Rachel's Visit

When Rachel found out Omaha had a lantern festival in April, she contacted me and asked if she could come check of an item from her bucket list.  We always love a visit from Rachel.  As with all our other times spent together, she is fun to talk to and always has lots of well thought out questions and comments.  Among the most exciting things she told me this trip was that she was planning on moving to Peru in the fall!!!  It's been fun to hear all about over the past few months.  We even got to see her again at the end of July as she drove what was left of her belongings to her parents home in San Diego, CA.

When she came out in April we had to take Saturday morning to show her the Omaha Zoo.  It's just so impressive and huge that we usually take all visitors to see it.  

We rested up in the afternoon and headed out to the Lantern Fest that evening.  Sadly after being there for HOURS in the cold, they cancelled the event due to windy conditions and rescheduled it for the following night. Despite the cold we still had a lot of fun roasting marshmallows and introducing Rachel to all of our friends in Omaha.

Sunday we headed to church.  Rachel bore her testimony and shared a neat experience that set the tone for the entire church meeting, I was proud to call her my friend.  We had planned on going to Winter Quarters that day but had to once again head back to the Lantern Fest.  Paul decided to stay home with Beckett, he didn't want to take him out in the cold 2 nights in a row. We did finally get to light our lanterns into the sky, but it wasn't nearly as magical as the year before.  Many people didn't return the 2nd night and the wind kind of blew the lanterns horizontally instead of vertically!

The next morning we took Rachel out for donuts at Lamars and before she departed back to Indiana.  

Thanks for the visit Rachel!

As I mentioned, because she decided to move to Peru, we recently got to see her again on her drive west.  We did finally take her to Winter Quarters for a little lesson in church history.