I hate it when I get started on a document, get
part way into it and lose it because I didn’t have it saved. This will save you
the task of reading the nonsense I must have written before and let us just cut
to the chase.
Do you realize there are only three months left
to 2014. I am amazed at how fast time moves when you get older. Maybe it’s
because our lives are so full that it just seems to go faster, but I remember
in April thinking about how it would be in October on our Mission. I guess it’s
our perspective. If we are looking forward, it seems to be a long time, in
hindsight, it is so short. Our 44th wedding anniversary is coming
this month. How in the world do people stay together for that length of time;
yet, it seems but a moment.
The next three months are at once my favorite
time of the year and my most depressing. I love the colors of the fall. The
blue of the sky here is brighter than any I can remember, and the fall colors
are unbelievable bright and cheery looking. The warmth of summer (although I
can’t really say it got that warm here) cools down, and it is pleasant to be
outside. Here flowers are still in
bloom, and everyone seems to be making the last clean up touches to their
lawns. I do so love Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These are my
favorite holidays because of the decorations and family centeredness (is that a
word?). You put one up, take it down, put up the next one and so forth until
finally you realize you have to take all the Christmas ones down and no big
holidays until next fall/winter. Once all the kids were gone from the house, it
was hard because no one was there to put up and take down with us. Oh, well,
now they are carrying on the traditions with their kids. Another note, I have
always especially liked Christmas because of its hope in the Christ child. I
love to collect manger scenes because they present the birth as a reminder that
He brought truth, light and hope to the world to save us from our sins.
This time of the year can be depressing because
the days are getting shorter which I don’t seem to feel as much as I have in
the past. It has been like the dark is coming on so much faster each day that I
would just miss the sunshine and evening brought the day to a close. Right
after the winter solstice psychologically I start to feel better knowing (maybe
a reason for my love of Christmas) that each day’s light was a few seconds to
minutes longer. Then spring would come with its gorgeousness, and life was good
again.
I guess I’m just saying that this time of year
is a bunch of contradictions. While life can be depressing, there are many
things that can lift us up if we but look for them.
Let’s get started. On Wednesday (1st),
we took Denise and her son, Timmy, to the zoo. He is at that stage of needing a
stroller and wanting to walk. Naturally, once he got out and we wanted to move
on, no way could we get him back into the stroller. His little legs just can’t
carry him fast enough to keep up with even our slow, long strides. We had such
a good time though. Some of you remarked that you saw the pictures on Facebook.
One of them showed me with Timmy sitting on a bench before the lake behind us.
It looks like I have snow white hair. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to look
like I have any hair, but my self-concept changed – not negatively, just
differently. We had to get them back
home by 1-2:00 so she could go to another appointment, so we were pushing Timmy
to move fast.
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| So regal! |
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| Oblivious of gorilla. |
That evening Elder Lenhard had to go help the
missionaries give a sister a blessing and then take a couple of them to another
area where they were changing companions for the night. He didn’t get in until
later, and I was worried, but he made it alright without me.
Thursday, we got up and went to the gym. We
don’t get to go as much as I wish, but we enjoy it when we get there. That
night we had Pathway and spent the day checking grades for the students, trying
to contact the one that has not come to class or done any work to see what is
happening, preparing the lesson in case the lead student doesn’t show up, and
making sure we had all the handouts for next week. I emailed the lead student
for that night and got a reply that she was having trouble and would get back
to me when possible. I never heard from her and when we got there that evening,
she wasn’t sure about the concepts she was teaching. She got through the
lesson, but she was struggling some. This is so good for the students. I’ve
always said that I learned more as the teacher than my students probably did. Next week, our teacher is a different type –
loves to comment on things completely off the subject and tends to ramble when
he goes there. We shall see what happens when it is his turn.
On Friday, we took a member shopping for food
again. Later we taught Denise her fourth new member lesson, and that evening we
fellowshipped with the missionaries and a part-member family by going out to
eat at the member’s favorite steak house, Boulder Junction. We could tell why
it was his favorite – don’t think we have had that good a steak in a long time;
in fact come to think on it, I don’t believe that we have had steaks since we
came out on our mission. We’ve eaten a lot of fish but no steaks – which I’m ok
with because steak is not at the top of my list for favorite meals.
On Conference Saturday, we were at the Scandia
Festival. It was by far the most disappointing in terms of the number of people
who came by, but we enjoyed the few who did. The genealogy group was set apart
from the rest of the festivities and I don’t believe most people knew we were
there. The woman who headed it was disappointed and asked what they could do
better. I mentioned to her that Elder Lenhard and I wondered why there was no
one at the head of the hallway to encouraged people to come down and look for
their histories. She liked that idea and said it was her understanding that it
was supposed to have happened, but it didn’t. Next year, we will volunteer to
be the ones to fire the people up.
However, I loved the little shops for stuff.
There were lots of nice things there, and I could have gone crazy, but I
didn’t. I bought a little handpainted egg and a handpainted Christmas ornament.
Oh, I also got a thimble.
