Our first Crawfish Boil!

We officially started teaching Glenda's husband this week.  He's the cutest!  Tammy still hasn't gotten the message about when she should be baptized.  I'm praying that it'll be Saturday when 3 of my sisters and my sister by marriage are here visiting. The dad of Morgan, a cute girl the Sisters are teaching came to the party and then to church on Sunday!  He grew up in the church and is now trying to get ready to baptize his daughter!! 

Crawfish lovers!

It was outside of my comfort zone, but really delicious, it tastes like lobster. They cook in a Cajun spice with potatoes and corn.  I actually liked the potatoes better than the crawfish tails.  Lots less work to eat, too.  Some people suck the meat out of the head, too.  I just stuck to the tails, which are pulled off and then the shell is pulled off.  Sister Housman, being from Hawaii is all about sucking all the meat out. 

They just pour the whole pot onto the table and everyone loads up their trays!

Before they were cooked..

while cooking...

onto the second pot.  The family of members that invited us, the Sisters and the Roberts, also invited the family of investigators you see in the background. 

This sign is in a yard on our way to Glenda's house. 

This cool tree was in Luke's back yard.

While we were having a fun Senior Missionary Conference and attending the temple...

our daughter Jessica was running her first marathon.  She not only finished, but qualified for the Boston Marathon!!

We decided that we needed to have a ward party with just one Sunday to announce and advertise, so I had the brilliant idea to make reminders to take to the members that weren't there that Sunday and to our investigators and less active members.  We spent many hours this week delivering them.  We were nervous that our efforts were wasted at 6:00 when hardly anyone was at the church.

The Elders blew up all the balloons for the tables for our "Up" with missionary work ward party!.

But, in the end we had 11 investigators there and around 85 people! One of the less actives has not been to a church meeting or activity since we came to Cleveland, and she brought her 2 non member daughters!!  The other less active family that came are the Grahams whose daughter and cousin are being taught and prepared for baptism. Its great to see how God inspires us to do little things to make the difference needed for success!

One of the cutest investigators who came!

2 of the senior couples didn't make it in time for this picture before our session. We had to leave right after the session to get to the ward party, so here they are without us after the session.

Here we are before.

Its been a fun week!  We're excited for the visitors coming this week!! 

Hump Day!

Its hard to believe that our mission is half way over!  We have learned a lot and met a lot of people and seen good people get better in the short time here so far.  Its so much easier to serve now; when we look at the people at church we know them or we know they are there for the first time!  We love the people here in Cleveland! 
We've also seen how short of a time the Elders and Sister serve in the ward.  We've served with 10 Elders and 5 Sisters so far.  Its much nicer to be able to stay in the same spot for the whole time! 
Our Bishop, Ken Shannon, got an email from the guy who baptized him (my brother-in-law's brother), with pictures of him and his future wife this week.  That's a tender mercy that may be why God sent us to Cleveland! 
We have quite a few progressing investigators.  I'm hoping that at least one of them gets baptized while my sisters and sister-in-law visit, cause baptisms  are mission pay days!
The Morales blessed their baby today.  Elder Quincy was asked to join the circle.  The first baby blessing I've seen here. 
We met a member we've been trying to meet for 5 months today!  He was very talkative and excited to have visitors.  We met a new move in, who was so excited to have visitors that she was kind of giddy.  She's texted me 12 times since we visited her today.
We are invited to a crawfish boil on Tuesday night.  I'm kind of nervous about that one. 
Tammy said she was talking to a friend about thinking of joining the Mormon church.  Her friend gave her a hard time and she said; "if I told you was going to becoming a Christian would you tell me I was crazy?" . .  "well its the same thing".  Her friend said that she hadn't thought of it that way. 
We're hoping that the Sisters hurry and teach Timothy the Word of Wisdom so he stops bringing a mug of coffee into Sacrament Meeting with him. 
I got a text from Amanda Jones, who moved to Farmington, NM.  She said that her kids are getting baptized on March 4th and that she and her husband are preparing to go to the temple!  That made me really happy! 
Our first grandkid turned 10 today!  They grow up so fast!!  It seems like all of the grandkids grow up extra fast while we're serving!  Another first was my first wedding shower here.  It was super fun and I was sorry to have to leave early to make dinner and get to an appointment. 
Its been back up in the 80s a few days this week.  We had one night in the 30s though.  Usually its gorgeous when we walk in the morning.  February is about perfect here! 

A cool sunset.

Our zone.

We had Panda Express on our way home from zone meeting.  First time in a while.

Elder Quincy didn't have to buy me flowers (provided by an investigator) or chocolates (from a member) or a card (another investigator) or tootsie rolls (from the sisters), or hearts (from Sister Drake)

.

Our Book of Mormon class keeps growing!  18 this week!

This road is crazy bad.  I won't let Elder Quincy drive on it in the dark. 

Working on an investigator's car.

Spring is sprung here!

Bishop Shannon and his future wife at his baptism with Dean Parsons. 

We got to spend President's Day with the Kendalls!  The kids were out of school.  I loved watching them play my Zumba game.  Sadly, Sydney and Avery were sick!

