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!