The new normal

As I was looking back through my journal entries to figure out what we did this week I saw a recurring start; "Today was a crazy day".  I guess that's the new normal.  We make plans and Heavenly Father chuckles.  He has it all figured out and once in a while we get it right.  We had a lot of last minute changes to our plans this week.  Lets talk about yesterday.  We had rides all lined up to get the Mavuangi family and the Gobble family to church, which included us making 2 trips.  First thing in the morning we heard that the Kangnis wouldn't be coming and so couldn't pick up 3 of the Mavuangis.  So we started calling people... 6 calls later we were still fumbling, but decided to go get the Mavuangis we could fit in first and tell them we'd be back for more.  Elder Quincy left me at the church (one more seat) and went to get Br. Gobble after hearing his dad could pick up the 3 kids.  He got there and no grandpa, so he called me and I found a good sister to pick up the rest of the Mavuangis.  Its kind of like that every Sunday.  Good news is that Saturday morning the Mavuangis are taking the driving test and so we can help them find a vehicle next week!

Here's a cool thing that happened; we had a few minutes between appointments and have been trying to meet one of the Hernandez family.  Sister Hernandez has 8 children; 4 girls and 4 boys. All of her girls have families in our ward.  We've never met her son, William and earlier that day we'd learned that he has a wife who isn't a member.  We went to their house and found no one there, so we dropped off at one more house and headed home.  On the way Elder Quincy wanted to stop and look for a van for the Mavuangis at a lot.  As we pulled up I noticecd one of the Hernandez daughters and guess who was there with her!  We met the son, his wife and 2 children and set up a meeting with this  family for this week!  Serendipitus?  Miracle?  You choose.

We got more stuff from the office this week and some orders came from LDS. store.org, so we are pretty set up in the 3 languages we deal with.

Beautiful clouds on the way to the office.

The tornado hit Maria's tacos, but she's still going strong out of this food truck.  4.8 stars out of 5! It was Elder Espinoza's birthday so we took the Elders out for dinner.  He is  our new District Leader. He was born in Chile!  Elder Meneses was born in Mexico.  They both moved to the US when they were 12.

The city building in Eldora.

We took Amy with us to the office and she was excited to get an Ensign!

The Jay's stuff that we moved into a member's garage got put into this moving truck, mostly by Elder Quincy and Br. Kynsaton.  the Elders showed up and helped for a while and Br. Keys came by with his truck after his work.  They worked miracles fitting it all in!

The windmills are awesome on the horizon by Beamon.

Part of the zone.  Two sets of sisters hadn't arrived yet.  We have 2 new greenies, one from South Jordan! and one is the nephew of our friends the Hurley's!  We heard about this meeting about an hour before we had to leave to get there in time and had to leave early to help with the Jay's move, so no formal picture.  I'll get one next week.

This is Charlie.  He is in the Veterans Home.  He's so sweet.  He was happy because someone had come and given him a shave and a haircut so I took of picture of him looking good.

We got to drop off a member to pick up some stuff from the County Jail.

There were lots of tractors on the road up by Eldora on Saturday.

These three Mavuangi kids are very excited that their mom is getting baptized on Saturday!  We started teaching the Daily dose English classes this week with them and Elysee.  They are good students!  

 Another awesome thing that happened is that we're teaching Maritza the lessons to prepare her to be baptized and her mom brought her and her 2 siblings to church along with the grandma and 2 cousins!  That was very nice to see them come in!
We have 5 Family Home Evenings scheduled this week!  3 of them tonight!   We are finding our stride and embracing the crazy!

Living in the growth zone

At our District Council this week Elder Westover said; "there's no growth in the comfort zone and there's no comfort in the growth zone".  So I guess we are growing.  We have taught lessons in 3 languages this week to people from Liberia, Togo, the Congo, Mexico and the Marshall Islands.  It turns out that Iowa takes in refugees.  5% of Iowa is people born in other countries and 4% are children of people born in other countries.  I spend about half an hour every day studying on Duolingo and TALLdrill apps to try to improve my French.  The Spanish seems much easier comparatively, but I still struggle to understand sometimes.
Another new experience has been using the laundry facilities in our building.  We have to have quarters!  Something I've never dealt with.  The nice part is that there are 2 washing machines and 2 dryers, so we can get things done faster than at home.
So, we've had 4 missionary meetings so far and each one has been in a different city. So we've been to Ft. Dodge, Des Moines, Amana, and Ames.  Inside of our ward boundaries we've been to Wellsburg, Grundy Station, Gladbrook, Albion, Conrad, Mountour, Tama, Toledo, Rhodes, and of course Marshalltown.  Each town is surrounded by corn and soybean fields and then has a cute center with stores and subdivisions.
We had a great baptism Saturday!  Danal is cute and outgoing and had 10 people from her neighborhood there besides lots of ward members there to support her.
I've started sending out a text with a scripture to read in French each morning after I send one to my English speakers. The 4 families I send it to have all expressed their gratitude and how they enjoy it.  Yesterday I knew the name of every person at church!  That feels good!

