Getting Warmer!

Us at Devil's Tower - The adventure of the week

We started this week with a temperature feeling like -24 degrees.  Today we are at 33 degrees.  What a big difference! We are loving every bit of it.  When it’s sunny, even better.  We should be in the 30’s most of this week.  We have a Brother in the ward that says he knows it’s spring when the Meadowlarks come.  He loves to hear them sing.  He hasn’t seen them yet, but promised he will let us know when they arrive.  

Me, Angie and Walt serving lunch at the Sr Center

Monday was pretty busy.  We had our lunch at the Senior Center and met 4 new people.  There are between 25-35 people that come every day.  The staff picks a number each day of how many people there will be.  To win for the day, they have to be exact.  The person who has the most wins in a month gets the pot of $20.  Each of them put in $5.  We don’t participate, but enjoy seeing how close our own guess will be.  We are really enjoying to getting to know the people and hear the stories about their lives.  

There is a volunteer service here for taxes.  So Monday we had our tax appointment and it was free.  That’s a blessing not to try to spend the time to do them ourselves.  We will still have to do our own PA taxes.  There is no State income tax in Wyoming.  Evidently, PA is a difficult tax form.  We have till April 15th.

Our Family Home Evening Group.  (Walt, Lucille, Jody, Me and Bev)

We also had our first Family Home Evening.  We had been trying to get together a group of widows and we were finally successful.  Even the sister (Bev) that hasn’t been to church in 30+ years came.  There was a good discussion on the miracles of Jesus Christ and how it affects/touches us personally.  There was also a lot of stories and laughter.  We have decided that people here love to tell stories -even to strangers.  This does make for lengthier conversations.  They also take a while to tell the stories - must be related to southerners. :).  Our group will meet once a month.  We feel it was a big success!!

We had our first temple preparation class with Keith and April.  It’s mostly for Keith, since April just went for her first time last month.  They come for dinner and then the lesson.  They brought pizza, bread sticks, and cinnamon sticks.  Carb overload- but sooo tasty.  We will meet with them every Tuesday probably through the beginning of May.  We love being around them and their very positive and happy personality.  It’s so exciting to be part of Keith’s preparation  to go to the temple.  The best part will be seeing them sealed for time and all eternity.

Another great experience relating to the temple this week was with Jim and Twila.  They haven’t been to church in a while due to a bad accident Twila was in, that affected her arms and health in general.  She has made a lot of progress, but still has a way to go.  They were sealed in the temple in November but have not been back since.  They hadn’t answered our phone calls in a couple of weeks, so we decided to stop by.  We thought about our training at the MTC (MIssion Training Center) and how before visiting, we should be prayerful about the needs of that person(s).  So we decided to do that before visiting them.  We felt inspired to talk about the temple.  We found a great Mormon Message about temples to show them.  Our goal was to invite them to come to the temple with us on March 23rd.

They invited us right in and were actually excited to show us the video on the tour of the Rome, Italy temple and the visit President Nelson had with the Pope.  They have a smart tv and were able to show us on there.  What a perfect segway into what we brought to share with them.  No luck getting our video to play on their tv, but we brought my computer.  After the video, we asked them could they come with us to the temple on the 23rd.  They looked at each other and said yes!  We are so excited for them and us as well.  We also helped them with some family history.  It was a long but wonderful visit.  The spirit was very strong.

Wednesday was district council (a.k.a - go to town).  We had our meeting with the other missionaries and our free Little Ceaser’s Pizza.  Then errands - hair cut, dry cleaners, gas, thrift store and Walmart.  We had quite a bit of snow but we’re getting used to that.  We visited with Gary on the way home.  We see him every week, usually Wednesdays.  He loves to have company and the Elders are starting to visit him a couple times a week.  He lives in the town between Newcastle and where they live (Moorcroft).  

When we woke up Thursday, we had 6 inches of snow.  I’m getting pretty efficient at cleaning off the car.  I miss having a garage.  Lunch at the Sr Center was interesting - Chicken Tater Tot Casserole, not really all that good.  Now I know.  But the visits were enjoyable.  We love being able to volunteer at places.  People are always so appreciative.  We also had Bingo that night.  The Seniors at the Manor are always so fun and love to joke.  That hour seems to go by too fast.  

