Merry Christmas 2024!!

At this Christmas time we wish to express our gratitude for all of our you, our dear family and friends! Thank you for loving and supporting us and our family! We have seen so many blessings this year and are filled with gratitude for our Heavenly Father and for our Savior, Jesus Christ. It was a special and sacred experience to witness the beginnings of two new eternal families this year as our son and our daughter were sealed to their sweethearts in the temple for time and all eternity! I am so grateful for temples and the sealing power that binds families together forever!

We were also blessed with another grandbaby this year and are expecting another one any day! It is so rewarding to watch our family grow and see what a wonderful job our children are doing as they parent their own children. Other highlights of this year included several graduations (Josh, high school; Jared, BA in Business Management from Utah Tech; Ellen MA in Professional Communications from SUU; and Jase's MBA from Western Governors University.) We also currently have two missionaries serving (Jaiden in Mongolia, and Josh in Korea.) They missed both the weddings but were represented with their cardboard cut-outs! :)

Our house is even more quiet now that Josh is gone, leaving Jenna the only child at home. As the youngest of seven children she is used to a fair amount of noise and chaos and doesn't like being an only child! Thankfully she has a lot of friends to fill in the gap! Rick is continuing in his job as the ASL coordinator and advisor for the Seminaries and Institutes throughout the US and Canada. It has been so exciting to see all of the progress that is happening with the program! When he isn't working at his full-time job, Rick will often interpret in the community. His favorite kind of interpreting is on a cruise ship!

I continue to work as an ASL interpreter in many different capacities including university, theatrical, medical, community, and sometimes even cruise interpreting whenever Rick can get me to join him! We took several trips this year both as a couple and with the children. Some of the trips included a cruise to Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Isles, a church history trip to Nauvoo (with family and cousins), a family trip to Bear Lake and Chicago, a cruise to Bermuda, an anniversary trip to New York (celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary), a quick excursion to Bryce Canyon, and more! 

Our children have been had quite the eventful year as well! Here are their updates! 

Brandon and Janika: This year has been a wild ride for our little family. It started with a preeclampsia diagnosis and the early delivery of our sweet little Callan Vance. He spent three weeks in the NICU and then was able to join us at home. Callan had a really rough start to life which led to all kinds of doctors’ appointments and several months of feeding therapy, but he is in a much better spot now! Still not sleeping well though so please send all the good sleep vibes you can muster, because we are exhausted. He's the happiest little boy and we are so grateful he is ours. Everett is two and a half and loves to sing, dance, read stories, and snuggle, and we can't get enough of his darling chatterbox personality. Brandon is still working remotely for Flexible Financial as their revenue operations system administrator. Janika is still working three days a week as an elementary school counselor and currently serves in the young women's presidency. This has been a crazy year that has tested us in so many ways but thanks to lots of prayers we made it and are looking forward to what next year will bring!

Jase and Ellen: Another year is in the books and it’s been a pretty good one for us! To start, Ellen changed jobs and now is a consulting partner in a couple of starter businesses. This allows her flexibility to stay at home with the boys, and use her new master's degree. In the spring, we moved out of our house in Herriman and moved into Ellen’s parents house where we rent the upstairs. We love being closer to town and to my work and getting to save a little on rent. This year I also applied for a promotion with my current company and got the job, so I am now a lab manager at our other location. I also started my MBA with WGU in July and finished it off in October. Last and most importantly, we found out this year Ellen was pregnant with a girl! We are so excited to have another girl in our family and we expect her to come any day now despite Ellen being due in mid January. Evan is now three years old and enjoys his new gymnastics class, playing with his brother, and being outside. Eli turned two this year and has grown into quite the little toddler. He loves playing outside with Evan, eating lots of food, and spending snuggle time with his mommy and daddy. It has been a wonderful year for us and we are so blessed to have such a wonderful family that continues to grow!

