A Joyful Week!

We had Zone Conference this week and Sister Drake assigned us to make a list of 10 things that bring us joy and to post it in our apartment.  I got to experience all of these things this week! 

I love it when the missionaries are low on miles because they need us to drive them to more of their appointments.  We love helping them teach their investigators.  There's a new rule in the mission field; no more zone meetings and when there's a zone conference there's no district meeting that week.  Perhaps my complaints about all the meetings getting in the way of the work reached the ears of someone?  At any rate, we found ourselves without a meeting Friday morning for the first time in forever and no set plans, so we decided it was time to keep our promise and visit Sister Kentish.  She lives about 2 hours away in Newton, Texas, so we had this beautiful drive up there and me with nothing to do, but listen to Hank Smith and take pictures.

Br. Roberts has a rental property he calls "2 Below".  The last renters really trashed the place.  Luke's brother kicked him out of their house.  He's been staying with a few members and living out of a garbage bag.  I loaned him my huge suitcase, because living out of a suitcase is much better than living out of  garbage bag, right?  Anyways, Br. Roberts offered his rental to Luke.  So Saturday morning 8 of us spent 5 hours cleaning it and its ready for occupation now.  It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever cleaned!  Rodent nests in every drawer, rotting fish in the fridge, food and trash left everywhere, and lots of dog poop and mouse poop everywhere.  It was a fun service project with all of the Cleveland ward missionaries there in spite of the disgustingness.  I have never been so hot before!  It was 89 that day, no air conditioning and it was super muggy.  Good preparation for the heat of summer which is right around the corner.

It sits right on this little marshy lake.  There are alligators in the lake, but we didn't see any.

This huge 8 year old was baptized on Sunday after the block by his dad.  I'm guessing Br. Colbert is 300 pounds. He is a great dad and is currently the Nursery Leader!  Gotta love that!

We took the Sisters to dinner at the Morales' on Sunday night.  A great way to break our fast for my niece, Aida.  Antonio told us the story of his life and wow!  He was kidnapped from Guatemala as a teenager and taken to Mexico.  He ran away and got lost in the forest, where he lived without food or water for 3 days and nights.  He found a road and turned himself over to the border patrol.  He got to Texas, illegally a while later, and this week he was able to get his Social Security card in the mail!  Today he's taking the driving test to get a license. And he can work legally here for the first time in the 8 years (not sure about that, so I'm guessing) he's lived here.  So happy for them!

More of our drive to Newton.  This is Twin Lakes.

We found Sister Kentish. She didn't know us at first, she has dementia, but after looking at our badges and realizing we were from the church she started remembering us.  It was such a relief to find her happy and well cared for.  Her attitude and outlook has changed drastically.  Her son, who was enemy number one before, is now her hero.  He visits her every week.  He took her home over Mother's Day week-end and she was so happy to see her puppy! 

The nursing home is clean and friendly and she's locked into the area she's in, but its for her safety. 

Jasper is a cute little town.

We drove through a cool storm.

This terrible wreck scared me some. They were still cleaning it up when we drove back by it 3 hours later.

This bridge over the Trinity River was cool.

I send Book of Mormon (usually) reading assignments to an investigator, 4 new members, 2 reactivating members, and a couple of active members every morning.  I do it first thing in the morning, before I get up, as I'm still laying in bed.  I told Elder Quincy that it just doesn't get better than that, doing missionary work in my pajamas in bed.  Sometimes I get lots of replies and questions and end up spending half an hour laying there "doing missionary work". 
Our investigator, Christina has been released from the hospital! She's still got a lot of work to recovery, but its really a miracle she's alive at all!  We're praying she can get married and baptized July 1st , as planned. 
Timothy and Odell were ordained as Priests in the Aaronic priesthood yesterday!  Ashely and Sonya taught the 11 year olds in Primary for the first time.  Angela Graham did the Wednesday night Achievement Day girls activity this week!  I so love seeing them serve!  We got to the 2nd step in our Addiction Recovery Meeting Thursday night and all 3 guys from our ward were there again!  They all felt the Spirit telling them to talk to the Bishop.  One of them did Sunday! 
Elder Quincy went fishing last Monday and they kept 103 of the hundreds they caught.  It took them almost 2 hours just to filet them!  He has probably caught more fish in Texas than he's caught in Utah now.  He's out there again this morning and Thursday morning President Drake and Sister Drake are coming up to fish with them! 
This was the first Sunday I remember without an investigator in our ward.  The Spanish Elders brought a guy into our Gospel Principles class though.  Bridget and Christina were both sick, and the others just didn't make it!  We'll be going to the temple with Odell and Tim next week!  Hopefully Jaycie and Tammy will make it, too. 

