A Whirlwind of a Week

We had such a great week!  At the Allen's on Monday, Luke was back and asking to be taught again!!  Tammy had been able to go 2 days without smoking!  Cheyenne's boyfriend, Tanner came to a lesson for the first time!  It was awesome!!  We read the Proclamation to the World on the Family.  It felt like a marriage prep class since Ashley and Cheyenne were there with their boyfriends.  I LOVE that family!  Oh and before that group we had a Family Home Evening with the Ungers!! We've been trying to do that since we got here 5 months ago! 
We've met with a sister who's struggling with the Word of Wisdom.  Her husband died of a drug overdose shortly after she was baptized last year and she is really hurting.  Its been great to help her understand how the atonement can help her with her pain. 
We took the Elders to dinner at an investigator's on Tuesday and then we took the Sisters there for dinner on Friday.  Mildred's son is a member.  She and her daughter-in-law have been widows for about a year.  She is such a sweetie and an amazing cook!  She's starting to get it.  She has good questions and really wants to understand where her son and husband are and how she can see them again.
Our Book of Mormon class is going really well!  Its been great for new members, reactivated members and investigators to study together.  An inspired idea of Sister Fisher's.  While we were at Book of Mormon class Sister Weitzel died.  That's 3 ward members in one week! 
Thursday we had the blessing of taking Br. Sneed to the temple for the first time in over 20 years.  As we walked through the front door he was already tearing up.  We also took Sister Unger.  One wheelchair is much better than 2 at a time.  Oh, how I miss going to the temple more often! 
Friday we challenged Luke to pray about it and to set a new baptism date.  Elder Quincy gave him a blessing to help him stop chewing tobacco.  There was a strong spirit there!
Saturday Elder Quincy went fishing with Br. Roberts and Br. Hill.  He outfished them all!  He was back in time to go with me and the Sisters to teach a couple of lessons before Jaycie's baptism.  It was the best baptism; Sonya gave the baptism talk. Luke came.  Tammy came with her boyfriend.  Sonya's husband came, and Tammy and Sonya's parents came, so it was really cool for her to be able to bear her testimony in front of so many of her family members. The Spanish Elders brought a couple of investigators, so that was cool, too!  The family invited us to dinner at El Burrito after to celebrate.  That was great, because we got to know Lloyd, Sonya's husband, better.
Sunday has been crazy busy!  We had 7:30 PEC meeting.  There were 8 investigators there to take care of.  3 of them came with Sandy for her baptism, which was right after church.  Elder Quincy confirmed Jaycie.  Br. Sneed spoke in church; his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson came to listen!! He told how repenting has blessed his life.  He told the whole story of his comeback and it was really powerful and touching!  A less active family we've been working with were there for the 3rd week in a row!!  Sister Lee even came to Relief Society for the first time!!  Sandy's baptism was great!  Her best friend's son baptized her.  I'm guessing he is where the referral came from to get the missionaries to her door.  His mom must have been touched to see her son baptize her best friend.  We hope she starts taking the lessons!
Elder Quincy gave lots of blessings this week, well some he had the young Elders give, and some Br. Roberts gave, but he participated in all of them.  Glenda decided that her husband is ready to be taught.  She's been worried because he has some dementia.  We think he's ready. 
We had a couple from the ward over for dinner Sunday night.  He's the ward clerk and is really awesome.  She's never been to church in this ward.  We  had a lot of fun teaching them  how to play speed Scrabble and Tenzies.  We had some good talks about her conversion and her background.  She kind of committed to come to the ward party Saturday night. 
We've had more rain this week than any time so far.  No more cold like we had a few weeks ago though.  The Spanish Elders got stuck in a ditch and Elder Quincy showed all the Elders how to hook up a tow chain.  Some good and some bad firsts this week. 

Book of Mormon Class

 Our new district.  For 2 more weeks.

Yup, Elder Quincy caught the big one and the most. 

Death and rebirth

We had an interesting week. Tammy said she isn't going to buy any more cigarettes.  The Brights were taking their son to Rexburg for school and got stuck in a blizzard without a motel room available.  They called and we were able to talk to my sweet niece, Heidi, who put them up for the night.  Its cool when two sets of cool people meet!  Our sweet granddaughter Tessa was baptized in Denver on Saturday.  We really wanted to be there, but just felt like we needed to stay here. 

Elder Kent in the back showing Tammy where to read the Word of Wisdom, while Jamison poses in Elder Taylors' name badge.

These steep steps need to be rebuilt.  They may be Elder Quincy's next project.

Elder Kent's birthday lunch at the Robert's.

Br. Tucker sitting to eat at the funeral luncheon.

Ailene with her mom, grandpa and cousin.

Clouds on our way to Jenny's today.

Cousins ready for dinner

Jenny's awesome table can seat us all!

Robbie Tucker died on Wednesday night.  Joyce Moore died Saturday afternoon.  Elder Quincy not only got to dress his third body for a funeral here, but he was a pallbearer for Robbie's funeral. We got a call late Thursday from Joyce's sister saying that we should get to the hospital because she was failing fast.  Elder Quincy and Br. Moore, no relation, gave her a blessing. She was pretty much released to die peacefully.  We made it to 2 other hospitals, and 3 nursing homes this week, then back to the same one for a blessing to Sister Ingold today.
The Spanish Elders had a baptism!  Elder Riches got to come back and baptize Ailene! His first baptism!  Ailene's grandpa was less active.  The Elders reactivated him and started teaching his daughter and granddaughter.  His daughter, Iris will be baptized soon. 
We are visiting new people all the time, I think we have been to 250 home now.  We had 14 people to our Book of Mormon study class at church this week!  2 investigators, 2 less actives and the rest active members and missionaries. Its coming along nicely!
Sonya's niece, Jaycie was surprised to see a friend from school at our church the first time she came.  He was ordained a priest today.  She's getting baptized Saturday and she may have him perform the baptism!  Pretty awesome for a brand new priest!  Sandy is getting baptized on Sunday! 
We have had to start the air conditioning back up.  We only went a few days without it.  Its gorgeous in the mornings when we walk though; about 65 degrees! 
We had a Zone Conference on Tuesday.  President and Sister Drake's friends were visiting and spoke to us. After the conference we were talking to them and discovered that Br. Condie is an old Kennedy Jr. High alumni.  He remembered my brother Bob.  Such a small world!
We are sleeping over at the Kendalls again, since the grandkids are out of school tomorrow.  Jenny cooked us an awesome meal.  Jason's family came, too.  Sydney slept over too.  More fun tomorrow!

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!