Getting "caught" reading can change your life. . .

Mallory was very excited when I interviewed her for the blog/newsletter. Then weeks went by and the write up didn't come. Finally it is here. I met with Mallory a few weeks before she spoke in Sacrament meeting. She was helping out in nursery and I found out she is very excited to be pregnant with her first child. She is due February 15th, but she is going to push it out on the 14th, she says.

Mallory is married to Tim Withers. She is a native of Arizona. She was married March 7th and moved to our ward into our ward to start her married life. Mallory and Tim met through mutual friends in high school. They dated for 2 months. Then Tim left for his mission. They kept in touch via mutual friends for the next 7 years. One day she signed on to AIM (instant messaging on the computer) and he was there. She took him out and bought him lunch and they have been together ever since.
Sister Withers is a convert to the church. A few years ago she was working for a doctors office where everyone was Mormon. One day at work she was reading the Book of Mormon and some one "caught" her. She thought she was going to be in trouble for reading it. She wasn't sure she was allowed to read it. Her coworkers let her know it was a-ok to read the Book of Mormon. They set her up with the missionaries and 3 months later she was baptised.

Mallory works for a doctor in Scottsdale. For fun she likes to go shopping but she is not a good sale shopper. She also goes on hikes with her husband.

How Brady came to be in AZ

Erin Low loves reading. She could just sit and read all day and be happy. She, at the time of the interview, was reading Sookie Stack House novels. She also enjoys scrap booking and making Brady (that's her son) t-shirts. She is the activities day coordinator for the girls just before young women age in the ward. She really enjoys this calling.
Erin met her husband James when she went on a trip to Hawaii to visit a boy she dated who happened to live next to James. Back home on the mainland they were both in the same stake. About 4 months after their meeting in HI they met again around Christmas time. She went up and introduced herself again and they started writing to each other. She was friends with his sister. He came back to California in April for a farewell and they hung out the whole weekend. All summer they visited and wrote back and forth. In August that year Erin took it upon herself to move to Hawaii. She went on the BYU housing board and found a place to live. She found a job, and she dated James for the next 8 months. Then in January he popped the question.
They have been married 2 years and 2 months. After James graduated they decided to move to AZ because they didn't want to live with either set of parents! They have been here about a year. Brady is just over 6 months old. He is so sweet and cute!!

Need a 5 am haircut??

Please welcome Lindsey Gettler to the G3 ward family. She moved to Chandler from Mesa in June with her husband Adrian and their little 6 month old baby Alina. Alina is the cute little baby with piles and piles of hair. Her mom says she was born with it and it kept growing from there. I love it!

Lindsey and Adrian met in High School. Their school did a matching making profile of the students and the computer matched them up! They didn't really date until after Adrian returned from his mission and a friend set them up.

Lindsey is currently a stay at home mom. She likes to make things for her daughter like hair clips and stuff. She enjoys cooking. Lindsey is an expert hair cutter. Since she is currently at home with Alina, when people hire her for a cut, they come over before it gets too hot out and she styles and cuts their on her balcony.

Get to know Lindsey and you will learn about many more talents she has! Welcome to the Ward!

You can sit in her booth, if you wanna...

Kayla Conover and her husband Greg moved to AZ 2 months ago. They came here for Greg’s work. He works for US Airways. As a “perk” they get to fly for free. Their big vacation goals are Jerusalem (him) and Venice (her).

They have been married 1 year and 2 months. They met at Los Hermanos Mexican restaurant in Provo where there is now a booth named after them. When ever you work at Los Hermanos and meet there and then get married you get a booth named after you. This happens often enough at Los Hermanos that it is a tradition!

Kayla moved around a lot growing up. She mostly grew up in Alaska. Then they moved to Florida. She graduated from High School in Florida and moved to Utah to go to BYU. She is one semester away from graduating. She hopes to finish her classes here at ASU then graduate from BYU. She is studying communication disorders. She specializes in speech therapy.

Kayla said they are very happy to be here and they love the ward. She was just called to be in the nursery. It is her first time in a primary calling. Watch out Kayla! Cody is coming soon!

A Magic(al) Mountain a Moment

Angela is married to Chirs Hoach. To tell you how this came to be I have to start by telling you a bit about Chris. Chris’ father was in the military. He was living in Hawaii when he was called to serve his mission. He was called on his mission to serve in Southern California. While he was on his mission his family moved to Southern California about 40 miles south of where Chris was. They moved into Angela’s neighborhood. 3 months before Chris came home from his mission Angela was baptized. When Chris came home they were in the same ward.
Angela was a new convert and had recently just ended a long relationship. She was not interested in boys or dating. Her and Chris had friends in common and hung out but it was a few years before they started dating. Angela’s sister was dating Chris’s best friend. One day they all decided to go to the beach. Her sister was off talking to her boyfriend, so Angel was sort of “paired up” with Chris. They began talking about dating and how lame it was. She was teasing him about the girls he had dated. He agreed he needed to start dating girls his own age. She said, “hey, I’m 21. We should hook up.” He laughed at her.

