Surprises and another Funeral/Baptism Saturday

We think we have conquered the bed bug problem and have moved our mattress back onto our boxsprings!  2 nights of sleeping in our bedroom have been heavenly! 
Elder Quincy has worked really hard all week and has finished one project, almost finished the second and is about half way through with the third.  He's a legend around here.  Br. Roberts tells everyone that Elder Quincy can fix anything! 

We have another great investigator we helped the Sisters teach this week.  He's older than us.  He's been studying lots of religions and thought he'd never need to go to a church to get close to God.  He said that when he came to our church and as he's been reading he has felt something that's surprised him.  He loves coming to our church and feels like its helping him to get closer to God.   He'll make a great member!
Our sweet Sister Mary Jernigen died early Wednesday morning. Today was the first Sunday in months without seeing her!  I really missed her!  Her viewing was Friday and the funeral was Saturday.
We went straight from the funeral Saturday to Timothy's baptism.  We got to see Sister Smith!  Timothy's brother baptized him and his Mom and Dad came!!  It was great! 

After the baptism we went to Kylie's (Tammy's granddaughter) birthday party.  I love that family!  The 2 preschool teachers we see every Thursday came with their families. That was really fun!  I think we need to teach one of them. 

After the party we picked up the Sisters and went to dinner at the Hodges.  They always have soo much food and are not happy if you don't eat tons.  Luckily she is an amazing cook. So even thought I was too full to do it, with our mattress out of the way, I did yoga for the first time in 3 weeks on Saturday night!  One busy Saturday!
Today has been great!  Elder Quincy confirmed Timothy.  He taught the 11 year olds in Primary and then he gave a blessing to an investigator after the block. Another surprise was that we had a Missionary Fireside tonight.  David Archuleta was down here for Time Out For Women. His sister is serving in our mission.  Our mission president arranged for him to come and give us a fireside.  It was amazing!  He not only sings so beautifully, but he has a beautiful testimony that was so wonderful to hear. I never thought I'd be seeing David Archuleta on my mission!
Another surprise is that the church didn't charge us for the month of December. Some kind of mix up because of our trip home for a week to help with Joni's baby. So we only have 2 more mission payments!  Its hard to believe its a new month tomorrow!  Can May really be here already? 
I've done some calculating and I think we've lost 12 members of the ward since we got here!  The Bishop has done 36 funerals in the 5 years he's been bishop of this ward.  So if you look at the 8 months we've been here; 12 is a third of the deaths!  Luckily we've had more baptisms than deaths!  So the size of the ward is still growing!  The Bishop was showing numbers in the 5th Sunday adult meeting today.  There are 564 people in the ward, and 14 of them have submitted family names for ordinances.  Of those 12, 7 of them are people who have been baptized since we got here!  And Timothy found a name the day before he got baptized!  I'm kind of proud of our awesome converts!  Its amazing how much joy they have brought me!

I had to add this picture of the darling Kinsly, who is 5 months old and had her first ponytail!

When Br. Sneed and Elder Quincy showed up to work at the Rudolphs one morning the found their dog like this and running into the fence, etc.  They saved her after they took pictures.

Here's the bathroom with the toilet and vanity in.

I loved these pictures of a younger Mary at her funeral!

Tim and Brian Foote.

The whole family with 'Aunt Sandy'.

I love that missionaries get to come back for baptisms!

Cute Kylie!

Elder Quincy helped the Perrys put the boards around the porch and put new boards on it.

This is the first half of the ramp.

Jessica Becker (a new convert) was so excited to see Sister Smith at the fireside tonight!

One super Sabbath!

After last week's tirade I decided to start with the positive!  We had the best Sunday!  Timothy decided he wants to be baptized on Saturday and he brought his mom to church with him!  Bridget, who has been attending church for a couple of months, but "wasn't ready for the lesson yet", said she wants to get ready to get baptized and is ready for the lessons!  Christina's divorce is going to be final on May 3rd, then she has to wait 30 days and can be married, and then be baptized a week later!!  We had 7 investigators at church!  Steven Mason passed the sacrament for the first time!  He really needed very little help.  Sister Jernigen was still breathing yesterday.  Elder Quincy and Br. Howland gave her a blessing of release.  We had the Elders with us and Shannon Watson.  We sang her favorite hymn for her; "How Great Thou Art" It was sweet!  She hasn't eaten anything all week.  I'm not sure what's keeping her here!  After that we took the Elders to the Broadway ward (an hour south) so Elder Brinkerhoff could baptize a sister there.  We had a great Sunday!

This is the super bed bug killer with a 5 star rating on Amazon we've been using. 

We got this plastic cover for the box springs.

Tile is in.

Elder Quincy got a morning off to go fishing.

This is the wood floor he's installing for Br. England.

Vanessa before her baptism.

Its much more diverse ward down in Broadway ward.

Just 2 little bed bugs this morning.  We have hopes of being able to be back in our bedroom soon.

Sister White's homecoming.  Sister Fisher in the middle!  My 2 favorite missionaries!

