January 3, 2012

Happy New Year All!
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. We have been treated kindly by the members of our ward,and we are grateful, but as Dorothy would say, "There is no place like home." {for the holiday}
We had district conference last Wedneday in Kalamazoo. We had training centered on inviting people to church. We are working mostly with people who are already members of the church, but we were able to apply what we learned, coming up with some plans for a family and practicing our plans.  The young elders who we role-played with, Elder Bagley and Elder Curtis,  were amazing. They had the Spirit with them strongly. They brought tears to my eyes even in a practice invitation. We had our first interviews with President Hess after the conference. He asked us is we wanted to be interviewed together or separately and smiled when we said together was fine. He says that it is not usually a good sign when couples want to be interview separately. But, Elder Hendrickson is a wonderful companion. He is easy to be with. He is a great missionary. We stopped off on the way back to BC at Tommy Doan's house. He is a young man from here who served in the Idaho Pocatello Mission. He is a nice young man. We were hoping that he would come to church on Sunday, but he chose not to. Maybe next time.
We went  visiting for the rest of the afternoon and went to dinner at the Lewis' family home. Brad collects and restores antique tractors. They are really interesting. He then drives them in parades and displays them at festivals all summer. They told us all about the racing of souped up lawn mowers. I can see us all racing those! It would be such fun. We want to get together to play "Uno Attack!!!"
Thursday: I spent a lot of my study time working on my talk for church on Sunday.
We had a wonderful day seeing new scenery. We went out to Ceresco and East LeRoy looking for people. We saw Lake Fine, Lake Graham, Lake Lee, among others. Lake Lee had ice forming on it and a huge flock of ducks swimming in the water. It was really picturesque. We did not have a lot of success, but the beauty of the drive helped us feel better.

Old Barn & Silo

Elder Ferons at Grant & Gloria

We came back into town and visited the Cooper's house, among others. That evening the elders came over to do some planning. They are wonderful. We really love them.
Sarah & Mark had their nineth anniversary on the 27th. We are so happy for them. Sarah had a birthday on the 29th and Kristin celebrated her's on the first of January. We thought about you all.
On Friday we spent a lot of time phoning to make appointments.  Most of the appointments we already had canceled. They had a lot to do to get ready for their celebrations on Saturday. That evening we stayed home and watched the final Harry Potter movie. We enjoyed that, and decided that we needed to move our preparation day to Mondays so we take them and actually have a little relaxation time. It felt good. We have not taken very much time off. Of course, we are booked pretty solid on Mondays for the next few weeks.
The people next door had a very loud party which lasted most of the night. Sleep was not too plentiful.
I cooked a large crockpot of pulled pork so I could take it to Schaffer's house on Saturday.
Saturday: New Year's Eve:
We took some great Hawaiian buns and the pulled pork out to the Schaffer's and had a wonderful visit with all four of them. They agreed to have the elders come to teach Jill in preparation for her baptism. She will be ten this summer. If you are not baptized when you are eight you receive them before you are baptized. We will take the elders out there on Sunday. They invited us to come to their house for Sunday dinner. Tammy also gave us some great carmel corn with pretzels in it, and some banana bread.
We went to the Stout home for dinner. She made a wonderful potato/ham/cheesy soup. I took bean dip and chips. The Bishop & Janet brought deviled eggs and some peppermint/chocolate chex mix. Sister Stout made a heavenly artichoke, spinach, hot dip. We loved it and got the recipe.
On New Year's Eve the apartments on both sides of us had all night parties. We did not really mind though as they are usually very thoughtful.
Sunday morning I gave my talk. I was excited that Grant and Gloria came, as did several others we invited to come.

I like having a new year. Every new year brings the promise of the unknown adventure. We are in the middle of one of the greatest adventures we have had in a very long time…that of serving a full time proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus  Christ of Latter Day Saints. We have left our family, friends, and home to live in a small apartment in Battle Creek, Michigan. Tonight we had our first real “Michigan” snow experience. It has snowed before but we are usually at or near home. We went out to Schaffer’s house for dinner. We arrived at 4:00. It was snowing lightly then. We had a nice time and when we went out at about 8:15 to go home, the car and the roads had deep snow on them. To top it all off, Maggie has been on strike the since last night. So we started back in a blizzard with the wind blowing, in the dark, without direction. But, we had divine direction and protection and we arrived home unscathed. It took a long time. We were slow getting out of the hills so we were worried and thought we might be lost. There was no way to tell where we were. All recognizable signs were covered up.
Today was district conference again. Afterwards we went to see Ed Torrance in the hospital. He is a nice man. He has been hurting a lot and lonely. He was glad for the company.