A Thanksgiving to Remember

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We had all morning to cook and relax, then we picked up the Tsoluka family and took them to the Jones' for their first Thanksgiving dinner.  It was delicious and fun and we all had a good time.  We had to hurry away though to go help Amy move a couch (the one Elder Quincy wired together) to her apartment and to move her things out of Br. Westwater's garage into her storage unit, so the Elders have a garage to park in for the winter. We hurried from there to have dessert with the Gobbles! Sister Tsoluka wanted to shop at Thanksgiving for some specials so we got to experience the crazy shopping part of the holiday. We came home and relaxed and then got a call at 10:00 to come give a blessing to Sister Ferguson's daughter who was in a lot of pain.  So we had a couple of opportunities to serve and got to enjoy time with people we love like family!

Gredo figured out how to do a selfie.

Our apartment is decorated!  Its especially fun because most of the decoration were gifts from ward members and my sisters.

We did more construction work at the Rodriguezes on Friday and Saturday. Elder Quincy built this closet for them.

Replaced wood on a window.  It was even warm enough to caulk and paint it!

He put the kickplate under the cabinets.

The cabinets on the left of the stove are from bigger ones he cut down.  He made the shelf for the microwave, too.

This is Marisol with her puppy Scrappy.  Its hilarious because he really doesn't like Elder Quincy and he's learned to like me.  That never happens with dogs!  We love spending time with the Rodriguez family!  We'll miss having projects to do at their house!

Manathan is pregnant!! We got to take her to the Doctor's office to get the business part done today.  We're excited for Hardy and Manathan to be parents!

With our Family Home Evening group on Monday nights and spending time with members during the week, we are feeling more and more like we have family here!
There's no doubt that we are needed and able to help here!  We are doing a lot more immigration, translating, ride giving, and general red tape work here than we planned to do.  We thought we'd be teaching the gospel more, but really, half of the lessons we learned from Jesus were from his service.  So I guess we're teaching even when we aren't opening our mouths.

Yikes!

It got real cold!  It was 4 degrees with a wind chill of  -8 when we left for church yesterday!  Luckily the new cold weather gear we bought last Pday kept us comfortable outside!  We did have 3 days in the 40's this week, too!

Sunday was really great!  Paul was interviewed for the Melchizidek Priesthood  by the Stake President, and Fortino and Edmond were ordained priests. Elder Quincy got to ordain Edmond!

Our pond froze over!

The line in the back there isn't mountains, its clouds and when we got to Des Moines we got into a snow storm!

We had interviews with the Mission President on Friday.  Here's our district at lunch after.

This was an unpredicted snow storm!  

This is my view in our car as we drive around all day.  We memorized this scripture to say to our President Badger at interviews. 

We feel very loved!  At church we were given; a poinsettia, some Abuelita's hot chocolate mix, a gift card, a Christmas wreath, a Christmas vase, Snowman salt and pepper shakers, some homemade chicken noodle soup and winter supplies and ties for the Africans!  Such a sweet ward!
Our Family Home Evening group was great last week!  We had 8 of us!  We had a great time and learned something.
Wednesday night was the best part of the mission so far!  We taught 18 people for an hour at the Methodist church with their youth group!  We really enjoy this great group of kids and their leaders are great, too!  We get to teach them once a month! And be there to help every week.
Its been a while since we've had a baptism here!  We do have some great people being taught and we think they will get baptized eventually.
Here's a slice of mission life for you; today is our Pday; so we started the day taking the Tsoluka kids to school, then we got two loads of laundy going and went to Alain's to help him call and get an appointment with his doctor so he can see a specialist.  We came home and moved the laundry and picked up Susan to take her downtown.  We stopped at the post office and mailed off Christmas cards and books for our grandkids.  We went to Walmart and got stuff for refreshments at FHE tonight.  We came home and put away the groceries and folded and put away our clothes, and went to State Center to pick up Cody for a job orientation in Marshalltown.  We dropped him off, went to the bank and got the letters we wrote notorized for recommending a sister and her husband for immigration and went and picked the Tsoluka kids up from school, took them home and went to Tama to meet Lea at the doctors to help her communicate about her problem with her ears from the noise at work.  We then actually had time to cook and eat dinner, prepare refreshments, and got this blog post part way done before we picked up Susan and went to FHE!  It was another great success!  So not a lot of preparing time, but we love helping and spending time with these amazing people.

It got colder

We had a great time at the meeting with the youth group on Wednesday.  We're excited to teach them this week.  One girl already wants to hear about the Plan of Salvation! She just lost a dad who was a non believer and she's struggling.  Here's the new district at lunch at Abeldardo's.

