Visiting San Bernardino!

Right after Christmas, we took a trip to California to visit Susanna's mission. She served in the California San Bernardino mission. It was a great trip and I loved meeting the people she served. Our first stop was in Victorville where we met her friend Robert.

We drove to San Bernardino and met her mission president and his wife later that evening.

The next day, we drove to Newport Beach and met David's family at the beach. It was pretty chilly so we didn't last long but we drove a few minutes to some tide pools which were more successful.

Afterwards, we went to a reptile zoo which had lots of interesting reptiles and smells and seemed a little overpriced. David paid for a snake encounter.

On Wednesday, we met Susanna's friend Laura and a few of her children. Laura told us about her Christmas tree. She had no money for Christmas but her children wanted a tree, so she tried to find one for them. She went to Walmart and couldn't find anything so she came home discouraged. Then later, she went outside and a very tall evergreen tree had shed some branches that were still living so she put them together to make a tree for her kids. It was her little Christmas miracle. You can see the tree in the background.

After visiting Laura, we drove to Christy's house. Christy is just 15 and was baptized 2 days before Susanna came home. She seems really well integrated into her new ward.

After Christy's house, we visited the first McDonald's store ever, then we drove by the Redlands temple. I really wanted to go in the temple and do a session but we had some cold symptoms that week so we couldn't.

The next two days we spent visiting Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park which really deserves its own post.

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Our Cousin Drew

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