Reconnecting With Amanda

Years ago, when our kids were in Primary, a family moved in next door to us- the Pattersons.  Their only child was a girl named Amanda.  She was in age between our oldest and 2nd oldest daughters.  They were not members of our church.  The girls invited her to Primary and she started attending every week.  We also invited her to attend our Family Home Evenings on Monday nights.  She attended every week.  We worked her into our Family Home Evening chart rotation and she faithfully took her turn at saying the prayer, leading the singing, teaching the lesson, presenting a talent, and providing the treats.  Her favorite was to present a talent.  Soon, she wanted to have the missionary discussions, which she had in our home.  She asked Ken to baptize her.  It was a special day.

A couple of years later, her mother, Penny wanted to take the discussions and, again, she had them in our home, or we went to hers to sit in as the missionaries taught her.   Ken also baptized Penny a short time later.  

Not long after that, their family moved to Idaho.  We would hear from them occasionally.  We knew that Penny went to the temple and that Amanda graduated from high school and went to Boise State.  We got an announcement of her marriage in the Boise temple in 2006.  We planned to travel to Idaho to attend, but then Ken's mom worsened, and we could see she was going to pass away, so we cancelled our trip (she did pass away that weekend.)  But then we didn't hear from Amanda or her parents for quite some time.  

But recently we reconnected.  Amanda and her husband were coming here for a wedding and wanted to get together.  We had them over for an afternoon and had a delightful visit.  Her husband is a jovial, talkative guy and they are raising their four boys in the gospel.  It made us so very happy to know that.  Amanda is a schoolteacher and was the representative from her school to the district and president of the union.  She has done well and is happy.

The only things that would have made the visit better is if we had remembered to take a picture.  But this is Amanda's Facebook picture.  

It was lovely to reconnect with this special person in our life.  We hope we can keep better connected going forward.