Tender Mercies in Cleveland

Elder Quincy is better at the panos than me.  I love this picture!We happened to be at the office at the right time to see Elder Allen before he left us!

Elder Quincy wanted to stop at the Stake Center because its our last transfer and we've never seen one, so we got to see Elder Johnson!  He's one of the missionaries who first served with us when we arrive in Cleveland! He's left us also!

This belongs at the end from the lovely place we went to teach with the Sisters last night.  Crazy lesson with 2 friends of Br. Cline who have had some incredible spiritual experiences.  The crazy part was getting them to listen. They really wanted to outdo each other in their storytelling  I had Elder Quincy start the video of the restoration. The only way to get talkers to listen is to get them watching a video I've discovered and it worked for long enough to tell them the basic outline and to give them each a Book of Mormon and challenge them to read it.

Elder Barrett sent us this picture of him fishing in Florida!  He beat Elder Quincy for the week!!

We got our new missionaries on Monday AND something that never happens happened! Sister Housman is back!  We are so pleased!  She is so loved by all of the Cleveland ward, knows the area that was whitewashed, is super on the ball and will take good care of these people we love so much!  It makes it much easier to leave!  Everyone is so excited and surprised when they see her! 

Elder Quincy was just a little too comfortable watching the video at the lesson with the Allen family Monday night, so I had Ashley get a picture of him and Laney.  We taught them how to use the scriptures and the Guide to the Scriptures to answer their own gospel questions. They really got into it!  We've been doing more driving than usual this week, so I have quite a few pictures of the clouds I love so much here.  We picked up food orders from the Bishop's Storehouse twice this week.  

We took a birthday card to Br. Espinoza and I had to get pictures of his pig and his goat chilling in the yard.  We didn't see their donkey.  Hope its okay.

There are so many kinds of twinkies here.  Are they just a Texas thing?

We took the long way to the ARP class Thursday night.  Just for the 1 minute view of this beautiful lake. We weren't going to let Luke miss the class this week, so we showed up at his place at 4:00, I did the dishes, while Elder Quincy vacuumed and dusted, and Luke swept and picked up trash off the floor. He recently moved back into his house that his brother had left a mess, and has been too depressed to clean it up.  After cleaning we took him home, fed him dinner and then we headed to class, went to class and took him home.  We spent 5 hours with him.  Once we went to his place and found his state we've been trying to see him every day and to talk and text him during the day.  He gave his phone back to Ashley  Friday and we lost contact, but we were pleasantly surprised to see he'd gotten himself up and to his lesson with the Sister Saturday morning.  The bad thing was that the other Sisters were also at the church giving a church tour to an investigator with the ex-girlfriend assisting!  Oops!  Awkward moment! The good thing was that he was over it and it wasn't so awkward at church on Sunday! The best moment of the week is probably when Luke got up and bore his testimony of how important it is to read the scriptures and pray every day to be able to resist temptations.  He also stayed after church and sat in on Bridget's new member lesson and warned her that she needs to keep reading the Book of Mormon every day to keep feeling that great feeling she got at baptism!  Its so cool when new member fellowship and support each other! Sadly Paloma didn't make it to church, so she won't be able to be baptized before we leave!  She had a cool experience with trying to stop drinking coffee this week though.  She was a whole pot a day drinker  She asked her husband to hide her coffee pot from her  So she went 3 days without drinking coffee  The fourth day she need her coffee, so she went to find the pot.  She found it up in the attic. As she was climbing down the ladder she dropped and broke it  She took that as a sign and hasn't drunk any coffee!  She is a super person!  She listens, thinks, asks any questions she has, then ponders and decides if she feels like its right and good.  So far she's come up with all the right choices.

Okay, last tender mercy was being able to help Shannon print off the temple ordinance cards for her husband, who died a year ago last Sunday, and to find out she was off of work the next morning just in time before the temple closed to be able to make a reservation for 8:15 the next morning!  Elder Quincy was baptized for her husband, her uncle and her grandpa. She was baptized for her grandma.  Today after church she talked with the Bishop and got a full recommend signed.  She's hoping to get with the Stake President this week and for us to be able to escort her to the temple before we go!

We got a couple of new members to church today that haven't been there for a while!  We had 7 investigators there including Cassie, who is an old friend of Ashley Evans' from school.  The influence that Allen family has on bringing people into the church just keeps going! Christina Soper gave the closing prayer in Sacrament Meeting!  We started handing out thank-you/goodbye notes  Its going to be so hard to leave these good people!  We just love them so much!