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| First day of school for Eldrex since surgery |
Transfer 15 Week 6 Oct 10-16 Week B8
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact
Preaching: This is the talk that I gave Thursday night at Justeen’s baptism in our Skyway Ward. (I had a beautiful gift, wrapped on the table.)
When you were young, was there a gift that you wanted more than anything else? Look at this beautiful gift on the table for you. December is coming quickly and we think of giving and receiving gifts.
The gift that I wanted each and every birthday, as well as each and every Christmas, was a horse. And every year, I got clothes, or a jewelry box, or something else that I was grateful for, but I wanted a horse. My father was a mail man, a letter carrier in Idaho. One year at Christmastime, my mother told us that my dad could not be with us on Christmas morning. We were disappointed and thought perhaps he had to deliver more Christmas cards and mail that needed to be delivered by Christmas day. We didn’t know why he was not home. As we speculated, there was a knock at our front door, so I ran to open it. There was my dad, and my horse - I thought the grandest of all gifts!
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| Biking along Lake Washington |
Arabian horses are trained rigorously in the middle eastern deserts. The horses must learn to fully obey the whistle of their master. When the horses are young, the master whistles and the horse must come to his master for a reward. This process is often done many times each day. This obedience is tested when the horses come to maturity. (Draw three circles, for three choices on the chalkboard.) The horses are put in a pen with no water for many days. They are deprived of water, which they need desperately in the hot Arabian desert.
Then, the horses are turned loose from their pen near water. As the horses get to the edge of the water, and just before they drink of the much needed water, the master whistles. If the horses have learned to obey they turn around and come back to the trainer who then gives them as much water and food as they need. These horses that obey are the chosen horses. These horses can be depended upon.
The master knows what his horses need and will not allow them to die of thirst, but they must trust him. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ know what we need and they love us and want to supply us with all things that we need, but we must trust and obey, as the Spirit whispers to us. The Holy Ghost will speak to us, to guide us and direct us in all the things that we should do. We will be wise to obey the Holy Ghost to keep us out of danger and in the path we should follow to get back to Heavenly Father and our Savior, Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost will not come in a whistle, but rather in a still small voice.
Monday: We had an early start in the morning. Eldrex went back to school so we walked down to the Acostas to help get him on the bus at 7:05. The bus didn’t come until 7:25. We also needed to give the school the medication that Eldrex takes so we walked there and took care of that. One of the things we have wanted to do was ride our bikes across Lake Washington on I-90. Monday is usually our Preparation Day. We knew we had to give Diane Nardi a blessing for her treatments that would start Tues. and her place was that direction. It was a nice day,(the forecast is rain for the next ten days and it has been raining the past few days), so we rode the bikes along Lake Washington to the freeway. We had to carry the bikes up lots of steps to get access to the bike path, and as usual we went too far and did some backtracking. The ride across the floating Bridge of I90 was fun and lots of good pictures. When you drive across the bridge its seems level, but looks can be deceiving. Both ends of the bridge have a long
uphill climb. We are trying to get in better shape and still have a ways to go. We stopped and had a bite to eat, then saw the text that Diane had sent to us telling us she was getting a pizza when we came. Diane is starting some shock treatments tomorrow for her problems and we certainly hope the treatments help! She wanted a blessing which is a huge miracle, as she is questioning her testimony and why she was baptized. She was very grateful to us for stopping by and to Elder Knowles for honoring his priesthood. There was such a wonderful spirit as Art administered to her. Diane felt it, as well as her friend, Linda, who was there. Diane lives on Rainier so we had to fight the traffic to get home, which is not the safest thing to do. We did take the back roads when we could. The second Monday in
October is the Canadian Thanksgiving and Sister Beck got permission to have a dinner and invite any missionaries from Canada. There was only one, Elder Nelson, that she knew about. Sister Rasmusson was even there, even though President Rasmussen was sick. There were many members of the ward (it was also Sister Meldrums 70th birthday). It was a fun party and lots of good food (Thanksgiving food). Sister Beck had done a lot of work to make it nice. She is excited for the Blue Jays, also. Karen rode the link to our place after her work and she went with us, so after the lesson and cleaning up, we drove her back to her place in Kirkland by way of Fred Meyers. It made for a long day. The one plus was: at 9:00, the traffic is not as bad and it wasn’t raining. We are always willing to help her when we can. She think is doing great at her new place, new ward, and her job.
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| Dinner after zone training with young sister missionaries |
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| baptism |
Tuesday: Today is our real p-day. We made lots of phone calls in the morning. Doctors offices, school district, and SRS class members to name a few. Anyway, we got things lined up for later. Our Self Reliance Service class for was cancelled for “My Job Search” since all but one have dropped out. (They got jobs!) We called the Vreeken’s and they took care of cancelling the class and getting the one remaining member a place to go. We needed to pick up Joyce Johnson and drive her to an interview. We tend her kids while she is in the interview. Gideon is a handful still. Joyce got the job. It will be her second job, so no days off. She is trying to get money to get her mom here from Africa. On the way home we stopped for gas and then all of us went into Sam’s and got something to eat. That was not a good idea with Gideon. He ran away from Sister Knowles when she took him to the bathroom! We made a stop at the post office but the line was out the door so we left. Since
it was p-day and our SRS class was cancelled, we decided to have a movie night at the church. Sister Stevensen wanted us to watch Amazing Grace. It was a pretty good movie about the slave trade in England and how it was abolished. We were told by Sister Rasmusson that we needed to get together once and awhile, with all the senior missionaries. Next time we do this we will plan a little sooner and invite the rest of the seniors.