Danal with her friends and family and the trio of EldersJo Ferugson at her beautiful place.

So some places are still waiting to be cleaned up here (rentals and those beyond repair).  Some are being repaired by the owners (those without insurance) some are being repaired by professionals (those with insurance), and some are realizing the damage is worse than first expected and will be demolished.  The traffic lights are on and almost everyone has power now, although some still don't have gas turned on.

Manathan and Hardy in the awesome matchng clothes she made.

We had the Elders over for hamburgers.  They enjoyed them.

Lunch at Hickory Park in Ames with our district.

Danal and friends excited to be given programs.

our laundry room

Our district.  We have transfers Thursday, so it will change.  Elder Fox and Elder Lovin are going home!

Some of the Matthew family; they are from the Marshall Islands.  The Elder that found them and taught them happened to be from the Marshall Islands.

The crew packing up Amy's stuff.  She has to move out of her rental because the roof was too soft to repair. She is awesome!  She was baptized the week before we got here.  We've been teaching her the new member lessons.  

This restaurant is open even though it hasn't got all the repair work done.

Lots of roofs covered in plastic waiting for their turn to be repaired.

This is the back of the Lennox plant.  Lots of people work there.  They plan to rebuild.

This water leaked into Amy's kitchen. It is right below the damaged roof upstairs.  The water line appeared over night.

We got these sweet notes from our grandkids today!  Our first letter!  We've had a busy day with a lesson in French, a lesson in English and a Family Home Evening in Spanish!  We love being able to teach lessons on this mission.  We've taught more than we did the whole year we were in Cleveland already in our first month here.  Its amazing to see how the Lord sends us to the right people at the right time!  He really does love the good people of  Marshalltown!

We are on a roll!

We started the week out with service at the Steinback's with Brandon Gobble, whose cute family totally reminds us of the Grahams from our Cleveland ward.  We ended the week teaching about 12 kids with Danelle who's getting baptized on Saturday.  Their parents were gone so we did it in the neighbor's driveway.  We had 2 family home evenings this week; one in English with the Gobbles, who fed us dinner and one in French with the Mavuangis. They are my favorite!  I gave 2 prayers in French this week!  I'm making progress! There's a church app TALLdrill that helps!

This is the city building that lost its spire in the tornado.

A wall done at the Steinback's.

We spent a morning helping sweet Lea Kangi get a bank account open and her social security card fixed so she could start a  job the next day.  She and her husband are getting ready to go to the temple.  I got to teach them their first temple prep class today, mostly in French.

The HUGE pile in front of the Bandera's is all cleared up!!

The mostly empty kitchen at the Jay's.

We had Zone Meeting on Tuesday.  It was great!  We loved hearing from the Badgers.  They are going to be wonderful to work with.  President said my favorite quote from the meeting.  "Every time you invite someone to come unto Christ, you are one step closer yourself." 

I love the wild flowers we see on our walk.

The Jay's empty bedroom.

How cool is this?  This quad is at the church.  Its almost as old as I am!

cool sunset from our balcony.

Lights still out downtown.

We spent most of a day in Toledo and Tama.  We made it to about 25 homes and only found about 6 people home to talk to. Everyone said we had to try the loose meat sandwiches at Maid Rite. So we stopped for lunch at the one in Tama.  No Ranch hand Café, but pretty good.

This is a buckeye tree.  They look like green walnuts.  

On the narrow streets they have signs saying which days you can park on which side. 

This is the neighborhood park in the hood.

The Roberts are an awesome couple in Tama, who invited us for dinner.  We were pleasantly surprised to find 4 other members there for dinner too!

The Roberts live in the amazing old house that is gorgeous inside and out.

Here's the Bishop's house with the huge pile of tree limbs hauled away!

Only time we've seen anything like lawns being watered here.  Apparently its very unusual to be as dry as its been.  Don't worry it rained today and will again tomorrow.  What a blessing for the people who lost their roofs and windows to have it dry for a while though!

This is Br Hoffa whose wife died the week before we got here.  He's 93.  His pocket is full of candy bars he won playing Bingo at his care center. He said that the corn on his farm is 12 feet high this year.  He's a sweet guy.

One of the people we found in Toledo was Dawn.  She was in a care center and was so excited to see us.  She'd had a bad experience and was really having a rough week. Elder Quincy gave her a blessing and she said that it made her feel so much better!  Our Heavenly Father knows and loves each of these people and he sends us to them when they need us.  What a privilege it is to be his servants!