My wife and I were born and raised in Washington, Utah. We both had typical small town life’s. Darcee’s dad passed away when she was 12. He was a school teacher at Washington Elementary. His wife Liz Barney raised their 6 kids on her own the rest of the way and never remarried. Darcee and I met in high school through friends of fiends. She wrote occasionally while I served a full time mission In Orlando, Florida. I was serving in a little town called Okeechobee. oddly during my time serving there I was receiving promptings that I would live there some day. I quickly brushed aside the feelings and figured some day with my future wife, would serve a mission there in that area possibly. Also in that area I met my oldest son Markies’s. He was 3 years old at the time. His grandmother was raising his older brother and 2 older sisters. When I got home from my mission my future wife and mother in law met me at the air port to welcome me back home. After a week or so we began dating and have been inseparable ever since! We were married in the St George temple Feb 7 2003. That same year 9 months later November 7th Jaeden was born. 2 years later our beautiful daughter Avery was born. 4 years after that our son Treyson was born. Life was amazing living the gospel life in southern Utah and it could not get much better than that (so we thought) Little did we know things were about to get turned up side down. My wife and I in 2010 went to Orlando for a business meeting. While in Orlando my wife and I attended church in the little branch from my mission in Okeechobee. It was a great reunion. We saw people that were taught and baptized while I served in the small branch. The spirit felt was strong and refreshing. While there we asked Markies’s grandma if he did well in school that year if we could bring him to Utah for the summer. She agreed. On the plane ride home my wife with tears in her eyes told me she had had promptings to move to the Okeechobee branch and help out. The feelings from my mission days rushed back and I knew then she was right and that was where we needed to be. Then I wasn’t not sure. A few weeks after our trip President Alonzo in Conference 2011 gave a talk and urged us to do what was right without delay. This was the answer we were looking for. We immediately put our house up for sale, sold our business and loaded our 3 kids into a RV and headed for Florida. When we got there life was simple and much different than our Utah life. Our kids were the minority as far as religion in there school. Darcee and I held many callings in our time there in the small branch. 1 1/2 years later we were presented with the opportunity to move back home to help family out. Markies had been living with us in Okeechobee so when we decided to move back out west we asked Mary (Markies grandma) if we could get guardianship of him and take him with us. Seeing an amazing opportunity for her grandson as a loving grandmother she agreed. We moved back to Utah for only about a year when the company I worked for back in Florida asked if I would come back and run a department for them in Okeechobee. We prayed about it and felt strongly it was to happen so back to Florida we went. Markies graduated (first one in his family to do so) then got a mission call to Bakersfield California. As proud of him as we were it was so hard to see him go. Jaeden, Avery and Treyson were heart broken to see their oldest brother leave. We never knew that they could grow so close. After he left for his mission in Bakersfield another career opportunity came up in Mesquite to work for the Ken Garff dealership. It was an answer to our prayers again. We packed up the family and moved to Mesquite. While In Mesquite we began to foster little ones through Clark County out of Las Vegas. In January 2019 we adopted our little girl Jizelle that we took placement of when she was 2 weeks old. Then In March of the same year we adopted our little girl Athena that we brought home from the hospital in foster care. All three are now sealed to us for time and all eternity. Markies is married to our lovely daughter in law Hanna and they have a beautiful little girl, Aurora our 1st grandchild. We currently foster 2 more little ones and have not been this happy ever. Life in the valley couldn’t be more amazing!! We love the stake and the surrounding areas here in Mesquite Nevada. We are so blessed to have been led on this amazing journey and can’t wait to see what great things the Lord has in store for us and our little growing family in the future. There are so many blessings and faith promoting situation’s to list on this small abbreviation of the last few years of your lives but we know we have been led here by divine intervention and this is where Heavenly Father wants our little growing family.
