Birthdays and Good and Bad news

We had some great successes this week!  We finally met Della.  We had to go to her restaurant and eat lunch there, but we had the place and her to ourselves!  And tonight we met Alizabeth!  She was baptized in July and her family hasn't been to church since we got here almost 5 months ago! Of the 21 people baptized last year, she's the only one we hadn't met.  We'd been to their house about 10 times with no answer!  It was her dad's birthday (said so in the ward bulletin), so we made a card to leave on their door and as we drove up we found him sitting on the front porch AND he invited us in to meet the family AND we gave them our New Year's message and prayed with them AND we set up a FHE with them!!  Hurrah for birthday lists in ward bulletins!  Wednesday my sister had a birthday and Ruby Morales had her baby boy, Christian!!  Lots of drama that day!  She was induced.  While in labor the hospital in Galveston started on fire!  She was evacuated.  She was at 8 centimeters when the doctor discover the baby was posterior and did an emergency C section.  We took them dinner last night and poor Ruby looks exhausted.  I wish we could have stayed and helped all night!  The mission president gave me permission to hold babies and children, but not to change diapers or hold them unless their parents are in the room with me.  Tomorrow is Br. Roberts' and Elliott's birthdays.  One will be 6 and one will be 76!  We are going to Br. Roberts (all the missionaries) and doing service for an hour (actually it turned into 3 hours and a fish fry). 

Then we get to call Elliott before we go out to work.

We had a sad week with Luke.  His mom is really against the church.  He is 29, so he could be  baptized, but is trying to keep the peace.  Ashley, his girlfriend is so sad.  We told her to be patient and to keep praying and being a good example.  The 2 greatest secret powers of missionary work.

Good news for her family is that her cousin Jaycey set a baptism date for January 21st and her aunt Tammy is a cigarette habit away from baptism.  We plan to commit her tomorrow night for the 28th!  Funny story, she is a great hunter.  She took the week off last week to go hunting.  She took the Gospel Principles book with her and never left the camp!  She spent the whole week reading it!  She read it cover to cover and marked it and wrote questions in the margins!  She said it was the best book she ever read!  So we think she's going to be baptized soon!  We just need to get rid of the cigarettes!  Another funny thing was that Elder Taylor asked her dad; 76 year old Pawpaw if he' d give up his coffee.  He stood up and yelled; " I gave up my smoking and my drinking and I'm not giving up my coffee!  That's between God and me!"   He is usually very sweet and mild, so we were pretty surprised!  Poor Elder Taylor was just about 2 feet away from him and was dumbstruck!  Sonya, Tammy, and I were all giggling.  It was pretty fun!  The rest of that group is falling like flies!  He's going to fall one of these days!  We had our first snow in Cleveland!  Its supposed to 81 degrees by Friday though.  50 degree shifts in temperature are kind of expected here.

The sister were pretty excited to get a picture on Br. Robert's hay.

The Elders followed suit.

Elder Quincy helped get Br. Roberts saw going.

Okay, then they found the flags in the barn and we got an awesome District picture!

Br. Roberts in his taxidermy shop!

This is Elder Romero.  The new Spanish Elder.

Lame picture of Sister Tomason in red.

The great nerf gun contest.

It may be hard to see, but on our way home from Zone Meeting on Friday, the temperature got down to 31 degrees and we had some snow flakes!

Big brother Angel holding Christian.

As we drove past this swamp with Br. Roberts today, he said that his friend killed a 12 foot long alligator on the road we were driving on this summer that had come out of there! 

Sunset as we left the Ungers and headed to see Sister Weitzel in the hospital. 

There a pretty awesome indian in front of Della's.

This house had amazing Christmas lights.  They're still up so I got a shot.

We were out in the sticks visiting Glenda Cleveland's (she is having surgery tomorrow to see if she has a blockage in her heart!) and Elder Quincy just had to go to the next little town and check out Ace.  There were literally no businesses there.  We got this gem of a picture of Hill Billy Heaven Road though.

