Our day started out with Craig not
feeling well, and we had lots to do for Pathway the next day. It is amazing
that for not teaching it ourselves, there are so many things to do to make sure
it all goes well. We lost one student already. He had car trouble and had to
decide if he could afford the class or fix the car. The car won out, and that’s
sad. This class would be so good for him. Also, we actually get our own key to
the High Council Room and won’t have to go by a member’s house each week before
class to get one. Several times last summer we would go by, and the key was
nowhere to be found. It really meant we had to scramble to relocate the class
and get the students there on time. This time it should be easier.
On Thursday, we had interviews with
President Cutler. I got my Temple Recommend renewed. I now have only one
signature on the recommend. I wondered if the Temple would say anything about
it but will have to see.
After interviews, our district had a
meeting on Tad Callister’s talk, Becoming a Consecrated Missionary. They gave
us a disk with the talk. How important is this work to each of us? When we
think about why we are here, it makes us question how effective we really are.
I know there are plenty of times when we wonder if we are doing any good. I
truly believe we are. We have met so many wonderful people in Wisconsin. There
is a strong Catholic/Lutheran foundation here that has strengthened good
families. We have many members of the Church here who were Catholic before
joining. With the strong families, the Spirit of Elijah is so powerful. It is
amazing to me how many people in this area are working, have worked, or have
someone who has worked on their family history. When we ask many who say their
work has been done, usually it is Aunt so and so. “So, where is the work if you
want to see it?” At their house! “Is it on paper that be destroyed by water,
mold and mildew, fire, and bugs that eat it?” Yeah. “We can show you how to put
it online for free so your whole family can see it and contribute to it. Are
you interested?
The “free” word seems to be the
bait. Ancestry is a known entity for them as they have seen it on TV, but some
have investigated it and decided it was too expensive; have used it and stopped
because it got too expensive; or are using it but won’t renew when their
subscription comes up because it is getting too expensive. We try to explain
the reason that Ancestry has to charge for their work, and that it is a great
data base to use. However, we can help them with a free data base that will
give them access to many if not most of the same records that Ancestry will
give them and do it for free. As we go to the festivals, we have so many who
just want to know who their so and so is and when we find them, it blows them
away. To find a maiden name for a grandmother is spectacular. We love their
excitement when we can help. I had a woman literally cry when I found some of
her family. She was so touched when I told her that she will see her family
again after this life because she was searching for a grandparent that had
passed, but she was little when it happened and she was curious about their
information.
That night our first Pathway class
started. I stated before that we had 23 students, but we ended up with 22 by
the first class. Someone went ahead and dropped before starting. A husband and
wife did not come, but we found out they live as far away as possible and still
be in either the North or South Milwaukee Stakes. The Sister from Madison who I
had said previously may be a problem didn’t show up, and I figured she found
out the distance wasn’t going to be possible. However, in the middle of the
class, I got a call (my phone vibrated and I glanced at it to see she was
calling). The brother who dropped out because of his car obviously did not
come, and one sister did not come who I later found out will not be coming Fall
semester because she had it last year and had to drop Winter and Spring. She
will join us in the Winter semester. We lost another who was a brand new member
and realized she was going to have to get a job to help her family and couldn’t
come. Finally, there was another that dropped because they couldn’t do it. We
were down to 17 that night. It was still more than we had last year. Each
student introduced themselves; there are three men and the rest are women. I
had already talked with several, and I knew two of them in that room were prone
to depression, one of them had a breakdown early in the year and told me after
class that he wasn’t very spiritual, so he didn’t often feel the Spirit. Of the
sisters, all mentioned that this was the first thing they were doing for
themselves. Several had put their husbands through school, and they had
children in school now. This was something they wanted and were going after.
The men included the one who isn’t “spiritual”, Victor, and Omar who we used to
help buy groceries for in City Branch. I’m hoping Victor and Omar can keep up.
Nathaniel (the non- “spiritual” one) is a computer geek, so I’m not going to
worry about him too much on grades. There were several who indicated they were
dealing with personal problems, and I just thought that this group is quite
different from the first group we had.
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| Our first class |
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| The Jepsons |
We felt good about the group, and we
are looking forward to working with them. The Jepsons (one of the Office
couples) has been asked if they would take over once we leave. How in the world
they will do both jobs will be interesting, but maybe they are better organized
than we are. They are both very smart, and have served in capacities where they
have worked with people a lot. He may be a former Bishop, I don’t remember. She
is very much like me. I was surprised when I met her because she is not afraid
to say when something is going wrong. She is not a complainer, but she doesn’t
paint a rosy picture about everything happening, and that’s ok. The other
couple who were here before would never say a negative word, and they were
great. Both couples are strong leaders.
