Musings about May

We walk by this lake often since we have a number of members and investigators out this way!

After returning from the United States our activities returned to normal, which means we teach weekly teclada lessons, hold seminary 4 afternoons a week, visit members, find in-actives, hold family home evenings with them, meet Beto at the church for repairs, try to download auxillary trainings for the organizations in Portuguese, try again, then buy DVDs to make copies for the newly called auxillary leaders, study to teach lessons on Sunday in Primary, Young Women, Young Men, and give talks or testimonies.  A large number of youth attend the temple with the caravan May 1^st along with 2 investigators.

John battles the mildew and dust in our apartment while I bake and wash for the week. Our washer is so small that to keep up with his white shirts, we have to wash two different days a week. Then we have to hope for enough sunshine to dry them before they are needed again. Last batch took three days to dry. The days are getting shorter and the nights cooler here. 

John does upkeep on the exterior of the church – mowing and trimming the lawn, cutting down over-growth etc. with the young men.  The flowers I planted are blooming even though it is the cold time of year here. 

 We had a break one night and projected Mulan on the wall of the church for anyone who wanted to attend – John popped pipoca (popcorn) for a treat. We had a fair turnout and one of the young men is now planning the next show – The Far Side of Heaven.

Some members live a way out - we just
walked up a hill and down this road.

We walk – a lot. Some of the pictures are things that we have noticed in our travels. We have borrowed a car to visit members who live 30 kilometers out of town and share dinner with them.  We have invited members to use our computers to do family history research and purchased family records from the cartorio in town. I had to bone up on the new Family Tree when a new, member calling was issued to be the family history teacher here.  We then stopped to visit with her and help her get connected to her own family tree. 

We had zone meeting in Guarapuava and one unusual reunion in Curitiba. President Cordon invited us to meet with a group of older, returned missionaries that were touring in Brasil. We were both invited to speak to them along with the Cordons and President and Sister Hepworth of the temple presidency.  We arrived in Curitiba while the Cordons were celebrating their anniversary by attending the temple.  Dallin let us into the apartment and showed us WWII battleship made of black Legos.

 One of our best experiences was having sister missionaries for a few weeks; the worst was losing them to go train other sisters elsewhere – they were the best!  Only another month now until we become part of a new mission and have a new mission president. 

Elder/Presidente McKinney gave a blessing to help an investigator with his desire to quit smoking and things are going well for him.

On the home front we are proud of Jay graduating from BYU and Deborah continuing her schooling through the summer after moving their apartment. We are excited to hear where Phillip decides to commence his graduate education after completing this year of teaching Latin and Chemistry. We are very grateful that the tornado in Oklahoma was 5 miles away from Jeremy and that Shaliese’s tornado warning did not materialize even though they have a great shelter at the hospital where Mike works. Daniel is training to run in a marathon and getting into shape and AJ and Cami are caring for our yard. James and Chelsea must be extremely busy with their 5 kids. It was great to talk to everyone for John’s birthday and again on Mother’s Day.  Thanks for the calls.