This was a cool, full rainbow on the way to our lesson Monday night.  It was too big to get it all in one shot though.

The God People

Pictures from my walk this morning!

Our new missionaries arrived Monday night and surprise! We love them!  Elder Quincy spent the whole day working on Shannon's stairs Monday.  He did make it to the lesson with the Allen bunch that night though.  Elder Allen, new to us, came to the lesson and talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy and why its important.  There was a lot of the Spirit there.  Tammy was getting sick.  She asked for a blessing, because she didn't have time to be sick.  It was a beautiful blessing telling her to pray and ask God for direction. 

Elder Quincy spent all day Tuesday working on the stairs.  I took them lunch and put in a couple of screws so I could say that I'd helped.  I got to go with the Sisters and meet our cool new Sister from Hawaii, Sister Housman.  She is wonderful and her middle name has 41 letters!  We went to visit a member and went to the wrong house.  The next door neighbors came out on their porch and the Sisters taught them a little lesson and left them with a Restoration pamphlet to read.  The husband said he knew a member.  It turns out he works with a guy from the ward at the prison.  He's invited him to church many times.  He said he'd like to come!  So then we went to the member's house next door and met her 17 year old twin boys who'd like to learn more about the church!  Win/win!  That night Elder Quincy made it home in time to go to Ramon's with me and the Spanish Elders.  We got to meet Elder Barrett!  He speaks Spanish with a southern accent, so he's great fun!  Ramon and his wife Maria are awesome.  They want to feed us again this week.  Its great because the Elders have been teaching Ramon and his sister-in-law, but never his wife!  The feeding us thing gets her involved and she is great!  They are interested in English classes, too. 

The Morales family had great news, while Antonio was helping with the stair building project!  They need to go to Guatemala for 2 weeks and when they come back he'll be a citizen!! 

Wednesday we had a new student at the English class, Jini, who's only been here for 41 days from Honduras.  She wants to know everything!  We had a hard time ending the lesson in time to eat lunch and get back for the Missionary Coordination meeting.  Elder Quincy finished the stairs project that morning.  It was good to have a companion again.  We actually got to visit a couple of members that afternoon before the Book of Mormon class.  Sonya showed up at the class with her sister Tammy!!  After the class we decided that we should paint the back of their parents house while they're out of town for a few days.  We set it up for Saturday afternoon. 

Thursday right after Preschool, we headed to Cypress to have lunch at Sydney's school for KISS day ( an acronym for something about special people eating with them).  It was fun!  We got back in to take the Sisters out for some lessons.  We even got to visit a few members; including the Morales to celebrate with them, the Weitzels and Garrets with sympathy card, and to deliver a birthday card to Br. Tucker.  

Friday morning Elder Quincy skipped another meeting; District meeting to go out with Br. Roberts to do some service and visits. Its pretty obvious that when its a choice between doing service and talking about it, Elder Quincy always chooses to serve.  He's pretty awesome like that!  After the meeting and visits, we ate lunch and headed to Jason and Nicole's.  We had a blast tending their 3 darling kids that night.  We got them up and ready and brought them to Cleveland Saturday morning so we could go to Eli's baptism.  They were so good for us!  Jason and Nicole showed up and took them home.  We took the Sisters to a lesson with the cute Harris kids.  It was great because their mom sat in on the lesson for the first time.  Then we dropped off the Sisters, picked up the Elders and went to paint.  The Elder had to leave at 5, so we took them home and came back to paint until there was no more light and barely got in finished!  Tammy told us something hilarious while we painted.  One of the kids at her preschool, Jackson, was showing her a picture and said it was from the God People.  She aked what that meant and he said, "you know the Quincys, the people that God sent to teach us".  She said that she couldn't correct him because she feels the same way about us.  A great pay day! 

Sunday was our Ward Conference and it was awesome!  There were about 8 investigators there!  Tammy cried through most of the meeting!  Doc is becoming a regular attender, he's the guy who sang with Willie Nelson.  He's a really good guy! We found out that Judy, an investigator that had a problem and hadn't been able to be baptized on Christmas Day as planned died last night!  It was the one year anniversary of her husband's death!

We hurried off after church to take the Sisters to teach a lesson and then made it back in time for Juan Lopez' baptism.  The Spanish Elders found him tracting, taught him the Restoration lesson and how to pray.  He said the prayer and then cried and said he'd just broken up with his girlfriend and felt so sad that he'd asked God to help him and they'd knocked on his door.  3 weeks later he was baptized!  He was sweet and crying after the baptism.

We had to take Elder Burdsol to another baptism from that one.  He'd gotten a ride there from a member, who'd dropped them off and said he had to leave.  It was about an hour south to take him and his comp to the church for their other baptism.  We stopped and took the Sacrament to 3 people and gave 1 person a blessing on the way home and were soo hungry and exhausted when we finally ate at 7:00.  I guess we need to start packing lunches on Sundays.  We got to Skype with Jack's family and watch Jamison open his birthday presents!  A great way to end the Sabbath! 

  Firsts for the week would have to be having to open the overflow into the gym for Sacrament meeting and taking my grandkids to our ward's baptism.  I think we put over 200 miles on our car on Thursday.  It was 83 degrees today.  Its spring in Cleveland.