On Friday, we headed out to Door
County with the Ted and Linda Barley. They are such good people. He had several
health problems out here and actually, had his gall bladder removed with much
trepidation because he has a genetic heart defect. They have operated on his
heart several times and told him they can’t do it again. Next time, they can’t
help him. But he has done well. He maintains the cars, and he has a great way
of calling those missionaries to repentence about what they are doing, and he
does it with love.
We left at 3:00 and headed north,
not knowing where we would lay our heads that night, but we sure enjoyed the
scenery as we traveled.
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| Supposedly the tallest flag pole in the U.S. near Port Washington |
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| Beautiful small city named Merton on way to Door County |
Door County jets out into Lake Michigan so that the
Lake is on both sides of it. It comes to a point where we turn around an head
back down. There is a boat that will take you over to the Michigan, or there is
a city that you can see jutting out in the water several miles further up the
lake when you get to the end. I wish we had taken the boat to see what we could
see. I think that would have been fun. After we got back home, we found out
that President Cutler, his wife and daughter were also up there that night.
They ate breakfast the next morning in the same place we did but earlier.
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| We passed Sturgeon Bay on the way. |
If you look on a map, you will see
Sturgeon Bay that we passed over. It was busy with boats going in every
direction. It was quite beautiful, and I liked it because I recognized the
name. hahaha
We stopped at a BBQ place for
dinner. I got fish, and for the first time, I got enough to say that I had
fish. It was great. The others had really good meals also, and this place was a
hit. We took our pictures out front with the pig.
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| Ted and Linda Barley |
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| Craig and Linda Lenhard (I swear I look at this picture and I remember my Aunt Peggy standing just like this with someone.) |
We began to call around for places
to stay. As we drove up through the area heading north, we quickly found out
that this is a tourist alley. This is a prime time to come vacation. There was
a fishing competition sponsored by ESPN going on, and there was another
activity up there that filled the inns, literally. We stopped at everyone we
came to that didn’t already have a no vacancy sign lit up, but to no avail.
Finally, we called a place, and they said they had a double that we could
share. I was not excited about that. It meant that we would either have to
stayed dressed up all evening while we talked, or if we wanted privacy we had
to stay in our bedroom. There was only one bathroom. I figured if that was all
they had, we were stuck. We get to the place and walk in, and wait for the guy
who is on the phone to get off. We tell him we are there for the room he told
us about, and he had just given it to the person on the phone. Ted can stand
and look at you until you begin to squirm and wonder how to get away from that
look. The guy looks at Ted and says for us to wait, there may be something he
knows about. He calls this woman, and the Lord blessed us because she had two
cottages that were still available just up the road and we could have them for
$110 each. We snatched up those cottages so fast it made my head swim, and off
we went in the dark to find this little hard to locate road to the right that
would take up back a little to the cottages.
We took the one in the back, and
they got the one in the front. Ours was kind of cool (temp. wise), but I was so
happy for the privacy that I didn’t care. We had a double bed, a TV that we could
watch for a little bit, a kitchen we didn’t dare mess up, and a bathroom that
was no very modern, but we had hot water. It was great, especially since I didn’t
see any spiders (maybe it was too cold) or any other bugs. I went around
closing all the blinds, because we were up against the woods, and if a monster
was going to try to see who was in this cabin, he would have a harder time of
doing it. I could just imagine yellow eyes staring out of the woods into our
window. I know we had a picture of the cabin, but we can't find it. Ugh!
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| Bedroom |
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Kitchen
|
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| Cabin we stayed in that night |
We made arrangements to be up and
about at 8:00. I was up at 6 and ready to go. They were up early also, so they
called and we got out about 7:30. We began driving through the tourist towns.
We hit Fish Creek first, and we ate there. It was a very small little
restaurant, and the food was good. They were fast serving also, I guess they
had to be with the tourist season upon them.
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| Fish Creek Bay |
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| Beautiful flowers in front of Hide Side |
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| Fall Festival downtown |
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| Cornstalks used for decorations everywhere |
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| Nice metal work in Hide Side |
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| Hide Side Store |
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| We actually went into stores on other side of road, but too fancy for us. |
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| Directory around area activities |
We went to some of the stores there
and looked around. What a great place if you were into tourist stuff, and I
was. There were some fancy clothes shops. Ted used to be a buyer for Zions in
Salt Lake, but they didn’t treat him right and he quit. However, in the
process, he has learned how to buy and buy well. He loves to get good value for
the money, who doesn’t? I have a feeling he has made a habit of knowing when,
where and how to shop. He has his own UPS business in Farmington, but he doesn’t
really want to go back and work it anymore.
We left there and headed over to the
water. I’m not sure how it worked, but we came to a wharf at a place that was
called Gilbraltar. There was a little park there where a lady came walking by
and took our pictures for us. We walked out on the wharf past the boats that
were moored there. The wind was brisk, and the water looked cold. The current
was really strong, and it did not look inviting, but I would have loved to take
the boat over to the city we could see from there.
