Hi Everybody,
That's
the question....This is pretty much the first time we've "lit" at our
house for 3 days and we might just write a few sentences tonight and the
rest in the morning. It has been a crazy busy week and only promises
to get more so starting tomorrow. But it's been a good week as well
topped off with a great CES symposium in Palmyra on Saturday. But first
things first. Sorry no donuts for the first day of school....we drove
past Dunkin Donuts and got homesick for Krispy Kreme! Actually that's
not true....we just missed picking up a few boxes and delivering them to
you all. We'll be excited to hear how everybody's first week went.
Public school doesn't start here until the day after Labor Day so all
the kids are getting in their last few days of playing. Keep us up to
date on what's going on in your lives and what your favorite classes are
and what you're doing for fun and just anything else you want to
write. We know the Moms and Dads didn't get a summer
vacation....right??
It was a busy week with
the missionaries. District Activity at our house was pizza and
watermelon and cookies and watching Ephriam's Rescue. The next day was
Zone Leader Training for the better part of the day where we all learned
the importance teaching spot on 3-5 minute lessons on the street or in
the laundromat or wherever and can I tell you I hate to roll play! Dad
is really good at it....once a missionary always a missionary. One of
the highlights of the day though was the night. We went to the house of
Jun and Faung Ueun (the Chinese girl who was baptized a couple of
months ago) with the Elders who taught them and another couple who also
speak Mandarin and we had a "treat" called a "hot pot." It was a
cultural experience to say the least and we made a video on our phone
and will try and figure out how to send it to you all. Faung Ueun's mom
also lives with them and she is directly from China, no English, but
we've become such good friends. So a hot pot is a hot plate and pot in
the middle of a round table filled with boiling broth, one side REALLY
spicy and one side mild for us wimps. Then there are plates and plates
and plates of things to put in the hot pot like beef and chicken and
pork and 3 different kinds of mushrooms and several kinds of tofu and
vegetables (sea weed even!) and these cool noodles and so many other
things we can't even remember them all. Then each one of us gets a
little plate with a special sauce on it that you add all these
seasonings to and a pair of chopsticks and when the "stuff" from the hot
pot is cooked, just a few minutes, you take out what you want with the
chopsticks (unless you can't pick up anything with the chopsticks!) and
put it in the sauce and eat it....and that lasts for about 2 hours and
you are so full you don't think you can eat one thing more and the
grandma keeps putting more food on your plate and soon you think you're
going to die....but it is all so fun and they are loving serving us.
We
had our last two summer institutes this last week and they were fun.
We've really enjoyed teaching The Gospel and the Productive Life. Now
if WE can only practice what we preach! On the way home from our Owego
institute at 9:30 at night and pitch black outside we encountered a
scary rainstorm....raining so hard we had to go slow and every time we'd
dip down into a little hollow it felt like we were going into a ditch
or something the water was so deep on the road. We were glad when we
passed through it! All the old timers here are predicting from all the
"signs" of the summer that there will be a snowier and colder winter
than even last year. No!!!!!!!!!!! Here's a funny story (sort
of....not the circumstances but the outcome) that also happened in
Owego. Won't go into detail but sometime ask Dad about being "carded"
because the investigator we took to the store was buying a 6 pack....and
she's 62 years old and awesome. I bet that doesn't happen very often
in the mission----a senior missionary having to show his ID so the
investigator can buy beer....on Sunday even! Lots of extenuating
circumstances but we got a good laugh out of it....she did too.
To
finish up the week, we helped Cornell United Religious Work with
Freshman Orientation. That was fun to meet all these kids and their
parents. It's interesting....could have been on the BYU
campus....parents coming in with first or middle or last kid in the
family and trying to make sure they were going to be ok and would they
have enough to eat and would they go to church or synagog or mass and
would they study hard and not get into trouble. That's where the
similarities end in way too many ways. The parents drop their kids off
and go home and then a pretty big percentage of their kids party all
weekend and get drunk and who knows what else. That seems to be the
culture here......how important to make sure values and standards are
very firmly entrenched in kids' lives while still under the influence of
parents and family. It's scary to realize the number of even LDS kids
who "fall out" of the Church when they come out here....especially the
undergraduates. The graduate students are pretty solid. Some of them
just struggle with faith issues but the majority of them are the best!
And we had a great 2 days in Palmyra at CES training. Went to the
temple on Friday which is always a great experience and then wandered
around the Sacred Grove just after a huge rainstorm (while we were in
the temple) and so it was cool and clean and beautiful and the sky was
blue and the sun low and it was awesome. Saturday was an all day
symposium with a keynote speaker from the Area S and I Office and then
amazing classes in the Grandin Building about the Book of Mormon and at
the Sacred Grove for 10 ways to receive personal revelation using the
First Vision as a model and the last class at the Hill Cumorah to learn
about the visits of Moroni. Are you jealous!!!!!
Well....we
didn't even finish this until Monday late afternoon. Elders wanted to
go up with us to Tagganauck Falls and then they came in for lunch and a
wrestling tournament on the floor. Now we're off to take a branch
member to the airport, back to campus for some more CURW freshmen
orientation work and then FHE where they're going to play a game called
Werewolf (?). That should be interesting. Luckily we're in charge of
the pretzels and peanut M and M's!
We love
you all!! We know that you'll be good and do good because you are
good! And we pray for you pretty regularly....like often.
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