Aaron and Briesa Got Hitched

 20 September - 26 September 2021

I felt absolutely awful at the beginning of this week with a cold. I still attended work and FHE on Monday (where we went to the Rollins and had delicious smoked burgers). The nice thing about work is that it is very slow in the mornings, so I was able to relax and take it easy. On days when I'm feeling better, it's nice to be able to work on other things, like my orientation course for classes starting soon. I stayed home from the evening activities on Tuesday and just rested all day and night. I think I slept pretty much all day. I was so exhausted! I felt bad that I couldn't help much with the wedding. On Wednesday, I made a bunch of gluten-free cookies for the wedding. My mom was stressing about there not being enough food (though of course there turned out to be waayyy more than enough), so I wanted to help ease her worries. That simple task wiped me out and I rested for the rest of the day. That evening, I met up with co-workers from the ice rink at Costa Vida for dinner as a get-to-know-you thing. It was alright. I wasn't very impressed with the food, and the company was interesting. On Thursday, I worked and when I got home, I helped a bit with setting up outside for the wedding, but mostly watched because Wendy had a lot of people over to help. I went to institute in the evening and got to see my high school seminary teacher, Brother Blamires! I stayed after to play some dodge ball. I left work early on Friday to be home to help with wedding preparations. Then I got ready and off to the temple we went! It was sweet and tender to watch Aaron and Briesa be sealed for time and all eternity. We took pictures outside of the temple afterwards. I got a lot of compliments on my appearance. Then we went to the reception! It was a hit. Everyone had such a blast and it was so pretty and there was SO much chick-fil-a left over. And treats left over. One of the highlights of the night for me was when I danced with Kayla's baby Jaylee. I bounced her around and she had so much fun. Her big blue eyes were round as she took everything in. Symantha was a beast! She worked so hard all night, making sure everything ran smoothly.

On Saturday, I was SO tired, but I still had to go in to work at 7am. I brought left over treats with me because my mom wanted to get rid of as much as she could. That made my coworkers very happy. When I got home, I slept and slept and slept. My whole family was just tired from the wedding. Aaron and Briesa left that evening for their honeymoon. We worked on Lucy's murder mystery escape room activity that she is putting on for mutual next week. 

My lesson on Sunday went well. I did my job, which was to focus on Jesus Christ and invite the Spirit. I did that, and it went wonderfully, despite my imperfections. I got a lot of thank-yous after. I could see that a lot of people felt the Spirit and were touched. Valerie and I went to the AZ region wide devotional, and it was good (though we didn't find any boys to get numbers from). I love how there is still so much to learn in the gospel. I learned new truths about eternity and that at baptism, we covenant to be obedient to God. The sacrament renews that covenant because we promise to obey, but it also adds in two other new covenants: to take His name upon us and to always remember Him. And then the first covenant we make in the temple is also to be obedient to God. God loves us to promise to be obedient.

Much love,

Emily Burnham