A Baptism without a Funeral!!

So many things happened this week!  Most of them wonderful things, but a couple of scary and sad things.  Shannon came to our Book of Mormon class early and had an interview with the Bishop.  She came into the class and said she wanted to get to the temple as soon as possible.  This was Wednesday night.  So I got right on the phone and we managed to get an appointment to do a baptism for Friday night.  She really wanted to take an ancestor's name.  We had no time we could meet to work on it together and frankly very little spare time to work on it alone before Friday evening, but she gave me her sign in information and I started working on getting a name ready.  I had tried everything I knew of and had just about given up late Thursday night (about an hour past when I'm supposed to be in bed) when the Spirit prompted me to try googling her great grandmother's last name.  When I did an alternative spelling came up, which I then tried in Family Search and found a match!  She'd had her married name as her husband's first name and her maiden name spelled wrong!  So Shannon was able to be baptized for her grandmother and it was awesome! Wednesday night Odell Jackson's nephew was able to talk to the Bishop and was found worthy to baptize his uncle!  Chris was less active when we arrived.  He was the caretaker of an investigator who died before we got her baptized.  That really put the fear of God in him and he started coming back to church.  His uncle moved in with him then and he came to church with him.  It turns out he's my 12th cousin through the Ezekiel Johnson line.  Anyways Odell is amazing!  He's 68.  He is so excited to serve!

The scary thing is that our new member has had trouble with alcohol.  The good news is that the Spirit told me he needed to finish the Addiction Recovery program.  There's a member in the ward who's recently finished rehab.  We invited the 2 of them to come with us to Kingwood on Thursday night for the group meeting for the Addiction Recovery Program at the Stake Center.  They came and ate dinner with us first and it was awesome!  We are going to do it every Thursday night as long as we're here.  The sad thing is that neither of them made it to church Sunday!  We just keep inviting and praying and texting and I worry, Elder Quincy doesn't worry, but I do enough for both of us!

These pictures are all backwards.  Friday we spent a few hours getting the lattice woodwork off of Tammy's porch so that we could paint her house Saturday.

Christina, an investigator who's engaged to a member got septic pneumonia and almost died!  They put her in a medical induced coma.  The doctor told Br. Soper that she may not live through the night.  Br. Johnston went to the hospital in the middle of the night and gave her a blessing.  When we got there the next day she was improving slighty, her kidneys weren't functioning, so they planned to start her on dialysis that day.  She gradually improved all day and they didn't have to start dialysis.  yesterday she got off of the ventilator!  They are supposed to get married on July 1st and she'll be baptized on July 8th, if all goes as planned! 

Saturday,we got the Elders at 7:00 and painted until 11. We came home and changed into clothes for the baptism and went to Odell's baptism.  Elder Quincy gave the baptism talk.  We took the Sisters back with us after we all changed and painted until 4:00. It was awesome because Sonya's husband Lloyd, and she and Tammy's parents; the Allens were there working and talking with us all day.  That's Jerry Allen on the ladder by Elder Quincy.

This is Barbara Allen talking to Sister Houseman.

Elder Quincy getting ready to cover the last of the barn red.

Sweet Shannon.  Her goal is to be able to get her endowment and be sealed to her husband by the anniversary of his death; July 30th. 

These pictures are all in the wrong order.  This is the porch without the lattice work.  It seems so much bigger!

One side finished.

Can you spot the squirrel in this picture?

A new flower I spotted on our walk.

Hard working Elders. Taking down the latticework. 

The Terrenos sales office I was talking about last week.

I thought this was hilarious.  We got our tires rotated this week and these moms were holding their daughters the whole time we waited!  One of them is bigger than her mom!

Update on the Morales; Antonio got everything done and should get his Social Security card in the mail this week!  AND Ruby has been cleaning and dejunking!  I killed hundreds of cockroaches and did a lot of sweeping up and organizing things, but Ruby has been going gangbusters on cleaning and getting rid of stuff!  My sisters would be amazed!  We even started on the back porch on Saturday night!

The Fish that Elder Quincy caught and Cinco de Mayo in Spanishland

All the missionaries went fishing at the Neal's property on Monday.  Elder Quincy caught this giant fish.  Everyone had to pose with it.  Jaymo caught this fish with Luke later in the same place.  Its just as big if it look at it in proportion to the fisherman.

