Hearts Full of Gratitude

In front of the Newport Beach Temple doors after Ryan's endowment

We don't even know where to begin to thank our Heavenly Father for the abundant blessings our family has received throughout the year. Having a son and brother in the mission field has definitely blessed each one of our lives infinitely. Our family has become closer, stronger and grown in so many more ways than we ever thought possible last May when we all hugged Ryan goodbye.

On this day of Thanksgiving we want to echo the words of one of Ryan's "favorites", our loving Apostle President Jeffrey R. Holland, and wholeheartedly agree; we really do love you the most Elder D!

"I would like to thank every missionary who has ever labored in this transcendent latter-day undertaking we have been given. The rolling forth of the restored gospel is a miracle in every sense of the word, and not the least of the miracle is that a significant portion of it rolls forward on the shoulders of 19-year-olds! As we have seen your sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, (and in some cases your parents and grandparents!) faithfully laboring, I have pictured the tens of thousands of others like them we have met all over the world. Clean, clear, bright-eyed missionaries, laboring two-by-two, have become a living symbol of this Church everywhere. They themselves are the first gospel message their investigators encounter--and what a message that is. Everyone knows who they are, and those of us who know them the best, love them the most."

Abide in Me Ensign May 2004