Quiver full of Quincys: A birthday party, a ward social, conference, collecting churches and the end of the first transfer

Sunday, October 2, 2016

A birthday party, a ward social, conference, collecting churches and the end of the first transfer

Time flies by so quickly! I can't believe its been another week! A couple of new firsts for this week were going to our granddaughter's 1st birthday party, experiencing General Conference here, our first ward social, and cooking breakfast for those at the church for Sunday's sessions.
It was awesome to eat Nicole's great dinner and to play with the grandkids Wednesday! Avery is so cute! Its amazing that in the short time we've been here she's changed so much in her motor skills!
Watching General Conference at the church is interesting. Apparently, usually its just the missionaries. We, the sisters actually, had the brilliant idea of having a Chili Cook Off after the Saturday afternoon session and before Priesthood meeting, so we had about 20 watching with us. We had about 45 people come to the cook off including 7 investigators!! Apparently making chili is serious business in Texas. So I made my usual easy chili with canned beans and canned tomato sauce and a package of mild chili seasoning, which I was embarrassed to enter in the contest. I was shocked to be the winner of the contest!
Richard and I decided that its too far for most of the members to go back and forth to eat between sessions, so we made pancakes, bacon, omelets, and smoothies after the first session Sunday morning. It was lots of fun and timely to get the missionaries all fed because of the fact that we're losing three of them! We are at the end of our first transfer! Sister White, Elder Sanchez and Elder Johnson are all leaving us! The good news is that they are all allowed to come back for baptisms of their investigators so we should see them all in the not to distant future; this Saturday for Elder Johnson and next Saturday for Sister White. I feel like I'm sending my kids off to college or something! So now we've been here as long or longer than all the missionaries in Cleveland!
Now for some culture. There are so many churches down here! Some streets will have one every block and they have some very unusual and obscure names. I've started trying to get pictures of them, which is difficult because its from the car as we zoom along. I'm especially partial to the Cowboy Churches, but only managed to get one of those this week. So I'm adding the pictures I've managed so far. This is a drop in the bucket!
It actually got down to 55 degrees one morning for our walk at 7:15. And that day it only got up to 79 degrees! We haven't been into the 90's all week, so I think its getting cooler and less humid. We hear that October is the biggest rainfall month. So far we've only had a few sprinkles.

We at losing half of these fun missionaries tomorrow!