A Christmas to Remember

Ok, I'm confessing that the first time we walked through the Christmas decorations at Menards I teared up thinking about being away from all our family for Christmas.  As we visited people in nursing homes and learned about so many that would have no one visit them on Christmas I realized that I have my husband and could talk to all my kids and grandkids and I am very blessed and definitely not without family! My siblings sent us gifts that filled our apartment and our hearts with Christmas joy.

We had a super busy and heartwarming day practicing true religion undefiled. We delivered gifts to, ate lunch with, or sang favorite Christmas carols with 5 people in 4 nursing homes.  We got to talk to or FaceTime with all of our kids and grandkids! Which was pretty tricky fitting around everything else, but so fun!  We went to a birthday party.  We fixed a turkey dinner for 12 of us, 6 of whom needed rides to get to our apartment. We had 2 from El Salvador, 5 from the Congo, 1 native Iowan, 1 from France and 3 of us from Utah!  It was crazy trying to communicate in 3 different languages! We talked to our moms! It was an awesome Christmas!

We had a great week!  We took treats to 4 veterans in the veterans home, took Alain to Iowa City at 6:00 am for an appointment with a specialist,  took him to lunch, the bank, the hospital to turn in paperwork and to request records for immigration, filed his unemployment claim, called his work to explain why he still can't work and called 2 other places to get him an appointment with another specialist.  We taught Nancy. We did family history with March Runner. We took Elysee grocery shopping and to the dollar store for cleaning supplies, taught her kids 2 nursery lessons, got Elder Barker to put youtubekidz on their new tablets, helped Edmond put online banking on his phone, searched for the car they want,and helped teach them a new member lesson.  We picked up Leas new glasses and took them to her at work. We visited more people and had a few more Christmas messages, then started in on the New Year messages. We took Manathan to an appointment and jump started their van twice. We had a great District Council with our great new District Leader, Elder Onstott! We had a super Christmas Eve Family Home Evening, and took the sacrament to 2 shut ins. We FaceTimed with the kids while the grandkids opened their gifts to each other when they got together after Christmas!  The Texas families were on different phones FaceTime ing too. It was loud and crazy and felt like we were with them for a while!

We got everything we wanted for Christmas!  Man are we ever blessed!

Isn't technology grand? Watching my grandkids in Texas open gifts from my son's tablet in Utah on Elder Quincy' s tablet in Iowa.

The Rodriguez family went to Cancun until Christmas Eve.  They brought us back gifts.

This church was hit by a fallen tree in tbe tornado and is falling in more all the time! Sad!

This is one of the first places we worked after the tornado.  There was a knocked down carport blocking in a member's car. Now there's this awesome garage! 

We had an awesome rainy day!

New district to lunch.

Pond in the rain.

Charlie smiling because his family were coming to see him the next day!

Carroll very happy about spending Christmas with his family the day before.

Iowa City

Sunrise on our way to Iowa City.

Christmas dinner fun.

Kevin's birthday party.

Some pictures our kids posted that warmed our hearts!

Lunch with Dawn Lough.

Visiting Paul and Lea

Singing with Barbara and Dina.

Our gifts to deliver

Sweet Max and his son.We plan to have a wonderful new year and hope you will, too!  Finished the Book of Mormon today as carefully planned, which required slowing down on my reading for the last week!  Thanks President Nelson for the challenge!  

Celebrating!

We had a wonderful time at our Family Home Evening group meeting on Monday!  Elder Espinoza's last one with us, so we got a group picture, minus Jerry, who was taking the shot.  Luis is in Honduras with his wife for Christmas, so we missed him, too. 

Edmond passed the driving test!!  This is such a blessing!  Now Elder Quincy is trying to help them find a car.

We got to take Lea to the eye doctor here in town for new glasses this week and then to Cedar Rapids to see a specialist about her ear problems.  She works by a very loud machine and has had ringing in her ear for a couple of months now.

 We had fun at the Youth Group at the Methodist church on Wednesday.  We even got to play the Christmas edition of  Don't Eat Pete with them.

Taking the kids to school one morning we found this house being removed.  There's been a lot of that going on lately.  Either starting repairs or removal.

The next day there was only flat ground.

It was 52 degrees one afternoon, so Elder Quincy enjoyed an afternoon walk around the still frozen pond.

