Here comes Christmas!

It's been a great week!  Our replacements have arrived and we've been training them.  We had 2 Sisters leave Monday, 3 Elders arrive on Tuesday, fed 40 at MLC on Wednesday, then a goodbye dinner and farewell testimonies that night and 8 missionaries left Thursday along with Elder Clark who's been an AP since we've been in the office!  We've been office staff longer than anyone else and we've been out longer than all the Senior missionaries and most of the young ones!  How did that happen? 
Saturday we had a normal Pday!  It's been a long time since I wore jeans all day!  Less than 3 weeks to go.  We've got lots of teaching to do before then! 

Pizza Ranch with the Hills and the Taylors 

Chili and chicken tortilla soup for MLC

The departing missionaries at Pizza Ranch

Birds on the Iowa river

One last trip to Kalona 

Our great Come Follow Me study group

Doing repairs at these Sisters' apartment.

Our last trips to Nauvoo and Marshalltown!

Such a fun bitter sweet week!  Our farewell trip to Nauvoo was lovely, but hard to say good bye to the Cummings and Dotys and realize I may never get back to Nauvoo!

Fort Madison has awesome Christmas lights along the river.

We made it back in time for our Iowa City wards Christmas party!

Yesterday we made one more trip to Marshalltown!   We stopped to see the Tsolukas in Grinnell.

Got one more picture of the church in Gilman where we taught the youth group.  Sweet memories!

We visited the Harringtons. 

We visited the Ibanezes.

We went to the Marshalltown ward party.  It really feels like home there!  It's great to see so many loved ones!

I got to sing with the Spanish speakers and Leah sang in French!

The kids sang in English .

We love these good people!  

We've had some interesting opportunities for service this week.  We are still working at lighting the world.  

Thanksgiving, Feeding the Sisters, Our last Zone Conference, Feeding the APs

We have been  busy!   The Sanders are very missed!  Last Sunday was so busy I didn't post!  So here we go trying to cover 2 weeks:Christmas lights on the street by our house!

Our apartment is decorated!

Sweet Sister Jones fed 40 people Thanksgiving dinner which was amazing!  

We went to Kalona one more time!

We fed this cute group of Sisters!

We decorated the office!

We sent Elder Bunche home; malignant bone cancer has since been diagnosed!

We set up, cooked, fed, and cleaned up for the 88 missionaries at our last Zone Conference!  We still managed to get in on some of the training and give our farewell testimonies,

Sweet Sister Cragun and Sister Prather

We had a farewell dinner for the APs.  Elder Clark leaves for home next week!

We are busy and noticing how much we miss having the Sanders!  We are enjoying the above freezing temps while they last!  Life is good,   We are trying to light the world with the service prompts every day!