Christmas and another week in the books!

We've been training the Hills in the office and Sister Hill is going to do great!  Monday night the Sturms had an open house.  It was fun to visit and have delicious treats!  Tuesday Bishop Downing called to say Manathan had an emergency c section and was here in Iowa City, so we went and gave Manathan and tiny Hardinel blessings.  Wednesday we had all the Iowa City missionaries over for a Christmas breakfast!  We taught them how to play the Thankful game and had lots of fun!  

Meanwhile our kids sent fun pictures;

Hardy and Hardinel 1 and 1/2 pounds!

This made me so happy; my grandson giving my mom a hug!

We are so blessed!  Only one more Sunday in Iowa!  We're praying the weather holds!

These clouds on the way to church this morning looked like mountains on the horizon!

Here comes Christmas!

It's been a great week!  Our replacements have arrived and we've been training them.  We had 2 Sisters leave Monday, 3 Elders arrive on Tuesday, fed 40 at MLC on Wednesday, then a goodbye dinner and farewell testimonies that night and 8 missionaries left Thursday along with Elder Clark who's been an AP since we've been in the office!  We've been office staff longer than anyone else and we've been out longer than all the Senior missionaries and most of the young ones!  How did that happen? 
Saturday we had a normal Pday!  It's been a long time since I wore jeans all day!  Less than 3 weeks to go.  We've got lots of teaching to do before then! 

Pizza Ranch with the Hills and the Taylors 

Chili and chicken tortilla soup for MLC

The departing missionaries at Pizza Ranch

Birds on the Iowa river

One last trip to Kalona 

Our great Come Follow Me study group

Doing repairs at these Sisters' apartment.

Our last trips to Nauvoo and Marshalltown!

Such a fun bitter sweet week!  Our farewell trip to Nauvoo was lovely, but hard to say good bye to the Cummings and Dotys and realize I may never get back to Nauvoo!

Fort Madison has awesome Christmas lights along the river.

We made it back in time for our Iowa City wards Christmas party!

Yesterday we made one more trip to Marshalltown!   We stopped to see the Tsolukas in Grinnell.

Got one more picture of the church in Gilman where we taught the youth group.  Sweet memories!

We visited the Harringtons. 

We visited the Ibanezes.

We went to the Marshalltown ward party.  It really feels like home there!  It's great to see so many loved ones!

I got to sing with the Spanish speakers and Leah sang in French!

The kids sang in English .

We love these good people!  

We've had some interesting opportunities for service this week.  We are still working at lighting the world.