Love and Marriage

Love and marriage.....love and marriage
They go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You can't have one without the other

Church leaders are concerned that many branch presidents in the Europe East Area are single. They are good, faithful priesthood holders, but lets face it, there are a lot of things you learn when you get married.  Besides the commitment issue, there are the lessons of compromise and forgiveness; most of life's important lessons are learned from our relationships with our spouses and children.  Charity, kindness, serving others, selflessness, learning to live within our means and a big one is patience....all these things we work on to make our marriages successful.

And it must be hard for these single branch presidents to counsel members who have marriage issues when they aren't  married themselves.  Women are complicated creatures and for men to even begin to understand them, they need to live with them at least 50 years.  And that's because after 50 years of marriage, they are so old and tired, men just give up trying to understand women....it's just too much effort.


To help with the lack of dating going on in the Baltic, there is another Celestial Marriage Activity being planned in Estonia in June. It would be nice if some of our young men could get a healthy dose of twitterpation before that event.

"Wait Sister Davis? Is twitterpation a word?"

Of course it is! You remember the word twitterpated from the Disney movie, Bambi, don't you?

Love and marriage, love and marriage

It's an institute you can't disparage

Ask the local gentry

And they will say it's elementary

And once a couple finds the love part...it's just a hop, skip & jump to marriage. 

But we all know that marriage is hard WORK!

And that is why the Vilnius, Lithuania branch organized a Strengthening Marriage Seminar on Saturday. Actually, Antti's wife Skaiste organized it. Latvia & Lithuania have a high divorce rate, but according to the government, there is no adequate explanation for it. The divorce rate is just under 50% with many Latvians' opting out of marriage entirely. Is it any wonder our YSA's aren't making marriage commitments in their 20's? And is it any wonder that some of the young marrieds in both countries are struggling with their marriages?

"My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met."

                                      Rodney Dangerfield

But Elder & Sister Davis wondered why WE were asked by Skaiste to attend the marriage seminar in her home country of Lithuania. What could we do to help? We found out....we could tell other attendees that even though Elder & Sister Davis love each other, we have had many struggles throughout our 36 years of marriage but we work through them. We recognize our spouses weaknesses and live with them.  And we don't give up when the going gets tough!  Of course, both spouses have to be willing to work together on this, a marriage can't be one sided. These are some of the messages that every couple needs to be reminded of.

After a talk by Elder Flake on communicating with our spouses....

"I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me."

          Anonymous

...the men and women went to different rooms.

President Boswell taught the men that their wives should be the most important person in their lives and to treat them as queens. He stressed that every Friday should be date night.  He must have done a good job because every husband planted a kiss on their wives lips when they came back together.

Sister Boswell had more of a discussion with the women and shared insights into what has made her marriage successful. The women brought up concerns about communicating properly with their spouses (men don't seem to listen very well)  and how much work they do for their children.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the discussion because the older married women gave tips to the younger wives. It cleared the air and gave perspective to the younger women who had concerns.

After we came together, (and Elder Davis gave Sister Davis a kiss on the cheek), it was time for lunch.

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like the horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can't have one, you can't have none,

you can't have one without the other!

Then it was time to play some interactive games....to see how well we knew our spouses and how well we worked together.

Antti and Skaiste....

Sister Davis had to make the hat and Elder Davis had to wear it to fish using a pole with a magnet attached. The fish had scriptures written on them and each couple had to look them up and explain how they related to marriage.

This picture got put on Skaistes facebook page with no explanation to it....just our names.

What caption would you put on it?

Write it as a comment at the bottom of the post :) 

And we weren't the only ones having fun....Pres. & Sister Boswell.

Elder & Sister Davis & Dainis attended a community choir concert in Riga the other night that Eva was singing in. We have come to love that girl so much. She is bubbly, sweet and friendly with everyone.  The choir sang delightful, Latvian religious songs. The conductor admitted that Latvia isn't know as a religious country but some of the prettiest music for choirs comes from songs sung in churches, so that is what they sang.

When we met with her afterwards, she said she was so excited to see us walk in with Dainis. Her friend Baiba, her little brother and her mom all came to the concert also.

And in case we don't have enough sweet young women for our rather slow-to-marry young men,  Baiba is now learning about our church and meeting with the missionaries...

Joke for the day: 

A man inserted an ‘ad’ in the classifieds: “Wife wanted”.
Next day he received a hundred letters.
 They all said the same thing:
“You can have mine.”