Alyssa Receives Her Mission Call

Alyssa made the decision to serve a mission when she was a junior in high school. It is kind of a cool story, so I thought this is a good place to share. She was going through a rough patch, spiritually, leading up to that year in high school. She had recently made a split off from her friend group that she had had since childhood because she felt like most of them were making choices in their lives that didn't align with where she wanted her life to go. She went to FSY the summer before her junior year and told me after she got back that it was the best week, both socially and spiritually. She made the comment that she had forgotten what if felt like to feel the spirit and FSY helped her remember again. And then she got assigned to a seminary class with a teacher that changed her life. I don't even remember his name even though she has told me many times, but he made such an impact on her at a vulnerable time in her life. One night, I was headed out the door to something and I went to check in with Alyssa and she started to tell me about the experience she had that day starting in seminary. She said that they were talking about missionary work in class and it got her thinking about whether or not she should serve a mission. She got home from school and read through her patriarchal blessing as well as some scriptures about missionary work and received this really strong impression that she should serve a mission.

After making the decision to go, it was easier for her to make plans for her future. She also was heavily influenced by a new group of friends to continue in the path that led towards serving a mission. With a December birthday and an acceptance letter from BYU, she had to make the decision of whether to go after one semester of college or to go in the summer after completing a full year. She felt really strongly that she should go after one semester and put forth every effort to go as close to her birthday as possible. She submitted her papers on the earliest day she could and received her call on August 13th. She invited friends, coaches, family, and other meaningful people in her life to come watch her open her call. We put a world map and a US map up on the wall for people to make guesses. We also created an online guessing game for people from far away to make a guess, too. The lighting isn't great, but here is what the maps ended up looking like.

The nervous anticipation.

 

Reading her call letter. 

 She is going to the Philippines Angeles Mission and starts home MTC on January 6th. She will enter the Provo MTC on January 15th and then spend 8 weeks there before flying to the Philippines. We have heard that she will also spend a couple of weeks in the Manila MTC, but she hasn't received anything official about that yet. She will be preaching the gospel in the Tagalog language.

She is thrilled with her call, even though she has heard horror stories about the spiders and bugs there and the heat. She has heard that the people there are amazing and the treat the sister missionaries like princesses. They will especially love her blond hair and how tall she is. I actually told her back in June that I had the feeling that she was going to go to the Philippines. I don't know why. There are a lot of missions there, so I ended up guessing the Manila mission. Close, but not her exact mission. She will have such hard times over the next 2 years, but also so many joyful times too. I look forward to hearing about her experiences.

Start of School

The kids started school on August 14th (Ashley) and August 15th (Tyler and Camden) this year. I didn't get a picture of Ashley because she was quite grumpy on the first day of school and we barely made it on time. Tyler wasn't very excited for school either, but he did take a pic

Ashley is in 11th Grade at American Heritage School. Her classes include English, Algebra 2, Digital Design, Dramatic Improvisation, Seminary, World Religions, and Medical Anatomy and Physiology. Tyler is in 6th Grade with Mr. Cook. He is quite relaxed about discipline which makes for a chaotic classroom sometimes, but I think Tyler is enjoying his class. He has a drum set, guitar, and a foosball table in the classroom. Camden is in 4th Grade with Mrs. Oliekan (the same teacher Tyler had in 4th grade). He is loving being in her class, as well. Both boys are at Snow Springs Elementary School. 
 

Miner Family Reunion

Our biannual Miner family reunion was back at the YMCA Camp of the Rockies again this year. It's a beautiful location and the YMCA has some fun amenities. There was a fire down the mountain from Estes Park the week of the reunion, so our normal route had a road closure. GPS led us on a route through the mountains which ended up taking us into Rocky Mountain National Park. This would have been super annoying if we hadn't already been planning on buying a pass to go into the park on this trip. We ended up climbing up the winding roads to over 10,000 ft in the park. It was a beautiful drive, but caused a bit of car sickness. So we got out at the top for a bit.

We arrived at the Barclay Cabin around 4:30pm. Ashley was our only kid that was actually looking forward to the reunion. Alyssa was sad about it because Connor would not be there and she doesn't have any other cousins close to her age on this side of the family. Our boys were not that excited because they are a lot closer to their wheeler cousins than the Miner ones. However, after we got there, they found cousins to hang out with and ended up having a lot of fun.

On Saturday, most of us headed up to this mountain coaster in Estes Park. We have never done it before and it ended up being a lot of fun. Alyssa and Claire dressed in matching outfits that day without even planning it.

The kids got to play Bingo 3 of the nights we were there. Camden picked out this drawing board on the first night and spent the rest of the reunion drawing on it a lot.

On Saturday, I went with the boys and Ashley to the pool. I didn't get any pictures because I accidentally left my phone in the car. We stayed until Ashley, Tamma, and Claire were done swimming. I took them back and then tried to return with the boys, but the pool was filled to capacity, so they put us on a waitlist. We went mini golfing instead, which was also fun.

On Sunday, I went with Alyssa on a walk. We ended up on this trail that could have taken us into Rocky Mountain National Park, but we stayed on our side of the river instead. It was still beautiful.

On Monday, we joined Christy, Jeff, Becky, and anyone from their families that wanted to come at Rocky Mountain National Park. We did a hike up to Lake Haiyaha. It was kind of a stormy afternoon and it started dumping on us right when we got to the trailhead. Fortunately, it calmed to a crizzle by the time we started hiking and the sun came out at the top so that we could get some awesome pictures with the blue water of the lake.

It was so pretty and peaceful at the top. The hike down went much quicker. We stopped quickly at this waterfall on the way down.

We didn't see hardly any wildlife in the park. But we did see some elk on the drive back out.

We were a little bit late for Bingo that night, but they waited for us so it worked out. Camden got these waxy sticks on the last night. He wasn't that happy with them until I showed him how to use them. Then he quickly made some fun figures.

We also played tennis on Saturday and Monday and a lot of 1 high in the evenings. It's always fun to be with my family at these reunions. We aren't sure how many more we will have. We are looking into a location in Southern Utah for 2026, but we aren't sure if it is big enough to fit everyone.