 We've had a wonderful week with lots of firsts. An outdoor service project without Elder Quincy there was a first.  Finding a sweet lady at the nursing home's great great grandparents was a first.  She is so excited about it, too!  I need to teach her why she feels the urgency to do her family history.
We went with the Sisters to eat at Odell's on Tuesday night.  BTW he's getting baptized Saturday!! He fixed us a delicious meal with pork roast and vegetables.  We left there and met the Spanish Elders to go teach Ramon's family. They failed to tell us that they were also feeding us dinner!  First time to eat 2 big meals in one night!  Shannon fed all of us lunch after we worked on her yard that day, and Sister Perry has been feeding Br. Sneed and Elder Quincy lunch everyday up at the ramp project, so we have had a record number of meals with investigators and members this week.  We ate with the Allens on Monday night, as usual, with the Elders and Shannon on Thursday night and with Br. Hodges and the Elders on Saturday night.  Sunday I cooked Café Rio pork for all the missionaries for a farewell dinner.  So we only ate at home twice this week. 
Ok, so on Friday night, Cinco de Mayo, after the Family History class and a lesson with Odell, we took some cookies to Ramon's house to thank them for dinner and Elder Quincy and I taught our first lesson in Spanish without the Elders.  I gave my second prayer in Spanish for the week.  Elder Quincy prayed in English, but I told them what he'd said after.  The missionaries call the areas with lots of Hispanics in our area Spanishland.  There are about 4 of them.  There's a huge business; that's kind of like Craiglist for Spanish speaker and a real estate company all in one called Terrenos.  I think it must be bigger than just here, because the signs say Terrenos Houston.  They build these subdivisions and seem to mostly sell to Hispanics, which makes it easy for the Spanish Elders to know where to look.
Saturday we went to a funeral for a step grandson of a sister we visit in the nursing home.  Her son is an inactive member.  It was the most country funeral ever!  Lots of cowboy music blaring, lots of guys in cowboy hats, and the preacher's accent was so thick, we had a hard time understanding him.  He gave a good, uplifting message though. 
Sunday was cool, Sister Houseman had the great idea of putting on a musical missionary fireside, this was planned months before we had the surprise fireside with David Archuleta last Sunday.  She had the Primary kids, the Young Women and a few individuals in the ward preform.  She also had President Rascon from the Mission Presidency speak and sing with his wife.  It was really nice and each set of missionaries; Elders, Sisters and Spanish Elders, had an investigator there.  The interesting part is that the Elder's Quorum were in charge of refreshments.  I had brought some brownie bites from Sam's Club as back up, and Elder Allen brought a cake a member had given him, but there obviously wasn't enough to go around.  The Spanish Elder's investigator left and bought a couple of chocolate cakes and a watermelon.  Life is different here in the mission field!  This ward is growing with new members and we are seeing inactives coming back! 
Okay, the best for last!  Luke was called to be the assistant Scout Master yesterday! Jessica Becker bore her testimony in Sacrament meeting and Ashley Evans gave her testimony in Relief Society!  This is a great adventure!  I'm so glad I have my companion back!  Oh and another awesome thing is that this ramp Elder Quincy just finished is in the same street as the Mason family.  Stephen Mason, the 14 year old son who is wheelchair bound was able to get into the Perry's home and hang out with their grandson, a 14 year old we are trying to get ready for the priesthood!  We'd built the ramp with his great grandmother in mind, but how cool that Heavenly Father had another plan in mind!

Elder Romero is leaving us today. 

Elder Allen, far left is leaving us, too.

While Elder Quincy was working on his ramp project, I went with all the missionaries to clean some of Shannon Watson's back yard.  Br. Roberts showed up with his lawn mower and got the whole place mowed, which was awesome, but he didn't get the message about bringing his chain saw.  All Shannon had was a machete and some hedge trimmers, but the missionaries managed to take out a few trees with what she had.  My job was to make sure they didn't take out each other and/or get too close to the Copperhead snake we saw down by the creek. 

Sister Housman said she did yard work with a machete in Hawaii all the time.

this is the huge burn pile from the stuff we cut down.

Meanwhile Br. Sneed and Elder Quincy worked on this ramp.

This is a memorial garden Sister Perry made in her back yard.  This is something people do a lot around here.

Leveling this driveway, putting in some culverts,  and bringing in gravel will be a future project.

Our last district meeting before transfers. The only picture I have of our whole district.

On the way to the Morales'.  They made it back from Guatemala!  Antonio is getting a Social Security card this week!  We're going to help clean up the disaster their house was when they got home later today.

A pond with great lily pads I admired on our way to visit a new member Saturday.

One of the swap meets in Cleveland.  This one sells ponies and goats.

Last few things Saturday; hanging this mirror and putting up the shower curtain. 

Logan graduated from Preschool on Thursday night.  We didn't get to go because the Elders needed us to go to eat with them at a single women's house.  Luckily Nicole is really good at taking pictures.