Poor Alex, has been working 18 hours a day trying to get ready to move.  He spent his birthday on his knees doing flooring all day.

I almost killed Elder Quincy!  He asked me to switch the breaker for the dryer off while he worked on the outlet, and apparently it was already off and I turned it on!  We had sparks and some burnt wire, but Elder Quincy is ok. It really scared us both!  

We had 3 trucks helping with the move and loaded them up 3 times.

My baby boy got married!  He kind of didn't invite his family, but he loves us and Charity made it, so that's kind of like having family there.  I told him it was his party and he could do it however he wanted, so he did.

More work involved with the kitchen being put together, but its all in the house.

The group at the Lutheran church.

We had a couple of cold days; 18 degrees, with a wind chill temp of 2 degrees.  We were out a lot those days, so we had all of our layers on and stayed warm enough, but we decided that we needed more protection for the 20 below they had last year for a couple of weeks. So today we went to Burlington Coat factory and got some warmer coats and stuff.

One of the loads read to unload.

Elder Quincy figuring out how to put in 220 lines for the water heater, dryer and range.

Framing the windows.

The Elders, the Elder's Quorum President and Elder Quincy unloading.

We're excited about going over the Addiction Recovery Program with Pauline.  We are meeting with her in the morning!
We had a the last pre-temple prep class with the Kangni's Friday night.  They told me some very sad things.  They have 3 kids with families still in Togo and are so worried about them!  They are waiting for a ruling on receiving asylum from the immigration department.  They can't get green cards without that being decided.  They've already waited for over a year.  Once they get green cards Lea can fly to Togo and visit the kids!  They say it is very dangerous in Togo.  My grandma heart is breaking for them!  Being a refugee is hard!

Quincy Taxi Service

This week has been all about giving people rides!  When Elder Quincy heard that Edmond had been stopped by the Police walking home from work at 1:30 AM and not speaking English well enough to explain, he offered to pick him up. So 6 days a week Elder Quincy sets his alarm and leaves at 1:15 and gets back at 2:00!  He's a nice guy!
We also took Elysee and Manathan to Des Moines yesterday to a few African stores.  The one in Marshalltown was hit by the tornado.  We give the Mavuangi kids a ride to school since it got colder. And yesterday we gave the Delaney kid's mom a ride to Wal-Mart. We've been giving Susan rides downtown and back home as she's looking for a place to live.
We love helping the Rodriquezes get their house ready for the move this week.  They take us to lunch and feed us way too many treats though. The best part is teaching their daughters boyfriend, Caesar is awesome!
We had lessons with Preston and Janelle again!  And Pauline still wants to meet. She's struggling with stopping smoking, but is so sweet and sincere!
It's transfers this week so Pday is supposed be tomorrow, but we have so much going on tomorrow that we're doing it today. Turns out we have a lot going on today, too.
We have a couple here doing record preservation for a year!  They will be a blessing to the ward!  The fun thing is that Elder Dahl is also a retired UPS driver!
We had a fun FHE with the Jollys.  She is the Primary music leader, so its awesome to be able to sing and not be singing solo.
We had more people than available computers even with our laptop at our Family History class on Sunday morning.  A nice problem to have!  We taught 3 people English classes this week!
I loved having a new member lesson with Elysee with teaching  Elder Onstott teaching and interpreting.  I learned more about her conversion.  She said her friends in the Congo all believe that we are Devil worshippers and even though she wasn't sure about it, she came to church because of the love she feels from the missionaries and members.  She said that the first time she walked into the church she was looking for signs of Devil worship and was happy to find pictures of Christ instead.  She has a lot of faith!
Last night we had a great group at our group FHE.  They really are feeling like family.  The Elders brought a Spanish speaking investigator and her son, so we had most of the lesson in Spanish.  Its nice to have flexible Elders that can switch between languages!

Tomorrow we start helping a member run his troubled youth program at this church.

African and Asian food store in Des Moines.

This building is finally getting cleaned up.

Caesar and Daphine.

Beautiful house on the corner by Janelle's hosue.

Pretty colors at the church.

Last window.

Br. Rodriguez.

We showed up to trim some windows while the Rodriguezes were at the store, so Elder Quincy built that platform in the back out of the old window frame to work on that window.  He had to wait for the ladder for the high one though.

Trimming out the upstairs window.

We feel needed here and sometimes wish we weren't so needed, but its a joy to serve, even when its as everyone's ride.