Firsts this week; spending lots of time without my companion, so doing lots of visits alone.  Its not as fun that way, but he's been so busy! Getting into to visit the Perdues (6th try worked) and having them set up a Family Home Evening with their neighbors with us!  Driving an hour to visit someone and then being too scared to walk past their dog to go in the house.  (Elder Quincy said that he wouldn't walk past that dog either)  Have I mentioned that Elder Quincy is the dog whisperer?  People are amazed that he can get us past their killer dogs without being attacked. 
This mission time goes by way too fast!  We are really having a great adventure!

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

We had a pretty rough start to the week.  Somehow we didn't lock the car Sunday night and we discovered our GPS was stolen Monday morning.  I got a call from someone sounding desperate and in need of help while Elder Quincy was working on the remodel.  I agreed to pick her up from a local motel at noon.  I started the laundry, including our sheets and went grocery shopping for just the essentials for that night and tried to call Elder Quincy, the district leader, and everyone I could think for to know what to do with this crazy sounding person.  I got home with the groceries and found Elder Quincy home with the terrible news that he's found bed bugs on our stripped bed! We picked up the woman, and while she went into the Burger King to get food Elder Quincy got the mission president on the phone he said we couldn't help this woman.  We had to let the Bishop take care of it.  We took her to the church and finally got through to the Bishop. She didn't want to take his offer of help and decided she wanted to go to Conroe to the Catholic church there.  So we drove her there, all the way listening to how a true Christian would help her AKA give her money to do what she wanted with.  So we left her in Conroe at the Bleeding Heart Catholic church.  It turns out she's been scamming several people in our ward into payng her motel bill for at least the last week.  Each of them had a different name for her, but we all had the same description.  So we were pretty much out of time for our regular Pday stuff, but stopped at Walmart for Bed Bug killer.  I managed to get taco salad stuff put together while we were sterilizing all of our bedding and spraying the bed springs.  Apparently the bugs hadn't made it past our mattress cover.  We sterilized it, move the mattress into the exercise room, and we've been sleeping in there until we are sure we've killed all the bed bugs.  They can go 300 days without eating!!

We had a great end to the day though!  The Allen family loved my Taco Salad.  We showed them The Prince of Peace video and read The Living Christ together.  It was amazing!  We were all crying and the Spirit was really strong.  Tammy and Sonya's mom, Babara, asked for a priesthood blessing!  Huge breakthrough!  Ashley received her patriarchal blessing Sunday.  Tammy asked her about it and it was really cool when she said that until she had her blessing, she hadn't realized how much Heavenly Father loves her and how well He knows her.  It was a really awakening experience for her.

 

Infested

Our Erstwhile bedroom.

The first Sisters from our first transfer here went home this transfer.  Sister Fisher sent me this picture of them and the married couple from the mission The Jones at her Homecoming! 

I was walking by myself a couple of days ago and heard a larger than usual animal in the vacant tree filled lot we walk by.  I thought I heard a snort and wondered if it was a wild pig.  The next morning I found this poor dead pig in the road.

Elder Quincy has been spending about 8 hours a day working on 2 service projects.  The bathroom remodel and a wood floor and paint prep at a blind guy's house.  He's had Br. Sneed with him all the time and Br. Bright some of the time.  They've got a lot done!

In the middle of demolition.

Walls mudded and taped.

PaintedShower liner and cement board in

Tile in on the shower floorAlmost done with the bathroom floor. Man this ward is going to miss Elder Quincy!

We visited Sister Jernigen today and she is really failing!  Elder Quincy gave her a blessing and told her to be at peace and she seemed to really settle down.  We thought she was going several times.  I am going to miss our Sundays with her!  She is so ready to go though!

It was a big contrast to go straight from there to this fun, loud, young energetic group to celebrate Easter, and the births of Logan 5 years ago, Alice 3 years ago and Jason 37 years ago! 

This sweet Mary is very huggable.

Jane loves getting her picture taken.

Alice loves her new dress!

Somehow this is the only picture I got of Sydney.  She wasn't feeling great!

Even Avery posed for me.

Logan!

Dean is so creative!

The Princess castle was a big hit!

 I finally got a picture of our district.  Here they are eating pizza after District Meeting for Elder Brinkerhoff's birthday.  They are great missionaries. 

My cute nephew and his family after having his adopted step son sealed to the family! 

This bunny is a less active Sister visiting the family who just lost their daughter, the Masons. 

I can't even begin to describe how happy it makes me to have her serving them.

It was awesome to see Luke bless the sacrament today!  I love that he has so many mentors in the ward.  More than one man in the ward offered to help him.  His Home teaching companion has been meeting with him to train him and gave him "The Continuous Atonement" to read.  And of course, Br. Bradley hired him and so he works with him every day.

We got a new Relief Society Presidency today!  Already they've made a visit to the Jernigens!  They are going to be amazing! 

Have I mentioned how much I love the Prince of Peace videos?  We've been showing them to lots of people and everyone seems to get touched! Firsts this week were driving to the Bishop's Storehouse alone, without a GPS!  Getting robbed!  Killing bed bugs!  Getting a REFUND from taxes!  Mission two thirds done!  Man it goes fast!