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| Craig on wharf |
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| If you can enlarge picture, you can see island where the ferry takes you. Wish we had gone. |
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| Boats docked around area |
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| Gilbraltar Park area |
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| Gilbraltar in front of Lake Michigan |
When we walked down a little way, we
were in another area and walked around before getting in his truck and heading
out to the end. We stopped at a Scandavian store, which was right up next to
the water. I went into the shop, and I bought a Christmas decoration made from
one of the anchors that goes on a fish net (looked like Santa), some cherry jam
(their specialty), a magnet (Mallory will have to inherit our magnet collection
since she started us on them), and I think that was it. While we were there,
two motorcycles pulled up that had been rebuilt. They were each $60,000 + in
price. Needless to say, Craig and Ted were going crazy. Actually, Ted and Linda
have a bike back at home, and they love to ride up in the canyons. I guess I’m
too afraid of crashing to get excited about a bike, but these two things looked
like little cars.
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| Some say its worth $60,000 - me, not so much! |
Once we got to the end, we decided
to come back down on the other side. I don’t know what you call this thing on a
map, but we went up one side and down the other. We had heard of a restaurant
where the goats sat on the roof and ate the grass up there. We found it quite
by accident when Craig spotted the goats. It was called Johnson’s, and it was
Scandavian. We went in to eat, and the food was good. I can’t remember what I
ate now, but it wasn’t something unusual, I know that.
When we left there we didn’t stop
again until we got home around 6:00. What a great adventure, and now we can say
that we went to Door County. Any time we tell people we are out touring around,
they ask if we have been there, so now we can respond in the affirmative.
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| Johnson's Restaurant - see grass on top of roof |
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| Goats basking in the sun on top of roof. |
On Sunday, we had our usual
meetings. That night Kathy and Mike Linsleys (another Senior Couple) went into
the Mission Home and were to leave the next day. We are going to miss them.
They taught in the Kenosha area in a Spanish Branch. The Branch President is
already asking Salt Lake to send them another couple. The Linsleys did
everything but be Branch President. The younger missionaries have lost their
lifeline, but the Lord will provide. We had hoped we would be invited with
others over to the Mission Home to say goodbye, but I guess it being a Sunday,
that was not done. When the Carter’s left, there was a dinner at the Mission
Home, and we all got to tell them how much they meant to us and so forth. I
hope the Linsleys weren’t hurt that it wasn’t done for them.
Monday saw Craig at a Chiropractor’s
office for an initial workup to see if they could help his back. He had an
appoint at 8:30, but he didn’t get out until about 10:00. We were meeting with
Jolene and Tim Carson at Baker’s Square for breakfast at 9:00. As it turned
out, they had tire trouble and had to go get it fixed, and they walked up to
the restaurant and called me early (Craig was at doctor’s), and I told them we
would be there as soon as possible. Jolene used to work in this restaurant when
they lived in Milwaukee (they now live in Racine – where we moved them earlier
in the year). Tim was up here for an eye appointment. When his retina detached
several months earlier, he had to have surgery. It has not healed as quickly as
they expected. He is an architect and needs the old eyes. They had to do
another surgery, and it has done better, and he is hoping eventually to get
back to normal. Anyway, they couldn’t make it to the doctors, so they waited
around for us until we finally got there quite late. However, we had a great
visit. We are trying to get them to the Temple. They have let coffee get in the
way, and with her quitting her job last year so she could go to Pathway, they
have slacked in their tithing. We encouraged them to get back on the horse and
get it moving. We don’t have that much longer to be here, and we want to go
through the Temple with them. We are going to have Thanksgiving with them, and
we are really looking forward to it. She is quite the cook, so I know we will
have a feast.
On Tuesday, we had our usual
District Meeting held at Parkway. I believe this was the first time we have
been in the room we usually use, and it has not smelled like Chinese food or
soy sauce that someone spilled all over the carpet. It has been nasty
sometimes. But it was a good meeting, and we can see the Lord’s hand in the
work. There is an Elder McMoore, kin to the McMoores in Columbus, but not real
close. He is a character. When he talks, we tend to hold our breath because we
are not sure what he will say. While I wouldn’t say he is way off the plan,
sometimes I wonder if this is just a period of time that he had to do in order
to get back to the important stuff. In the entire time we have known him, he
has not changed. We love that young man, but he…..who am I to judge him. Guess
I better stick to my own shortcomings and not worry about his.
September’s scripture is 3 Nephi 2720
–
Now
this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth and come
unto me and
be baptized in my name that ye may be sanctified by the
reception of the Holy Ghost,
that ye may stand blameless before me at the
last day.
Elder
and Sister Lenhard
