Celebrating!

We had a wonderful time at our Family Home Evening group meeting on Monday!  Elder Espinoza's last one with us, so we got a group picture, minus Jerry, who was taking the shot.  Luis is in Honduras with his wife for Christmas, so we missed him, too. 

Edmond passed the driving test!!  This is such a blessing!  Now Elder Quincy is trying to help them find a car.

We got to take Lea to the eye doctor here in town for new glasses this week and then to Cedar Rapids to see a specialist about her ear problems.  She works by a very loud machine and has had ringing in her ear for a couple of months now.

 We had fun at the Youth Group at the Methodist church on Wednesday.  We even got to play the Christmas edition of  Don't Eat Pete with them.

Taking the kids to school one morning we found this house being removed.  There's been a lot of that going on lately.  Either starting repairs or removal.

The next day there was only flat ground.

It was 52 degrees one afternoon, so Elder Quincy enjoyed an afternoon walk around the still frozen pond.

This group of missionaries left us.  Here they are at the Salt Lake airport.  We had the priviledge of working with all but 2 of these missionaries.

And here's the picture of the new group at our combined District Council Friday.I enjoyed singing with the ward choir in the Christmas Sacrament meeting program yesterday.  I especially loved looking out at the ward and realizing how much I've grown to love this group of good people.  Smiling at them and seeing their faces light up really made me happy.  As we were leaving for church Tammy called for Cleveland, Texas to say she was talking in church and she read me her talk, which was beautiful and made me cry, but oh so happy!  Life is full of good happy moments!  Like watching these two on the horse at the grocery store.  Soon they'll have a car and I'll miss spending so much time with them!

 Elder Barker is our new Elder.  He is English speaking, so I am now the Spanish expert in the ward!  Scary!  Nancy and her son Kevin are meeting with us for lessons the next 2 days!  I've never taught the commandments in Spanish since my first mission, so this will be interesting!  We love you and wish you all a Merry Christmas!  So far, we have lunch at nursing home, birthday cake with Nancy and Kevin and dinner at our house with the Elders and Nancy and Kevin.  We also promised to visit 4 more people that day, so its going to be busy and fun!

The Very Best Part of Christmastime

In case you wondered what we look like these days, here's a great picture Emma drew for us yesterday!

I love Christmas food, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, and talking about Jesus Christ.  We have had a wonderful mix of those things this week! Starting with an awesome Family Home Evening at the church on Monday night!  We had a great time talking about the life of Jesus Christ. We sang Christmas songs. We had enough kids to play some fun games and great refreshments.

Because of the ongoing need for repairs on homes from the tornado; Habitat for Humanities will be working in Marshalltown for the next year.  There are a couple of city owned homes that were vacant.  The church was given the assignment of cleaning them and painting the insides.  This is one of them. I also took a bunch of pictures this week of the demolition and repair work going on. 

Notice the tarps on many roofs still.  Hopefully these will be repaired soon.

There was a wonderful crew on Saturday with people from all over the stake.

Elder Espinoza goes home this week.  We had his goodbye dinner on Wednesday night before we headed to Gilman.  It was our week to teach!  The highlight of the month!  We really love the kids!  We had about 18 on Wednesday night.  They love the Mormon Messages videos we show them and don't complain as we quote from the Book of Mormon. 

The heat still wasn't on when we cleaned on Thursday night at the Habitat houses.  The cleaning products were all frozen!

 Cute helpers at the painting project.

More demolition.

We have an awesome family moving into the ward.  We met them at the home the are about to buy for Elder Quincy to give them advice.  There wasn't a ladder to get into the attic so Br. Newberry monkeyed his way up there.

Besides Elder Espinoza going home, Sister Durland is also leaving our district for home.  She was "born" here in Marshalltown.  The missionaries like to take "funeral" pictures as they are about to "die". 

 They all brightened up and we had a fun lunch at the Pizza Ranch; a buffet pizza place.  This group put away a lot of pizza!

More places being repaired.

Demolition.

Friday night we had a great Relief Society progressive dinner!  It was so fun to see the decorated houses, eat the good food and best of all; Pauline came!!

There are lots of empty lots around where houses have been taken down.

Saturday after painting we went to the Christmas Party at Barbara Costello's nursing home.  She was very excited to have her granddaughters there, too!

More painting crew.

We took Manathan and Hardy to the OB again, which just happens to be in Ames where Sister Durland is serving, so we arranged for her to meet us to see Hardy and meet his wife.  As Hardy put it she was his "team" with Sister Mitchell 18 months ago when he was baptized.

This is the other house we painted.

We are spending lots of time with the Tsoluka family.  Usually at their home.  The kids have been asking to see our house, so last night we had them over for dinner; as requested pizza and ice cream.  It was lots of fun!  We mananged to teach a New Member lesson of the Plan of Salvation, too and I introduced the kids to Wii Fit.  Maybe it wasn't a good idea, but it was delightful to hear them laugh!  We managed to take Edmond to the IRS office in Des Moines, Alain to a few places and mostly help him figure out his insurance and doctor visits by phone.  The weather has been really nice!  Above freezing most days this week! When the sun shines we feel like its spring!