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| Canadian Thanksgiving |
Wednesday: We stopped on the way to zone training at the post office and mailed the packages. Zone training was for three hours. It was a long time to sit, plus role playing. Sister Leavitt is struggling so we took her and Sister Young to Applebee’s for lunch. We don’t know Sister Young very well so it was nice to get to know her a little better. After a stop at Walmart, to pick up supplies for tonight for achievement days, we went home until time to pick the kids up for achievement days and YM’s. The girls worked on their scrapbooks and the boys played basketball. We took them home late so we didn’t make it back to the meeting with the Bishop. There is a big storm on the way tomorrow and we got a call from the Masseys to make sure we had flashlights, food, and water in case we lose power. The really big storm may hit Saturday so we will keep you posted. There are lots of activities planned on Saturday so we hope the storm will miss us.
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| false alarm |
Thursday: The rain and cold are back. We didn’t have any pressing appointments so Joyce made soup and Art packed a few things we aren’t using, not getting excited to go home, just cleaning a bit. In the afternoon we took Joyce Johnson to the school to see if Gideon can go back to a full day. We found out it is a state law. Sister Knowles has been making calls to the district office trying to get some help. They are going to let him back in for the full day and check in every day with Joyce Johnson about his behavior. The Hermanas’ came over for dinner at 5:00, that’s why Joyce made the soup, plus it is rainy. 7:00 was the baptism for Justine Salgatar. It was a great baptism. There was a very good turn out even with the bad weather. We picked up Princes Joy and the twins. Joyce spoke on the Holy Ghost.
Friday: The institute class was cancelled because of the big storm which ended up being not as bad as they said. We spent most of the morning catching up on phone calls and started taking the pictures off the wall in our dining room. It is going to be harder than we thought. It seemed like a good idea when we started putting them up. All the missionaries have enjoyed finding their pictures when they come over so it will be worth all the work it will take to clean the wall up. The Primary Halloween Activity and cutting down trees have both been cancelled for tomorrow. Thats when the bigger storm is supposed to hit. Today it is just lots of cold rain and wind. We did go do a little shopping and went to the Acosta to check on Eldrex. He had some trouble at school and Estrella wanted us to take her to the school and talk with his teacher, but it was a teacher training work day so we will have to do it on Monday. We came home and the building had the fire alarm go off. The fire truck showed up and the building was
evacuated for a bit. Luckily it wasn’t raining when we had to go stand outside. We have never heard if there was a real fire or not. Joyce had a call from Shelia Dean wanting our help for some family history, so Joyce got that set up. We stay in and watched a church movie for our date night.
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| doing service |
Saturday: Since everything we had planned was cancelled it gave us time to go and help clean the church. Pretty much the same were in attendance. It takes about an hour it there is eight or more. Since we were in the cleaning mode we came home and cleaned our place some. Cleaning the church gets us ready to go from cleaning an apartment to a house. We were supposed to go to an activity at the Spanish Branch in the evening, but with the terrible winds and rain, we decided not to take the chance of driving there, so we stayed in. We never did lose power, but many in our ward did.
Sunday: No one wanted a ride to church. We only had Eleazar, Reymark, Princes Joy and the twins at church, with none of the adult Acosta’s. We hope the two weeks of conferences (general and stake) hasn’t got members out of the habit of church. Joyce Johnson was there with her kids. Art went into primary so he could help Sister Knowles since Gideon was there. Between Gideon and Lehi, and Hyrum, the Primary Class is
beginning to be a circus. Sister Knowles asked Ruth to pray for her and that helped… We left a note on their door, and invited our neighbors, Kaitlyn and Jorden, over for soup, after church. We were late getting home so we figured they weren’t coming over since we hadn’t heard from them. They did show up right after we got home, so we had a fun visit with them. They are cute kids, and maybe we can interest them in our church. We talked about Joseph Smith and the Sacred Grove, so that was good. In the evening we picked up Sister Beck and Stevenson and attended the mission devotional in Enumclaw. It is far south of us, so took us an hour to drive in the rain. It was very good us usual. The choir had about 80 missionaries and we only knew about 10 of them. Most of the ones we know well have gone home already. We did get to see Elder Lappalienen. He came out when we did and spent the start of his mission in Skyway B. There were a few that go home on Monday that we saw. It rained all the way there and all the way home. Even with all the rain and the storm we managed to get a few things done. Hope you had a good week also, Love Joyce and Art.
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| Mission Devotional |
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