At Walmart, Walt found this T-shirt and a maul for chopping wood.  Not sure is the shirt is appropriate to wear in public.

Our last event for the evening was Missionary Correlation meeting.  That is where the missionaries and a member of each auxiliary come together and discuss ways to help the missionaries with the people and families they are working with.  This includes us and the “young” Elders.  It’s something our Stake had not been doing before we had that General Authority come to visit last month.  It’s a great opportunity for everyone to work together and brainstorm on other people that would benefit from a visit from either sets of missionaries.  It brings a lot of unity to the work.  It’s going very well.

Gary had given us a whole smoked turkey.  We had it for dinner on Sunday, we saved some meat out for sandwiches and then I made a big pot of Brunswick stew.  I ran out of room for all the veggies and ended up putting it in two big pots.  The total amount ended up being 10 quarts of stew.  It was a lot of meat to work with.  We will be sharing the stew!

Friday was supposed to be the nicest day of the week - sunny and 40 degrees.  That morning, we went with the Elders to teach the Smith children, so they can be baptized.  I think I explained about that in the last blog.  We found out that we will be starting from scratch.  They know about God and very little about Jesus Christ.  It didn’t take long to figure out that we would need more visual and fun things to hold their interest.  It was our first time to meet the kids, so they did pretty good talking with us - mostly.  It won’t take long for them to warm up to us - especially when we pull out our “grandparent mode.” We will meet with them again next week.  We’re just excited that we have this opportunity to teach them.  

We had a lunch appointment with two single ladies from our ward who are room mates.  They suggested having lunch at “Isabella’s”, since they both work two jobs - it was their lunch hour.  I was excited thinking we were getting Italian.  Walt thought it would be more just regular food.  They actually had both.  The visit was good, but don’t think we’ll eat there again.  Once was enough.  Evidently, the locals love the place.

Devil's Tower from the road.  On a nice warm sunny day, the view would be tons better

So our “adventure” for the week was Friday afternoon.  As we are driving up to “Devil’s Tower”, it starts to snow.  Not what the weather said it was doing.  By the time we got there it was a full blown snow storm.  We were the only ones there, but still had to pay the $25 park fee.  We decided to get the $80 year pass instead.  It lets us into any National or State Park.  I was hoping it would be free since it was snowing and no one else was there.  But now we’re set for the year on park adventures.  Devil’s Tower is a huge rock formation - huge!!  The winter wonderland was quite beautiful.  Luckily, we had our heavy coats and snow boots in the car.  We actually put a heavy coat in the car when it’s warm enough to wear our light weight ones; just in case.  It’s best to be prepared in a place like this.  So it really paid off this time.  It was a bit of a hike, but pretty cool.  Not exactly the adventure we planned but it was still an adventure.  We’ll see if the predicted weather this week will really happen.

Our snow storm (supposed to be sunny) at Devil's Tower

Me all bundled up

Eskimo Walt - Devil's Tower

We see the hand of the Lord everyday in our work here.  Asking for guidance in our daily prayers helps a lot.  We have really enriched our prayer time, personally and as a couple/companionship.  We spend a lot of time on our knees praying for those we visit and how best to help them.  There is a lot of difficulties people are facing here and it feels good when we can help, even in a small way.  Sometimes we are blessed to be able to help in bigger ways.  Our ward is so supportive and help us in any way they can.  We’ve only been here 7 weeks, but really love the people in this area.  They are so kind and very open and friendly.  We’re looking forward to warmer weather and hearing those Meadowlarks sing.

We really appreciate all of your support.  We love hearing from you guys!  We’d love to hear more from you guys - just to  know you all are still alive and how you are doing.  You can send text or emails - our phone numbers and email addresses are the same, even though we have this additional missionary email.  We love you guys and miss you.

Devil's Tower (forest at the base)

Devil's Tower