Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Grandpa Pete

"He loved to make beautiful things."

My Granda Peterson passed away earlier this month with complications from heart surgery. He was born in Logan so his family chose to have him buried here with his parents, and Jordan and I were able to host all the visiting family for lunch and a day of visiting on the day of the service last weekend. What a blessing. 

My heart felt so full with gratitude for so many reasons. 

I was so grateful for the opportunity to serve. Things have been going pretty smoothly for our family and we'd been praying for a chance for our family to serve. We worked and prepared and crossed off lists to get our home clean and organized and to have everything ready for the luncheon... and we prayed that those who would come here would feel a sweet spirit of peace in our home at this hard time. 

Another great blessing was hearing and learning so many really good things about my grandpa. My mom (and her siblings) never had a great relationship with their dad, so I had rarely heard anything good about him. What a gift to hear from my aunts and uncles about his talents, his efforts, his trials, his good desires, his work to be a good father. And what a witness to the power of the atonement to see their healing and their peace. 

One thing my Aunt Eileen said after describing many of the things he had fixed and built  was "He loved to make beautiful things." This is a gift of my own that I've often attributed to my mom. What a sweet discovery to learn that this is something I can thank not only my mother for but her mother and father as well. (And quite likely their mothers and fathers...)

My aunts and uncles have done so much to serve me and my family since I was young. I felt so grateful this past weekend for them, and  for the opportunity to serve these good, good people who have done so much to love and care for me throughout my life.