All kinds of lessons this week!

We've added a new first to our mission experiences!  We, well actually Elder Quincy, have been teaching Edmond and Elysee to drive.  I watch the kids and try to keep them out of the way as they drive around the church.
We taught English to the Mavuangis (after driving lessons), Plan of Salvation lessons to Pauline, Janelle, and Samoping, a Temple Prep lesson (in French) to the Kangnis, Gospel Principles in English and French, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson to Vickie. We also helped Alain by calling immigration and asked them to expedite the immigration of his wife and three boys to come from the Congo because of his health problems.
We met the last member of the Hernandez family in the ward!  Daniel and his wife came to church Sunday!! Elder Quincy is going to help them with a building project at her parent's house.  He also found a family who's remodeling a home, the Rodriguezes to help.
I have two tender mercies to share this week;
First: we are teaching Pauline who obviously smokes.  She is so sweet and so sincere.  She's been reading and praying.  We've been praying that as she reads the Book of Mormon that she'll lose the desire to smoke.  Sunday she told us that she's trying to stop smoking because when she was praying she felt like it was the right thing to do!
Second; Sunday we drove up to Conrad to take the sacrament to Br. Hoffa.  When we got to the nursing home we discovered they had everyone on the front lawn for a concert.  So we started for home.  As we pulled onto highway 14 we got a call from Brandon.  His wife had just been in an accident on the road we were on. Right by us.  We were able to be there to comfort and help get them back home.  We are truly seeing God's hand in our lives as we serve!

We found Elder Asay from Houston on the wall at our district meeting in Ames.

Friday we showed up to do service at this building which didn't happen. Some miscommunication between agencies.

Driving home from Toledo and our lesson with the Kangnis

More flowers on my walk around the pond.  I've actually worn a jacket for walks this week.

Samuel was so excited about his mom driving that it was hard to contain him.

More pictures of the place we did service on Saturday.

Lunch with the District at Rico's Tacos.

Proof we've been in Gilman.

This is where we met the seniors coming to retrieve there stuff from their rooms.

This is their building, notice the top floor is gone.

The concert on the lawn at the nursing home.

some of the volunteers waiting to serve.

We took the Sisters to a doctor's appointment that happens to be in my awesome cousin, Lisa's town!

Jessi and Preston walking past some of the pieces of their vehicle.

The sister wore matching skirts and tada!  Lisa's daughter, Kelsey had one, too!

We stopped at the Chinese Buffet on the way home!

We made it to Nauvoo!

We've had an awesome week!  The highlight was getting to take these new converts to do baptisms in the Nauvoo temple today!  This is such a miracle!  Paul and Lea work 6 days a week long hours and the temple is 3 1/2 hours away. I was looking at the Nauvoo schedule trying to figure out a time they could go and tada!  It was open today on Labor Day!  And they were off from work!!  Luis was also able to come.

Br. Kangni was able to baptize his wife and Br. Mora in French.  Br. Mora was able to baptize Br. Kangni is Spanish.  There was an awesome temple worker there who speaks French who made it all work out!  It was great to be there!  We are exhausted and have no clean clothes for a busy week, but it'll all work out.

On their way in!

After.

We had lots of appointments fall through for the week, probably because of the holiday, but we also had 4 people tell us they want to be taught and be baptized. 

Crossing the Mississippi river into Illinois.

The buckeyes have ripened.  

We've had lots of rain this week, the clouds make awesome sunsets.

The corn is ripe.  In fact we wonder why it isn't being harvested yet.  We'll have to find us a farmer to explain it to us.

Pretty awesome sky on the way home today.

The metal salvage is pretty full from all the tornado cleanup. 

Several of the young families in the ward gathered at the church in the rain for a fun Family Home Evening activity.

I love the spider web in this picture.

Pretty wildflowers around our ponds.

Avenue of the Saints... on the way to Nauvoo.

 Some awesome rainstorms.

Notice the ripe soybeans.

One quick story about the Kangnis.  They were baptized on a Saturday and the next morning their car wouldn't start to come to church and get confirmed.  Lea said; "We're walking!  So they walked about 18 miles and were late, but got confirmed before Sacrament meeting was over.  They have a lot of faith!

Our cute district.

We had a great week!

After all the craziness last week it was awesome to have a week with few cancellations and things going more or less according to plan!  We had 6 Family Home Evenings this week!  We are getting really good at Don't Eat Pete!  Elysee was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. I love her!  She is awesome.  

The French speakers in the ward all have a different first language which isn't French.  Swahili, Lingala, Mina and probably more.  They come to church and understand very little of Sacrament Meeting, have a French Gospel Principles class and then are totally lots in Priesthood and Relief Society.  I am getting better at the speaking, but am so far from being able to translate for them.  I gave a talk at the baptism alternating between English and French in hopes that the repetition would help them understand.  So Elysee's husband, Edmond and son, Rovi were already baptized.  Elder Quincy baptized her.  

I am fascinated with the windmills here.  I had no idea how huge they are until I've seen the arms of them on the freeway.

They are longer than 2 semi truck trailers.this is a part of town that had been blocked off until recently.  I got some pictures of the repair or not repair work going on there.

We had interview with the Mission President and his wife on Friday morning. The district meets and has a training session then we're called out for interview 2 at a time.  Here's a picture of our new district minus Sister Henderson.  She wasn't loving her district that day.

Here's the Mavuangis ready for church and Elysee's confirmation.

We are teaching Elysee and her 3 kids English on Wednesday nights.  They kids really don't want to sit through a lesson, so we got a basketball and promised Elder Quincy would teach them to play basketball after the lesson.  It went well this week.

 Sunday was so awesome!  Amy gave her first talk and did an amazing job!  She is a natural speaker!  Edu gave his first talk in Spanish and Br. Westwater translated!  There were about 20 Spanish speakers there so it was wonderful!  And they called Edu and his wife to teach a Spanish Sunday School class!  We had 2 more Hispanic families there for the first time since we've been here.
We are trying to plan a trip to the Nauvoo temple before it closes for 3 months.  The Africans work 6 days a week so its hard to schedule, BUT they will be off on Labor Day and the temple is open until 1:00 that day!
We had a first yesterday!  We taught the first lesson and put Janelle on date for baptism!!  She and her mom and grandma all listened and it was wonderful!  Maritza and family and Preston and family made it to church, so they are one step closer to their baptisms!  We are loving life!
One quick story of God's hand in this work.  We drove past a house for sale and decided to take a picture and text it to Amy.  She is the one who is living with friends since the tornado.  She answered quickly and asked if we could come get her. She'd just been in an accident.  We were about a block away and Elder Quincy was able to bongee cord her bumper on so she could drive home.  God loves us and is watching out for us!  Its a privledge to be His servants.