. He told me about the homeless people he spoke to outside of Temple Square and how he had encourged one young man to return to his family and to church. He told me some of the "legends" of his mission, and what an awesome companion

he had. He told me how amazingly hard it was but that it was the difficulties that made it so great. And he told me he felt our prayers and knew the Lord was blessing him and us. We said our goodbyes so he'd have enough time to talk to dad.

(he was at the family party with all the kids). After I hung up, I sat for a while and pondered on the last three months of our lives. The trials came one after the other first with Bekkah and Jackson's illnesses, then Emily's hospitalization and now the fire. Through it all the Lord has

blessed us. Rebekkah remains stable, Jackson is tolerating the battery of ongoing testing better than any grown up could, we caught Emily's infection before it became life threatening and her surgery went well, and we were all able to escape our little inferno without even a scratch. The adversary will proably continue to work hard as we prepare our next missionary to leave in the coming year, but our faith will not be shaken. Heavenly Father will continue to bless us as long as we are doing are best to keep his commandments and do our part. So bring it on!