Hinckley Blog

On Saturday we were in Southampton, NY & when we walked into a cute little Italian place for dinner, JT spotted non other than Creminelli meats! It was pretty exciting. Way to go Creminelli!

Elder Jensen, our faithful Ayudante, completes his mission next week. So on preparation day this week we took the Ayudantes and the office staff for an excursion to Tossa de Mar, one of our favorite places.

The mission rule is that Elders do not go to, near, or in sight of the beach. Any exceptions must be 1) on cold and rainy days, and 2) when accompanied by the mission president. Both conditions were met, which had the Elders jumping for joy!
The medieval city of Tossa is one of the most picturesque sites on the Costa Brava.The old walled city is still inhabitated, although the city has grown well beyond the original walls.Our favorite picnic spot is located near the top of the city on the edge of cliff overlooking the sea.

Saturday I had coordinating council meeting in Madrid (with our Area Seventy, Elder Camargo and the stake presidents and district presidents from our mission and Bilbao). I had planned to travel over on the AVE, but we got word that the Church offices in Madrid wanted us to swap cars with the temple president as part of a reduction in fleet, so we volunteered to drive our car to Madrid and drive the new one back.

With the permission of the Area Presidency, we packed an overnight bag and headed off to Zaragoza on Friday morning, interviewed the five missionaries there (and did a temple recommend interview for a member), then headed into new country for us - the freeway to Madrid!

It is about 3 1/2 hours to Zaragoza and another 3 1/2 hours to Madrid. We arrived about 6:00 and the temple president had us stay in the "General Authority" room in the CCM housing area on temple square. It is a lovely room - some of you will remember staying at the CCM during the Madrid Temple dedication.


And the view from the room was lovely:

Friday night we met the Cleggs (Bilbao) and the Watkins (Madrid) and had dinner together at a Chinese restaurant. It was 2 1/2 hours of non-stop talk sharing issues, asking questions, telling stories!

Saturday morning we spoke at a devotional in the CCM and were able to meet the one missionary coming to us next week, Hna. Bennion. We were expecting 5 more but none of them have visas yet. We did, however, meet two going to Bilbao that will come to our mission on July 1 with the boundary change.


We also did a session the beautiful Madrid temple, then Pte. Clegg and I went to our meeting. After the meeting we did our car trade. We left behind our 2006 silver Toyota Avensis (Avalon) and picked up a 2008 silver Toyota Avensis - but it has automatic transmission and cruise control! It is the only car I have seen in Europe with automatic and cruise, and it made the trip home a dream!

It was late afternoon by the time we left Madrid, so we decided to stop and spent the night in Lerida since we had never attended Church there. We had a wonderful visit Sunday morning with the members and missionaries.



We then set our cruise control and cruised home! All in all, it was great weekend excursion - interviews, talk, temple session, training meeting, new car, ward visit, 

I loved having time with Annie while the girls were in school. Here are just a few things I caught on camera. Now the girls are out of school and it's nice for her to have her favorite playmates, but I sure love our one-on-one time.

We had a great day in Salt Lake on Monday. We stopped by the cemetery before heading to Ginny's for swimming and bbq with all the Pearces. Being at Ginny's brought back so many memories of playing there as kids. I loved sitting in her white chairs by the pool, pushing the girls on the swings, watching them climb the tree behind the garage, and mostly sitting around the table laughing with my cousins.