November 24, 2022

(Paula) Sending you warm wishes this Thanksgiving. We hope your day has been filled with joy and peace as you gathered with your families. We miss you and we miss our grandchildren and their parents. But we are filled with warmth. Not only from the beautiful Hawaiian weather, but from the God’s love as we feel so blessed to be here. Since it is Thanksgiving, we will show and tell you a few of the things we are thankful for. 

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(Mark) I’m thankful for the dozen or more different colors of hibiscus and orchids we have seen here.

Mark's photo 
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 (Mark) I am thankful for the diversity of plant life we see here in Hawaii. One of the unusual plants is this little tree that has about 50 little trunks, and this huge Banyan tree that also has about 50 trunks. I don’t know if they are just the same kind of tree at different stages of development or not.

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(Paula) I'm thankful for our cool new cellphones. With fancy phones and gorgeous scenery, we feel like professional photographers.

Mark's photo at Waikiki

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(Paula) I'm thankful for Elder Soderborg. He humors me by letting me do silly things like figure out which palm tree on campus is the tallest. And he lets me stand as long as I want watching waves and taking photos. 

I think this one is the tallest.

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(Paula) I’m thankful for the turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and hula dancers at our missionary Thanksgiving dinner today.

(This song sums up our feelings today:

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.

For the beauty of each hour,
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flower,
Sun and moon, and stars of light.

For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind's delight,
For the mystic harmony
Linking sense to sound and sight.

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild.

Lord of all, to Thee we raise,
This our hymn of grateful praise.

At this holiday season, we send you all our "gentle thoughts and mild" and pray that the Lord's blessings will be with you.