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| All hand painted |
Other than that, I kept thinking about how we were
going to get all this stuff home to Utah. We will have to buy a truck at this
rate. We aren’t actually buying a lot,
and I’m going to send boxes home when it gets close to the time. The Kringle (pastry) was first brought here
by the Swedish group and might I say they are delicious. There are several
different kinds, and we sampled two which we loved. There is a place in Racine
that makes them so we will be giving them a visit in the future. I had the
Swedish pancakes which I didn’t think was much to make over. Elder Lenhard got some kind of veal sausage
that you eat off of a stick. It was a glorified hotdog to me, but we will
obviously get some more. They got them from Usingers here in town.
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| Food area (held in a local school) |
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| Music was wonderful. |
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| Craft area |
We had taped the Conference to watch when we
got home. The recorder went crazy and we
had 6 tapings for 2 shows. In the middle of a session, it would stop and the
next recording would pick up from the first. We obviously missed parts, but we
are glad they will be in the November Ensign issue. If you are reading this, tell us your
favorite talks. I loved Elder Bednar’s, President Uchdorf’s, Elder Holland’s,
and Elder Nelson’s. We missed President Eyrings. President Monson didn’t speak as long as we
hoped, and when we tuned in it appeared as if all the talks were about him. I
wondered if something had been announced about his health or something because
the tone of the talks to me was that he was having trouble and needed our
prayers. Evidently, that wasn’t the problem.
Elder Lenhard listened to the Priesthood
session on the computer that evening and loved a talk about the dandelions. He
was quite buoyed up when it was over.
On Sunday, we picked up Denise and took her and
Victor (another recent convert) to the Stake Center to hear the morning
session. We wanted them to see another building beside the City Branch.
Actually, Victor had been to the LDS Church before and was pretty familiar with
us before he joined last month. Denise had never been to any building but City
Branch so this gave her another perspective. They came back to our apartment
for lunch, Elder Lenhard had to take Victor home, and Denise stayed here and
watched the afternoon session with us. She asks good questions. She fell in
love with Elder Bednar.
On Monday, we went to Pat’s to help her again
with her genealogy. I had another 700 items that I had scanned to transfer to
her computer. Also, she had scanned lots
of items, but could not get any to upload to FS because they were tifs. Also,
her printer would link up to 16 items to each other – one right after the other
– and then she didn’t know how to separate them. We spent 5 hours there trying
to get stuff done. Finally, I couldn’t do anymore, and told her there wasn’t
anyway we could finish by Thursday when they were going to leave for Florida.
She said that she would be back next April, and I will send her things as I get
them. I’ll also put up things that I’m scanning for her. I still have about
600-800 documents, pictures, etc. to scan so I’m glad I have plenty of time to
do them later. My success of the week was that as we were leaving we gave them
a Book of Mormon. They gave us a gift card for helping with the family history,
and we told them the book was the most important thing we had that we could
give them. We encouraged them to read it as a second witness of Jesus Christ.
We would love to hear about their experiences with it. She said she liked to
read books so we will see.
We had enough time to go to Costco and buy a
few groceries, get home in time to pick up the Sister Missionaries from
Wal-Mart where they were getting their groceries , unpack and relax for a little
while and then we went to Denise’s apt. where she was having a going-away party
for her missionary who helped get her baptized. It was very nice, and we stayed
for an hour and got home around 9. It had been a full day.
Tuesday, we went to gym and enjoyed a few
minutes there. We had contemplated spending the day as a P-day so we washed
some clothes which was greatly needed, Elder Lenhard put the sweeper back
together which I had disassembled to clean the filters, got some family history
of our own done, and prepared for Pathway. I have to say my husband spent some
time trying to figure out what was the matter with our heat (since it wasn’t
coming on), and going to the office to ask if anyone had turned in his keys
that he lost six weeks ago. Someone had, and he was able to get them back. We
found the factory where they make Sprechers drinks – absolutely the best root
beer, cream soda, orange cream, ginger ale, and cranberry drinks. They use
honey and natural ingredients from here in Wisconsin. If we buy the drinks from
there, we can save almost 50 cents each. They are expensive to buy in the
store, so we got several cases to put away for those times when a root beer is
the only thing that works. So good! They
told us there are some places in Utah and Texas where you can buy the drinks.
It has been a great week. We have much to do
this upcoming week (Wednesday and Thursday) before we leave Friday for the
weekend in Texas for Riley’s and McKay’s baptisms. Now, if we want to leave the
mission we have to have special permission from the General Authority over this
area. He is Elder Martino. He told President Cutler to let us go. When we leave
the mission, we are place on inactive status and when we get back we are active
again. We think it has something to do with insurance. If we are covered by
Church insurance (which we aren’t), they don’t want us in areas they know
nothing about or what we are doing. The Church shouldn’t be accountable for
anything that happens when the missionaries are off on personal activities. We
are blessed to be able to go.
Our scripture for October is from Doctrine
& Covenants 20:37:
And again, by way of commandment to the church
concerning the manner of baptism—All those who humble themselves before God,
and desire to be baptized, and come forth with broken hearts and contrite
spirits, and witness before the church that they have truly repented of all
their sins, and are willing to take upon them the name of Jesus Christ, having
a determination to serve him to the end, and truly manifest by their works that
they have received of the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins,
shall be received by baptism into his church.
Love you all.
Elder
and Sister Lenhard
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