Fall is Here!!!!

We are actually going to get our blog out on time this week.  Not too much has gone on this week.  One of the best things we got to see was the signs that Fall is here.    We really don’t know what to expect here for any season since it’s our first time for everything in Wyoming.  Once we got near the Big Horn mountains in our travels this week, we started to see yellow and orange leaves; mostly the cotton woods.  It does my heart good to see them.  Fall is one of my favorite seasons.  Walt was told by someone of a really pretty place to see lots of Fall foliage.  We’ll have to check it out soon, maybe this week.

I think we covered Monday on last week’s blog/email.  So I will start with Tuesday.  We usually have our District Council meeting on Tuesdays in Gillette.  This week they needed to have it on Thursday.  This freed up our Tuesday morning - which meant - the thrift store.  I was looking for a couple of new tops to go with my black pants.  The weather is getting much cooler and pants are so easy on seminary days.  We, as usual, found lots of neat stuff.  A jar for spaghetti, some brand new bread pans, some Tupperware (the actual brand), a backpack, new coat rack, two fall wreaths, some nice metal baskets and many others.  All for $11.  The best find was the table waterfall thing.  I plugged it and it seemed the motor was louder than the water sounds.  I figured I would just re-donate it.  My genius husband did some magic and it works great.  I put a video on Facebook earlier this week.  He just amazes me with his ingenuity.

Us with our haul from the thrift store

The fountain remade by the genius husband

It was turning out to be a gorgeous day, so Walt was itching for a hike.  I promised if I got half my seminary lesson finished I would go.  So about 2:30 we were off.  We didn’t want to spend too much time driving to the destination, so we just went to the Flying V trail.  It’ one of the first ones we hiked.  We started out up hill and it didn’t take long for me to start dragging behind.  Once at the top, we stopped a bit, but it didn’t seem enough for me.  Then as we started up the second hill, Walt spotted some fossils.  He kept finding more and more.  He suggested I just sit and wait - no problem.  He found tons of these things, all on the surface, nothing under neath.  He looked them up later and found they were squid fossils - probably around 200 million years old.   Wyoming used to be a land bordering a sea - quite a long time ago.  It was a wonderful find for him, and I so loved just sitting and enjoying the breeze and swaying long pole pines.  It wore us both out, but was just what Walt needed.  I was able to have enough time to finish my lesson and get to bed pretty reasonably.

Our hike on the Flying V trail

Walt's fossil treasures

Wednesday, we had serving lunch at the Senior Center, then directly to visit the Smiths.  Renee had several shots, like pneumonia, flu and an another one.  It is taking a hard hit on her.  She feels like she’s been run over by a truck.  The visit was much shorter than usual.  Then we were off to Gary’s house.  It’s been a while since we have visited.  When I called him last Saturday to go to church, he declined but suggested we come by and share what we learned in church.  That’s a first.  So we shared what we learned in church and moved on to his new class in cake decorating.  When I had spoken with him on the phone, he told me about it and I said he could practice on my birthday cake.  He was all over that one.  We planned out a date and time to have a little party for me.  He has the biggest heart.  Our dinner appointment and lesson cancelled on us, so we just cooked dinner at home and Walt finished up his lesson for Thursday Seminary.  

Thursday started a multi- day adventure for us.  We had seminary, packed the car and headed out.  We had our District Council meeting in Gillette at 10:30 am.  We also had a seminary in-service meeting in Gillette at 6:30 pm.  So we planned some errands and spent the day in Gillette.  It was such a beautiful day.  The morning was pretty chilly, but it warmed up to about 76.  It felt like a beautiful summer day.  A great day for errands.  We picked up my new glasses, took packages to the post office and UPS, visited a couple of thrift stores, and stopped at a Frontier Museum/Shop.  The Museum was quite an interesting place.  The two owners repurposed old things into something totally different.  They are very creative and the stuff is just beautiful.  Walt found a set of annuals from an encyclopedia collection.  For $1 we bought the book for 1961 (our birth year).  For dinner, we went to a place Pres. Bailey has suggested, called “The Coop.”  It’s a rotisserie chicken place.  Walt ordered the Chicken  Chorizo Tacos.  It comes with grilled fresh pineapple .  He really enjoyed it.  I had a chicken breast with garlic roasted green beans and shredded cabbage which had a lime cilantro dressing.  Everything was quite tasty.  Then it was off to our training on Seminary.  It was very helpful.  

In front of the Frontier Museum Shop.  The Exxonmobil Horse

A great restored old car at the museum

This is our first time to teach seminary and any helpful ideas are great.  There is a part of each lesson where the students are to pull out a gospel truth or principle from what scriptures we just read/studied.  I wasn’t sure they would even do it, so I have just been putting the principle on the board and gone over it.  We learned that night how to help them do this for themselves.  It is definitely a great thing for someone to learn how to read a scripture and be able to find what they personally need to learn from that scripture.  So I took lots of notes and am ready to teach them this skill.  