After that they started hanging out more. They went to Magic Mountain. Angela is a water magnet when it comes to water rides. They went on the water ride. All of the water got on her. Everyone else on the whole raft was dry! The sun started going down and she was freezing cold & shivering. Chris was laughing at her. She turned to him and put her arms around him to hug him for warmth. As she describes it, “Chemistry happened & that’s the end of that story.” That was the moment she knew. Today they are living their happily ever after. They have 3 kids. Angela currently is a stay at home mom.

Arizona has a way of keeping people....

Ali Wilcock moved to Arizona 3 years ago from Texas to do her residency. She is a pediatrician. Her intent in moving here was to stay the 3 years that she committed to for her residency and then move back to Texas but all that changed…

3 months after Ali moved here she met Dalen. They had both recently been to Costa Rica and connected talking about their trips. Dalen was a member of the church and Ali wasn’t. Ali went with Dalen to church (an ASU singles ward!) a few times. She was very busy with her residency which required long hours of her. Dalen went back to Costa Rica and their dating life ceased for a while. Ali focused on her career & her goal of completing her residency. One day a friend asked her to take the missionary discussions with her. She really felt she was on the slow track to learning the gospel. 4 discussions took her a year. She initially agreed to take the lessons out of a curiosity.

Dalen came back home from Costa Rica and they started dating. Ali finished her residency. He baptized her a member of the church in April of 2008. Ali and Dalen were in Costa Rica again last August when he asked her to marry him. They were married in January of this year. They decided to stay in Arizona since all of Dalen’s family is here.

Ali currently works at an office across from our ward building. She enjoys outdoor activities. She likes running, & hiking. Her and her hubby have even done some ½ marathons together. They have a little doggie named Aggie.

Branding Cows, Sprayed by a Skunk.. Come get to know this sweet sister!

Leslie Gurtler has 4-5 active boys! They are 4, 7, 8, and 10. Her boyfriend has a 6 year old son also who is often with her and the family. Leslie is a Registered Nurse who is currently a stay at home mom.

Leslie was raised on a 72 thousand acre cattle ranch in northern Arizona. She rode horses, milked cows, branded cattle, and collected eggs from their chickens. She was sprayed by many a skunk in her youth, too. Skunks like to try to steal the eggs from the chicken coup. Every once in a while she would go in to collect the eggs and there would be a skunk waiting. And Shhhehhe. Phew, Blammo, she is now stinky! And the old adage that if you hold a skunk up by it’s tail it can't spray is NOT true! Leslie learned this from experience. To get that stink out of her and off her she had to bathe in Orange Juice and tomato juice and it still lingered for a week!
Nowadays Leslie enjoys less stinky activities. She loves to read fantasy books. Lord of the Rings is amongst her favorites. She likes to work out when she can. She enjoys scrapbooking when she has the time. And time permitting she enjoys surfing the internet.

Astrophysics for fun...

She came from Bosnia 8 years ago to go to school here in the United States and she found love. Selma went to the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her future husband Daniel Escobar went to the University of Texas, El Paso. They both worked for the same professor but didn’t meet until 2 ½ years after that.

After graduating Selma moved to Arizona and got a job at Intel. This is where she actually met Daniel. She met him in the cafeteria. It was her first week there. She is a bit shy and no one was talking to her. Her shyness kept her to herself. Then Daniel came up and sat down at her table and just started talking to her. They became friend. Work friends at first. Then they started dating 6 months later. About a year and a half after that they were married in the Temple. They have been married since November 2008. Selma and Daniel both work at Intel and they still have lunch together. She loves being able to lunch with her husband everyday.

For fun, Selma likes to read about and learn Astrophysics. She also likes to ski. She also travel. This is her in Switzerland last year!

Happy Graduation!

Erica Benson graduates tomorrow, June 3rd! Woo-hoo! Congratulations! She is not looking to take too much time off. She plans to get a job for the summer. (Does anyone have any good leads?) She will start at Chandler/Gilbert in the fall.

Erica loves soccer. She plays on a local adult league. It is a blast. She has met some awesome people.

I asked her to share something about herself that you might not know. She likes reading and writing. She really likes writing stories. People might guess she’d enjoy writing sports stories, but that is not the case. She likes to write love stories. She has the “nerdy” heroine get the guy. She tells me the stories are "twisted in a good way." She is not published yet, so she is keeping her writings to herself. Maybe one day...

Erica has and older sister and a younger brother. She says in 5 years she will probably be coaching soccer with 4 babies. "4 babies in 5 years? From now?" I ask. "Oh, wait." she says, "I will get my associates degree first."