Jared and Hallie: 2024 was an iconic year for us. Why is it that I say, “us?” BECAUSE HALLIE AND I GOT MARRIED! Yeah, that was awesome. But it also didn't happen until September so let me backtrack a bit. This year I continued on the seminary teaching path and since I finished my bachelor's degree at the end of last year I was able to start my master's degree this year through SUU. I cranked out some online classes that kept me busy. During the summer I was able to enjoy teaching at some FSY sessions in Ephraim and Provo, and Hallie and I got locked in on the marriage idea and so I proposed to her in June. We were so excited to get married that our engagement felt like it lasted forever (plus we were training for a marathon the whole time making it truly lengthy) but eventually our big day in September came, and we were sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Temple. We didn't go on our honeymoon though until after our marathon was completed, so we got to start off our marriage accomplishing something great! We've spent the rest of this year staying busy with our master's degrees and enjoying our time together in our new little basement apartment, and we are incredibly excited to see where this next year takes us!  Click HERE to see Jared and Hallie's Wedding Video! 

Janelle and Bryton: This has been such a big year for Bryton and me! The most noteworthy event was our wedding at the end of November in the St. George Temple! The wedding and reception went perfectly, and we are beyond thrilled to be united for eternity! Other than that, we are both in our second year at BYU, with Bryton studying Information Systems and I am studying Psychology. Bryton recently started a job helping with database and tech at a small business in Provo, and I worked as an MTC teacher at the beginning of the year and am now working as an Infield Mentor for the MTC. It has been a successful year for us both and we can’t wait for the many years to come! 

Jaiden:  Христийн мэндэлсний баярын мэнд хүргэе! Khristiin mendelsnii bayriin mend hurgey! Merry Christmas! (Those all mean the same thing...) so yeah I have actually lived in Mongolia for this WHOLE YEAR WOOO how cool is that? It still seems fake to me too. This year has been incredible. I have had the opportunity to travel all over the country of Mongolia and serve the most amazing people. I’m not quite sure how to summarize my year into one little paragraph, but I'll try my best. This year I fell in love with beautiful Mongolia, experiencing traditions like Tsagaan Sar and Naadam, meeting so many cool people, teaching some of my greatest friends about the gospel, teaching English to anyone I can, eating super strange foods like sheep head and anus, and just living it up and learning to love all Mongolia has to offer. I am so thankful for all of the support I've had over this past year!! I wouldn't trade lessons I've learned or the memories I've made for the world! 

Click here for Jaiden's Christmas message through song! 

Josh: Josh finished up another successful year of soccer on the Snow Canyon High School soccer team and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. He received the All-State award for soccer, and the Seal of Biliteracy for Chinese. Josh was the Bass section leader for the high school Madrigals. They performed at many places including Disneyland! Josh spent many hours a week working out at the gym and enjoyed making “Cringy Vibe” videos with his friends, Adam and Caleb. Josh has four nephews who love spending time with him! Josh has been in the Chinese Dual Immersion program since kindergarten and passed the Chinese AP test as a freshman. So, we were all surprised when he opened up his mission call to discover that he would be serving in the Korea Seoul Mission!! Josh immediately started learning Korean and started his mission on August 12th. He was in the MTC for two months and has been in Korea for two months. We look forward to his letters and zoom calls each week. He is having a great experience! 

Jenna: This was an awesome year for me!! So much happened. I had some accomplishments that I am proud of and also had some great memorable experiences! I have some amazing friends, and I hang out with them all the time. They are so much fun, and we have had some super fun times together. This year I also got a job at Tuacahn!! It was my very first job and so I was super nervous, but it is so much fun. I love it! This year I was also very focused on school and Chinese because I was taking the Chinese AP test, which is a very hard and important test. I took some booster classes to help prepare and I ended up passing! I was very happy!! This year I also started learning how to drive. I always loved driving, and I got my driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday. I passed my driver’s test with a -13, which is not very good, but at least I passed! Although it’s quite ironic that now that I have my license I hate driving because it scares me. I even hit a curb, which I have done quite a bit, but this time my bumper fell off.  Now that I am sixteen I am also able to go on dates! I am also singing with the SCHS Madrigals and dancing with Southwest Dance. My year altogether has been great, and I wouldn’t change a thing!

As you can see, we have been extremely blessed! We are so grateful for all of the tender mercies we have received throughout our year. We wish all of you a wonderful Christmas and many blessings to come in the new year! 

Love, 

The Jensens