Christmas Parties!

This has been a really good week!  We were able to teach some great lessons, Pauline is coming along so well!  The Dents are still progressing, and Nancy and Kevin are planning to get baptized in January! We had a really nice Zone Conference in Des Moines.  I love departing missionary testimonies.  These kids are pretty wise!  We didn't hear about the Ugly Christmas sweater thing until Sunday night and we had a full Pday with our taxi service, but we manage to find a couple of T-shirts at Walmart and had fun.  A great way to get into the fun of the season.

 The Harringtons came to the Christmas Party!  They haven't been to a church meeting in 22 years!  It was so nice!  It was impossible to be there and not feel the spirit with those cute children performing and the beautiful music!  There is no place in the church building for a party like this, so we went to the Fisher Community Center.  It was really nice!

I know I am the world's worst selfie taker, but here we are in our version of ugly Christmas sweaters at the Zone Conference.

Rovy, the shepherd.

Gredo, dressing up as me.

More Ugly Sweaters.

My favorite part of Christmas celebrating is the music and the children acting out the Nativity! 

Our District.

Yes, this is a man ice fishing on our pond!

Susan going to see her son, she hasn't seen for a year and 5 months!

More ugly sweaters.

Isn't this stable that Br. Wheeler made awesome?

Enjoying the office staff and 2 cute Sisters at our table.

More Sweaters.

This cute Sister Short goes home in 3 weeks.  Another noncoincidence. She's only been a member for 3 years!  We know her Aunt Jane and her uncle who baptized her! 

It was such a win to get these three on stage!

Our Zone.

Amelia cooking pepe.  At least that's what it sounded like.  It smelled awesome.

More cute missionaries in ugly sweaters.

Lunch was good, but the dessert bar was amazing!

Last Monday, the Bishop called and asked us to randomly pick up this sister and take her to a bus.  I know there aren't coincidences, God puts us into the places he wants us to meet people.  It turns out this sister is one of my best friend's cousins.

President Badger (we were calling him Mr. Rogers) and Sister Badger  joining in the sweater fun.

We have lights on our window.  Only ones in the building!

Just when we thought all the parties are over, Sister Costello invited us to her Christmas party at the nursing home.

Lighting the World!

It is pretty awesome being a missionary at Christmastime!  This has been a week with lots of opportunities to serve.  I noticed a sister on our ward facebook page who had a Christmas tree she was getting rid of and we knew that the Tsolukas have never had a Christmas tree, so we got to pick it up and deliver it to them.  Gredo asked me if it had a star, so we managed to find a cheap one at Target to put on the top.  They were so happy! 

We got to help feed the homeless with this great crew.  This little baby and her brother kind of broke my heart.

The reconstruction from the tornado is an ongoing process here..

 We visited a member and met her son and his 2 cute new members of their family.

We had the chance to Facetime with this cutie and watch her open her present.  She seems to like it.

Another District lunch.

We got to help move a friend of some members.  This darling girl was just too cute to not take her picture.

 We got to sing in Stake Conference with all the missionaries in our Zone.  Elder Brad Bowen was our visiting authority and it was really an amazing experience to be there with him!  What an inspired man of God!  Paul Kangni was sustained to receive the Melchizadek Priesthood!  We are beyond excited to go to the temple with him and Lea!!  After Stake Conference we went to the Methodist Church to hear the Messiah concert.  It was lovely!

Then to end the day we watched the Christmas Devotional.  We were the only ones who showed up, so we just watched it on my tablet. It was nice.

On the worldwide day of service we were able to spend the day with the Harringtons, we brought lunch and Elder Quincy helped with some projects that Br. Harrington hasn't been able to do because of his health.  It was fun!

More fun Christmas decorations; my sister sent this great ornament of the temple we were married in! And my baby brother and his wife sent a really cute Christmas apron that I didn't get a picture of. 

We are still running a taxi service.  This morning we've given 4 people rides, with 7 more to do today, and this is our day off!  Its nice to have a car that works and is warm and beautiful Christmas music to listen to as we drive people around.  We are blessed to be here and to be needed.  We've been blessed to be able to teach the gospel to some great people this week!  We're especially excited that Pauline has gone a week without smoking and is happy and our referral from a member in Omaha, is a wonderful young man and his girlfriend who have great questions and will be parents before Christmas! It doesn't get better than that!

Here's Gredo so excited and ready to hug the tree!

A Thanksgiving to Remember

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We had all morning to cook and relax, then we picked up the Tsoluka family and took them to the Jones' for their first Thanksgiving dinner.  It was delicious and fun and we all had a good time.  We had to hurry away though to go help Amy move a couch (the one Elder Quincy wired together) to her apartment and to move her things out of Br. Westwater's garage into her storage unit, so the Elders have a garage to park in for the winter. We hurried from there to have dessert with the Gobbles! Sister Tsoluka wanted to shop at Thanksgiving for some specials so we got to experience the crazy shopping part of the holiday. We came home and relaxed and then got a call at 10:00 to come give a blessing to Sister Ferguson's daughter who was in a lot of pain.  So we had a couple of opportunities to serve and got to enjoy time with people we love like family!

Gredo figured out how to do a selfie.

Our apartment is decorated!  Its especially fun because most of the decoration were gifts from ward members and my sisters.

We did more construction work at the Rodriguezes on Friday and Saturday. Elder Quincy built this closet for them.

Replaced wood on a window.  It was even warm enough to caulk and paint it!

He put the kickplate under the cabinets.

The cabinets on the left of the stove are from bigger ones he cut down.  He made the shelf for the microwave, too.

This is Marisol with her puppy Scrappy.  Its hilarious because he really doesn't like Elder Quincy and he's learned to like me.  That never happens with dogs!  We love spending time with the Rodriguez family!  We'll miss having projects to do at their house!

Manathan is pregnant!! We got to take her to the Doctor's office to get the business part done today.  We're excited for Hardy and Manathan to be parents!

With our Family Home Evening group on Monday nights and spending time with members during the week, we are feeling more and more like we have family here!
There's no doubt that we are needed and able to help here!  We are doing a lot more immigration, translating, ride giving, and general red tape work here than we planned to do.  We thought we'd be teaching the gospel more, but really, half of the lessons we learned from Jesus were from his service.  So I guess we're teaching even when we aren't opening our mouths.