They only had one church!

This is sweet Christian! 

Ring out, Wild Bells and Let him Die!

We had quite a week!  We stayed at Jenny's Sunday night and got to play with kids all day Monday.  Well, actually as usual Elder Quincy found a project to work on with James.  We got to see all of our kids, but Jonathan (he was not feeling well) and all of our grandkids open their gifts to each other; 14 at Josh's house and 4 at Jenny's house.  It makes me very happy to see them all together!  Our kids spoiled us with some nice gifts; a Smart watch for Elder Quincy and the perfect purse for me to use on my mission!  It was delightful! 
We worked hard on Tuesday and had some great visits and ended the day with the best of all!  Luke, Ashley's boyfriend said he wants to get baptized sooner!  He's done great at the no coffee thing, but he's struggling some with the dipping.  So its looking like January 14th.  We'll see! 
Wednesday morning we helped teach English class to Cristina and then we hooked up with the Parsons at Jenny's house and went to lunch with the 2 great families!  Texas BBQ at Pappa's.  We made it back in time for our Missionary Coordination meeting and visits after the meeting. 
We have 2 new missionaries; Elder Romero from California (who spoke Spanish at home) and Sister Tomason from Idaho Falls and all southern Idaho cities.  She is on her last transfer; in mission lingo, "she's going to die in Cleveland". 
We had a super fun night at the Howard's on New Year's Eve; which included food, lessons and speed Scrabble.  We had a 7:30 pm curfew for the night, so it wasn't too crazy.  Church was awesome on New Year's Day!  Br Roberts spoke!  We only had 2 investigators there, but 2 inactive families came that we've been working with. 
I love seeing our 2 golden converts; Glenda and Sonya sitting together in Sunday School class and finding connections!  It makes me very happy! 
We set the goal of 25 baptisms in our Cleveland ward this year!  I think we're going to top that!  Its good to be alive and serving in Texas!! A crazy first was that this mission payment made it half way paid for! 

I forgot to share this picture from our last District Meeting before Transfers. 

Our good friends and part member family, The Howards.

FaceTime with the family from Jenny's.

Lunch with the Parsons and Kendalls.

No picture of Kent, but he was there, I promise.  And yes, my grandkids are so cute that the manager gives them hats at Pappa's!

A White Christmas at 76 degrees!

I cannot even begin to say how excited I was for Sonya's baptism yesterday!  This picture is most of the 4 generation group we've been helping the sisters and then the elders to teach since we got here.  I had a hard time sleeping Friday night I was so excited!  There's a Christmas present story involved here. Sonya's daughter, April was baptized about 4 years ago in Belize.  It was totally life changing for her and she's been working on her family ever since.  Ashley, April's sister was baptized a couple of years ago in our Cleveland ward.  She started having the missionaries teach her family about 4 months ago.  Sonya is the first of that group to be baptized.  She decided to be baptized on Christmas Eve and confirmed on Christmas Day!  April lives in Colorado.  So after Sacrament meeting today the family started driving to see her.  They haven't told her that her mom got baptized.  We took a picture of her in her baptism clothes and made a 8x10 picture they are wrapping and surprising her with tonight!  They promised to get a picture of April opening the picture! 

How many missionaries does it take to baptize one cute little sister?  More than those shown in the picture!  Well, one more, Sister White started teaching the Bible Study group! 

Elder Quincy finished the huge ramp project!  Here's some of the helpers!  It was important and needed, but I hated not having a companion for lots of days this week!

We had all the missionaries over for breakfast at 7:30 this morning.  It was really fun!

Elder Taylors dad sent ties for all of the Elders and scarves for all the Sisters. 

Sister Fisher, on the right is leaving us on Tuesday!  We will miss her!  Elder Riches on the far right above is leaving us ,too.  I really hate transfers!

