What a Splendid Weekend!

My husband Steve works with the most wonderful people. For years he has worked with people from all over the world. I love that about his job. Some of these "international" colleagues have moved here to Salt Lake to work at Church Headquarters. Steve has loved working more closely with them here and we finally got everyone together to have a dinner party the other night.

I met a couple of Steve's colleagues years ago when I visited Steve in Europe while he was there on an 8 week assignment. It was so fun to see them again and finally meet these people that Steve has been video conferencing etc and talking about for years. Plus they also brought their families and that just made it even better!!! I instantly loved them all!!

These people are just about the nicest people you could ever know. In our group of 5 families we had 7 countries represented: France, Germany, England, Scotland, Peru, Africa, and the Philippines. At the dining room table I heard three different languages as well as English being spoken. Plus we had English spoken with a Scottish accent and English spoken with an English accent. Wow oh wow did we have a lot to talk about!! I could not get enough.

Everyone brought food to share and so we had a really yummy lemony chicken dish from Peru, Brie and yummy cheese from France, a very special Christmasy dessert from France, German bread..homemade...yum! and more.

I love how the Gospel binds our hearts together in love no matter what language we speak or where we are from!

I did not get enough pictures and that is a bummer...but we were just enjoying the moment. Gilles got a group photo and promised to email them out so hopefully I can post that here soon.

Here is (from left to right) Gilles from France (the dinner party was at their very lovely home) John from Scotland, (moved here about a year ago from Germany) and Miguel from Peru.

Jacob made a new friend. This is Miguel's son. They moved here a couple of years ago from Peru.

The boys had a great time with their new friends. They played games and watched a movie. In this group we have David's son, Eric (from Germany) then Jonathan and Joseph, Chloe, Sarah and Evanie (from France) and Miguel's other son....hmmm...can't quite remember his name...

This looks like a calm game but there were crazy moments of laughter and fun...These kids just instantly bonded..... and they want to get together again. Joseph went to a hockey game a couple of weeks earlier with Chloe, Evanie and Sarah and had a great time.

Here's the group photo....What a  fun night together.

I still wish we could live somewhere foreign.... have the Germany experience for a few years.... We almost took the opportunity to live in England about 10 years ago. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had we taken that opportunity..

So grateful that my husband works with such a great group of men. So grateful he works for such a fine and beautiful institution. So grateful to be involved in this work...