Hope in the Hopoate Family

 We welcomed our 4th baby into our family just over a week ago! We were so excited for her arrival, but also nervous... Nervous because we still had not decided on her name. This was my experience on coming to her name.      Malachi and I had already known one part of her name. We knew we wanted her to carry the name Marie/Mary. Marie is my middle name after my great grandma, Dorothy Marie Kelsey Gerber. Then we had many experiences that told us that Mary should be apart of her name when we were at the temple. So we translated it into a different language. We loved Marie/Mary in Maori, which is Mere. But we didn't really know if it was better as her first name or middle name.     Now this sweet little girl is born! She is just absolutely teeny tiny! She weighed 6lbs 9oz at birth making her our smaller baby by over a pound. She also looked super Maori to us when she was first born so that helped us focus on just Maori names.     Well the next 24 hr...

 Well here we are! I didn't think this day would come haha. I am down to my last couple of days being pregnant because we have an induction planned if she doesn't come soon. That made me want to go back a bit and talk about how this all started. It's a crazy and long story so here goes... May 2022 I am innocently sitting in sacrament meeting trying to entertain 3 kids who are ages 4, 3, and 1. It's quite a lot of work as you can imagine. No matter how many quiet toys and quiet snacks I bring, it's always pretty loud and hectic. Well on this particular Sunday a High Councilman is speaking and he's one of my friends. He's sharing about how every time he asks his son to do something, he will do it, but he'll first say, "yes, in one minute." Like he'll say to his son, "Josh, take out the trash." And Josh will say, "Yes, in one minute!" So he asked us to think about when we might be saying that same thing, "yes, in one m...