The finished project.

Working on the railing.

Lunch with Sydney.

We followed a big truck down this dirt road and the sun shining through the dust made it look like the light in the sacred grove in the first vision painting.

The new district!

We finally found out what makes these mud towers, some a couple of feet tall; its crawdads!

Jason's hot date for the night!

Eli and family.

Eli and more family.

Almost done with the painting.

Angel Morales is my special church buddy and likes to sit with me.

Juan Lopez and Elder Burdsol's first time to baptize!

More Service, Good-byes, Changes, a Temple Trip, and Fun

We started the week out great with all the missionaries going fishing on a member's private land.  Br. Roberts and Elder Quincy went out in the boat.  All the young missionaries had to fish from the shore.  Br. Roberts caught a couple from the shore before we got there.  None of the missionaries caught anything, except for Elder Quincy got 5!  I had to run to the office and turn in the baptism records to be recorded, so that the new members could get their temple recommends to go to the temple and do baptisms on Thursday.  I rushed back to pick up the Sisters and dropped them at home.  We hurried and ate lunch and went to help move in another new family!  They came from Mississippi!  We had to leave there and rush to the church to chaperone the missionaries so they can play games together.  Elder Quincy went home and showered, then replaced me so I could go change and get the ham ready to take to our dinner and lesson that night.  We picked up the Elders at 6:00.  Not a minute to relax on our "day off".  The lesson with the Allens was great though.  Sonya bore testimony to them of how the Book of Mormon has changed her life.  5 year old Jamison has had back pains and asked for a blessing!  So sweet!  Tammy cried when Elder Kent said it might be his last Monday with them.
Tuesday Elder Quincy fixed Br. Sneed's truck they've been trying to fix for months!!  We had fun driving the Sisters to a couple of lessons, and then with the Spanish Elders to teach a great guy; Ramon.  Wednesday we had success meeting with a couple of inactive members then had a fish fry/goodbye lunch at Br. Roberts and a last Missionary Coordination Meeting with this District.  Sister Tomason goes home Tuesday and Elders Kent and Burdsol are being transferred on Monday.  Transfers are sad, but exciting at the same time.  We always get great new missionaries.  We had a smaller group to our Book of Mormon class on Wednesday, but 3 of our new members had interviews and got their limited use recommends! 
Preschool on Thursday was fun as usual.  Elder Quincy was picking up materials for his next service project, but the kids in the class we teach had made special art projects for us that were really sweet.  We had our Youth/New Member temple trip that evening.  There were 30 of us there from our ward!  Sandy was baptized for her mom and grandma.  Glenda was baptized for her mom and grandma!  Brandon was baptized for the Bishop's family.  Sonya and Jaycie got their recommends, but didn't make it this time because of a mandatory play practice.  We'll get to go with them soon!  It was really fun to be there to hand them towels.  It felt like being a temple worker for an hour or so.  Elder Quincy was able to be a witness and to perform confirmations.  It was a really great night!
Friday we had Zone Meeting and learned about how the new schedule is being implemented in our mission and how to do the new Key Indicators.  All stuff that isn't really for us, so I was fine with Elder Quincy spending the day working on Shannon's stairs.  He was gone from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm.  After Zone Meeting I got to go with the Sisters to teach a couple of lessons.  Saturday Elder Quincy was back at the job site.  I came and taught Shannon and her nonmember mother-in-law about temples and death and eternal families.  I left to get the Sisters and spent all afternoon driving them to a lesson and a couple of great visits with less actives.  Then Elder Quincy joined us for a delicious dinner of fried catfish at a member's home.  He's the only member and the Sisters taught his family a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation after dinner.  Yup, 2 fish fries this week! 
Sunday was Super!  There were more people bearing testimony than there was time for!  Shannon Watson fasted for her first time!  Diane Gonzales stayed for the whole block for the first time!  We took the sacrament to 3 homes and showed them "The Blessings of the Temple" video.  One is an endowed sister who has health issues, one is a sister dying of cancer, and the other is a recent convert recovering from a diabetes related infection in his leg who is trying to get healthy enough to get to the temple.  The same message that was so different for each of them.  Br. Tucker, who just lost his son to cancer last month bore his testimony in Sacrament Meeting today and said that he was so thankful that the Lord set things in motion so that his son could be endowed in December while he was healthy enough to do it.  Its been a temple kind of week!  First for the week is sending our first missionary home!  First letters from one of our kids!  The Chapmans all wrote to us and colored us pictures!  We feel loved! 

Fun with bunnies at the home of a less active member.

Moving in the Roberts.

The Sisters posing with Br. Robert's fish.

Preschool art projects.

These sweet ladies preparing to go into the temple for their first time!

Brandon after doing baptisms.

Glenda and friends after baptisms.

Sandy after baptisms.

Sister about to be parted.  Sister Pace (yellow skirt) and Sister Tomason (red skirt) are going home!

The platform raised.

Fearless 3 year old grabs the chicken to show us.

top stairs about in.

Beautiful Sabbath day drive to take the sacrament to the sick and afflicted.