We worked at the temple on Friday, so we just drove to Sheridan after our meeting to spend the night.  Its an hour and a half from Gillette to Sheridan.  We’ve been told many times to be careful when driving that highway at night.  There are so many animals along the roads - antelope and deer mostly.  We saw about ten or so along the roads, and therefore, we were keeping our eyes peeled.  We don’t really want to deal with that kind of situation.  We got there about 9:15, talked a little bit, and then we all were ready for bed.

Friday morning, we left for Billings.  It’s only a 2 hour drive from Sheridan.  The drive from Newcastle to Billings is a total of 5 hours, so it was so nice to break it up into 3 chunks instead of one long drive.  Since we didn’t start our shift until 3:30 pm, we got some errands done in Billings as well.  We got our flu shots, shopped at Walmart for certain things, got the non-cold stuff from Costco, got our free bread from the Great Harvest Bread company and had lunch at Red Lobster.  

The temple was a nice experience.  I was able to officiate in all the ordinances that night and Walt did most of them.  I had some really good experiences with patrons, as did Walt.  It’s been over a month, and we both have really missed being at the temple.  Afterwards, we stopped by Wendy’s for a quick bite before heading over to the Solomon’s to spend the night.  I ended up having a great conversation with the lady/girl who waited on us.  She noticed our name tags and asked about our mission.  She was raised half Latter-Day Saint and half another Christian religion.  She hasn’t been going to our church, but watches a christian show on TV.  I invited her to come back and see how she likes it since it’s been a long time.  She said she would think about it.  It would be awesome if that was the nudge to have her come back.  We just never know what kind of inspiration or influence we might have in someone’s life.  

The Solomon’s are a Senior Missionary couple (although they are younger than we are) that serve in the Mission Office.  They have been friends with our Mission President and his family (The Larsons) for a very long time.  He requested them to be office missionaries here.  They are truly a blessing to our mission.  He is in charge of housing, so they are the wonderful people who cleaned and set up our house to be prepared for our arrival.  It was quite a bit of work for them; especially since Elders had been staying there only one or two nights a week.  The place was a disaster.  Sis Solomon threatened them with their lives if any one got anything dirty before we arrived.  

Saturday, after breakfast with the Solomon’s, we headed to the temple to be patrons.  We don’t work a second shift on Saturday, because we want the opportunity to get the work done for our own ancestors.  Both days there were a good spiritual boost for us.  Sometimes it feels like we have been on our missions forever.  We have our down days, but this temple trip helped a lot.  I wish we lived closer and could attend more often, but we are super grateful that we have the opportunity to work there and attend once a month.

A picture taken on the way from Billings to Sheridan on Saturday

Our original plan was to drive back to Newcastle on Saturday after the temple.  Then on Monday we have a Zone council in Sheridan that we would need to drive back to (another 6 hours of driving).  After considering all the options and if we could cover all our bases, we decided to stay in Sheridan until Tuesday morning.  Originally we would be spending the night in Sheridan on Monday any way, since the meeting wouldn’t be over until 8:30 pm and it’s a 3 hour drive back to Newcastle.  This saves us 6-7 hours of driving time.  The Bailey’s are so good to us.  When I asked about staying those nights, she said Yes - right away.  The kids are super excited to have us around that long.  So spent last night we stayed here at the Bailey’s and are here right now.  We are able to do all our lesson planning, FaceTime with grandchildren, writing our blog and studying our scriptures right here.  It’s a nice break of not getting up early and teaching Seminary.  We have a dear sister in our ward who subs for us when we have meetings and trainings to attend.  Thank goodness for her.

Walt and Pres Bailey making jalapeño poppers

That is it for this week.  We have such a strong testimony of the need for us to be here.  There are several families that we feel needed us, specifically Walt and I and what we have to offer.  The Lord, in deed, watches over us and provides us with the things we need.  We don’t always  understand His timing, but He does.

Our first long horn steer!!

Oh - one crazy thing.  Most of you probably already know about our big snow storm.  It is mostly hitting, in our mission, the Northwest part of Montana.  They are expecting 3-4 feet - yes feet - of snow by tomorrow.  The weather forecast for us and the other parts of the mission we will be traveling through constantly changes.  We will probably see some amount of snow by Tuesday!!  Meanwhile, back in PA - it is 90 degrees.  You guys enjoy it for us.  Guess we’re headed for a long and cold winter here in Wyoming!   Lots of love to all of you,

Screen shot of weather from my phone.  It just amazes me the changes and variety in the temperatures

A river we crossed on a Sunday ride with the Bailey's

Us in front of the river