We had dinner at the Roberts after church with the Sisters.  I had my first fried turkey.  Delish!  The Sisters had to hold these baby pigs.

 

Our first for the week was going to the CC Driver Pentacostal Chrismas Program on Friday night.  Vanessa, an investigator said she'd come to church (and she did) and invited us to hear her sing at her church Friday night.  It was awesome, right in the middle of the hood, we were the only white people in the building.  They were very kind and welcoming.  Vanessa sang a solo and was amazing!

The sisters skyped at our house, and then we got to Jenny's in time to play a few games with the grandkids, eat a delicious Jerusalem dinner and Elder Quincy helped get Dean's robot together

Its been a great week and an amazing Christmas!!

From 80 degrees to 29 degrees over night and celebrating Glenda!

Can it really be Christmas in a week?  It was 80 degrees yesterday, but got down to 29 last night. I actually wore my raincoat over a sweater this afternoon. What a week!!  The lesson with the wonderful Allen family last Monday couldn't have gone better.  They were all there plus Ashely's boyfriend, Luke made it!  Two of them were sick and asked for blessings after the lesson.  Sonya is getting baptized on Christmas Eve!!  Her sister said she would be, too, but not yet.  We think that Jaycee, Luke, and Tammy will be next, followed by Sonya's husband, Cheyenne and her boyfriend, and then, finally the Great grandma and pa.  I love them all soo much!
Tuesday was our Christmas Conference.  It was an all day affair, which included talks, special numbers, a slide show with pictures of all of us.  Testimonies of the missionaries about to go home, a wonderful lunch, including a chocolate fountain, a talent show (with everything from Polynesian dances, piano performances, off tune solos, on tune quartets, Irish dancing by an Elder who is ranked for clogging competition nationally, viola, violin, and yes, even bag pipes), a movie (17 Miracles), and lots of fun seeing most of the missionaries we've lost from Cleveland.
We had 3 nonmembers to English class on Wednesday morning!  Awesome Hermana Torres told them how she was converted by coming to the church for English classes.  Elder Quincy got about 2 thirds of the way done with his huge ramp project.  I got to go out with the Sisters a bunch while he worked.  Br. Sneed, recently reactivated, helped Elder Quincy all day Friday.  He said it made him so happy!  He hadn't done a service project for 18 years!  He wants to help him both days he's working on it this week.
The highlight of the week was Glenda's baptism Saturday!!  She is just about the sweetest thing ever! Having James Farmer baptize was icing on the cake! And it happened to be on my sweet grand-daughter's 8th birthday.   Luke committing to being baptized Thursday night was cool, too. The only problem being, its the date that Tessa will be baptized in Colorado.  We're trying to figure out if we can do both of them.  Some firsts for the week, would be going to Livingston for the first time to help the Sisters with their exchanges, finding members from the English ward we've been looking for when we attended the Spanish branch's Christmas party, having a recent convert baptize, and helping a recent convert anoint , first a baby, then his nonmember mom for blessings with Elder Quincy.  The Lord is pouring down blessings on our ward.  Glenda was the 20th baptism for the year, which was the goal the Ward mission leader had set, but there will be 2 more before the end of the year!

 Br. Sneed at Book of Mormon class Tuesday night.

First time we met Br. Sneed in October.

The fall looking trees on the way to Livingston on Wednesday.

Tessa and her scriptures!  Our traditional 8 year old birthday gift

 I brought these guys lunch at the work site.  I even helped them a little.

This is sweet Faith.  She has spina bifida and is a doll!

Glenda and her husband, Roger with the friends who converted her.

Glenda with her daughter, Melissa. 

We are praying that Roger will be baptized, too!

There's a lot of joy in this picture!

Glenda's family

On the way to a FHE with the Jones

This sweet family is moving to Farmington, New Mexico.  We had one last FHE with them before they go.

 Having 8 investigators to church Sunday was awesome; 5 for their first time!