This group of missionaries left us.  Here they are at the Salt Lake airport.  We had the priviledge of working with all but 2 of these missionaries.

And here's the picture of the new group at our combined District Council Friday.I enjoyed singing with the ward choir in the Christmas Sacrament meeting program yesterday.  I especially loved looking out at the ward and realizing how much I've grown to love this group of good people.  Smiling at them and seeing their faces light up really made me happy.  As we were leaving for church Tammy called for Cleveland, Texas to say she was talking in church and she read me her talk, which was beautiful and made me cry, but oh so happy!  Life is full of good happy moments!  Like watching these two on the horse at the grocery store.  Soon they'll have a car and I'll miss spending so much time with them!

 Elder Barker is our new Elder.  He is English speaking, so I am now the Spanish expert in the ward!  Scary!  Nancy and her son Kevin are meeting with us for lessons the next 2 days!  I've never taught the commandments in Spanish since my first mission, so this will be interesting!  We love you and wish you all a Merry Christmas!  So far, we have lunch at nursing home, birthday cake with Nancy and Kevin and dinner at our house with the Elders and Nancy and Kevin.  We also promised to visit 4 more people that day, so its going to be busy and fun!

The Very Best Part of Christmastime

In case you wondered what we look like these days, here's a great picture Emma drew for us yesterday!

I love Christmas food, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, and talking about Jesus Christ.  We have had a wonderful mix of those things this week! Starting with an awesome Family Home Evening at the church on Monday night!  We had a great time talking about the life of Jesus Christ. We sang Christmas songs. We had enough kids to play some fun games and great refreshments.

Because of the ongoing need for repairs on homes from the tornado; Habitat for Humanities will be working in Marshalltown for the next year.  There are a couple of city owned homes that were vacant.  The church was given the assignment of cleaning them and painting the insides.  This is one of them. I also took a bunch of pictures this week of the demolition and repair work going on. 

Notice the tarps on many roofs still.  Hopefully these will be repaired soon.

There was a wonderful crew on Saturday with people from all over the stake.

Elder Espinoza goes home this week.  We had his goodbye dinner on Wednesday night before we headed to Gilman.  It was our week to teach!  The highlight of the month!  We really love the kids!  We had about 18 on Wednesday night.  They love the Mormon Messages videos we show them and don't complain as we quote from the Book of Mormon. 

The heat still wasn't on when we cleaned on Thursday night at the Habitat houses.  The cleaning products were all frozen!

 Cute helpers at the painting project.

More demolition.

We have an awesome family moving into the ward.  We met them at the home the are about to buy for Elder Quincy to give them advice.  There wasn't a ladder to get into the attic so Br. Newberry monkeyed his way up there.

Besides Elder Espinoza going home, Sister Durland is also leaving our district for home.  She was "born" here in Marshalltown.  The missionaries like to take "funeral" pictures as they are about to "die". 

 They all brightened up and we had a fun lunch at the Pizza Ranch; a buffet pizza place.  This group put away a lot of pizza!

More places being repaired.

Demolition.

Friday night we had a great Relief Society progressive dinner!  It was so fun to see the decorated houses, eat the good food and best of all; Pauline came!!

There are lots of empty lots around where houses have been taken down.

Saturday after painting we went to the Christmas Party at Barbara Costello's nursing home.  She was very excited to have her granddaughters there, too!

More painting crew.

We took Manathan and Hardy to the OB again, which just happens to be in Ames where Sister Durland is serving, so we arranged for her to meet us to see Hardy and meet his wife.  As Hardy put it she was his "team" with Sister Mitchell 18 months ago when he was baptized.

This is the other house we painted.

We are spending lots of time with the Tsoluka family.  Usually at their home.  The kids have been asking to see our house, so last night we had them over for dinner; as requested pizza and ice cream.  It was lots of fun!  We mananged to teach a New Member lesson of the Plan of Salvation, too and I introduced the kids to Wii Fit.  Maybe it wasn't a good idea, but it was delightful to hear them laugh!  We managed to take Edmond to the IRS office in Des Moines, Alain to a few places and mostly help him figure out his insurance and doctor visits by phone.  The weather has been really nice!  Above freezing most days this week! When the sun shines we feel like its spring!