Hi Everybody,
As inevitable
as the coming of winter is, we'd be glad for Fall forever! For about 3
days last week the colors of the leaves were unbelievable....every
shade of red, orange, gold, yellow, brown imaginable. Our "hills" were a
riot of color and those fall days of 72 degrees were the best. But
today is cold and rainy and even a snowflake or two and it will be that
way all week. So that's the weather report from upstate New York!
Thanks
for your notes, letters, e-mails, and cards this last week. You all
may be out of sight but never out of mind! It seems like we're beginning
the holiday season already (all 3 months of it) and this will be the
first time we won't be surrounded by family for all the
festivities.....except for NYC on Thanksgiving Day if we don't get lost
trying to get there. We're excited for the Macy's Parade and hope that
we can find a place to actually see Connor march. That minute or two
will be worth it all! Why don't the rest of you come too!!! But we'll
patiently wait until next summer for whoever makes it. There are some
pretty impressive Halloween decorations around here. We have two
pumpkins that we bought to carve for our District activity on
Preparation Day last Monday. But....we decided to paint them instead
and they were so ugly we washed all the paint off in the bathtub when we
got home! But the activity was fun and the creations of the young
missionaries were pretty original. This District of amazing Elders and
Sisters most likely will be changed significantly in about 10 days at
transfers. We've been together for 3 transfers (18 weeks) including 2
new missionaries that came here for their first areas in their
missions. We feel like their Grandpa and Grandma! They've taught us a
lot and we think we've been there when they needed us too so it's
probably time for them to leave the nest. What a blessing it is to know
these "kids" and watch them grow and increase in faith and knowledge
and power. It makes us think about what transfers have been like for
both Carlee and Cade this last week. We're glad we don't have to pack
up and move and get used to another companion! We're also glad we can
text and facebook and write whenever we feel we need to!
One
of the good things of our mission has been when we visit the
Seminaries. We're doing that again for the next three weeks. We
decided to be a little more sensible in our approach this fall than we
did last spring. We're just doing it 2 days a week for 3 weeks because
getting up at 4:00 a.m. to be out the door by 4:45 and to our seminaries
by 6:00 is a little intense for these old people! Last week was
Binghamton and Corning and those are the longest away and they're done.
But whenever we get to feeling overworked, we think of those faithful
Seminary teachers who teach 6:00 a.m. seminaries 5 days a week for a
whole school year. And they always have smiles and act happy to be
there......they actually are happy to be there! Besides our other
normal activities this week, we had some of our YSA participating in a
wind symphony concert at Ithaca College and 2 of our women are on the
Cornell rugby team so we went to be supportive of them. We didn't know
that Ithaca College has one of the preeminent music schools in the
United States. And these rugby players are REAL WOMEN!! They all seem
happy when we come to anything they do. Another really good time of
most weeks is eating dinner with Danile and Eliza Brown and their two
little girls, Rhoda and Dacie. If we told you about them, forgive us
for repeating. They have dinner for the young elders and sisters once a
month and since there are 3 sets we get to drive them at least 3 weeks
out of each month because they live quite a ways away and the
missionaries don't have enough miles on their cars to go. They live on a
wonderful little piece of property in the country with a beautiful home
and chickens and they grow just about everything we eat. Eliza is a
gourmet cook and it's an adventure in culinary expertise every time we
go and we love it. Friday night's menu was a pot pie that looked and
tasted like it came from the world's most famous chef. It had things in
it that we couldn't even pronounce. And dessert was a made from
scratch angel food cake with raspberries from the garden in whipped
cream directly from the cow. Are you hungry yet?! A couple of weeks
ago they had a bear amble through their property and help himself to the
chicken feed!
Another blessing this week
has been helping Harmony, one of our YSA, with her mother who now lives
with her who has cancer and is undergoing some heavy duty chemo. We
spent a lot of time with them this summer when Liz (the mom) had major
back surgery where the doctors discovered a stage 4 bladder cancer. The
back surgery probably saved her life as that's how they discovered her
cancer. She's now living with Harmony so we help whenever we
can.....with transportation to and from the hospital and yesterday we
spent several hours at their home putting up cupboards and helping
rearrange the kitchen to make it more usable and Dad put up plastic on
the windows to prepare for winter. Sometimes when we see people go
through such incredibly hard trials, we think how can we ever possibly
complain that things are tough for us.
We
had the normal institutes and friday forum (chicken enchiladas, sunrise
salad and no-bake cookies---hungry yet?) this week which we're getting
better at with not stressing out so much....except for wondering if
we'll have 15 or 50 for friday forum so we prepare for 50 and it all
gets eaten. But one of the highlights this week also was going with the
Sisters to teach Steve, a young man who needs Jesus Christ in his
life. Our newest Sister Missionary bravely gave him the baptismal
commitment and it seemed as if the Spirit were audibly speaking to him
through her. It's an amazing experience for me not having ever served a
mission before. These experiences are worth all the Cooking Every
Second! Another good thing this week was today, going to the "farewell"
Sacrament Meeting talks in Owego of our friends the Ormes who will be
going into the MTC on November 10th. They'll then be coming back out
here to be MLS missionaries in the Malone Branch of the Potsdam District
which is clear up on the Canadian border. They had requested this
mission and will be phenomenal missionaries. We'll miss them as they're
about as far north as the mission goes and we're on the southern part
of the mission. Then we went to the hospital to visit Brother Albuja
who is one of our institute older students who has been very, very sick
and in the hospital for two weeks. He and his wife were some of the
first people we met here. We think we wrote about them in the first
email we wrote home....they're the ones who held the Owego institute
together for several years.
Well, it seems
like when we write on Sunday night that it's the end of the week but
it's really the beginning isn't it. This will be another busy week as
they always seem to turn out to be but the blessings just keep
coming.....both at home and here. We spent most of our institute
lessons this week with Helaman 5 which talks all about "remembering."
What an awesome thing it is to remember the experiences we've had in our
lives and what we know and who we love and why we love them and
especially that if we build our foundation on the rock of our Redeemer,
Jesus Christ, when the "mighty winds of Satan and all his hail and his
mighty storm beats on us" that it won't have any power over us because
of the "rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a
foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."
LOVE YOU A BILLION TIMES!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment