Nov 18 07

November 18, 2007

We kept thinking all week that if we could just survive until Sunday we could get some rest. We did survive, but today didn’t turn out to be quite as restful as we had hoped.

Church went well. At our early morning meeting we managed to change the Christmas dinner from a community free for all to a dinner just for the branch. We are going to have it on December 2. We’ll serve dinner at 5:00, watch the Christmas broadcast, and serve dessert after the broadcast. We just didn’t want to do another big dinner all by ourselves like the Thanksgiving dinner was. At least the Christmas dinner will have some sort of religious purpose. President wants to make it pot luck. I’m sure I’m so faithless that I’ll have to fix some sort of food just in case no one brings anything. Wilcocks and McNeils are going to do the desserts with us. Any great ideas for a fun, easy Christmas dessert? If anyone suggests Candy Cane dessert Robert will probably send very bad gang type people to hunt you down.

After church Juliet called and asked if it’s OK to wash the garments. They say Mormons are distinctive, but I hope they don’t mean it’s because of our odor. Not washing our garments would certainly make us stand out.

About 4:00 a lady came over to talk to Robert. Her name is Becky and she came once before for help writing a paper for a psych class she’s taking. When she called she said she wanted him to proofread the paper for her, but she didn’t have much written when she actually showed up. Guess she just wanted to talk.

When she left we fixed dinner. She stayed kind of long so we ate about 20 minutes later than we should have and started our 24-hour fast at 6:20 instead of 6:00.

After dinner we went to Chery’s to pay her for some more stuff she made for us. Then we went to Juliet’s. In the temple yesterday they told me that her garments are way too big for her. They gave her a new pair to wear and she told me on the phone that’s the only pair she can wear and will just have to wash them every night. She doesn’t have a dryer so that’s going to be a real problem for her. They have no way to get to Snowflake, so I guess we’ll run up to Snowflake Tuesday morning, exchange the garments and then drop them off before we go to Tucson.

While we were at Juliet’s Maxine called. She was crying and told Robert she had to talk to me and she would be sitting in her car in the driveway waiting. Fortunately we were close so we went right up there. Her grandmother who raised her has been in the hospital. Maxine is her legal guardian, and she is planning to take her to a nursing home. The grandmother needs 24-hour care and doesn’t get it here in Cibecue. Maxine is the only person who even checks on her or takes her meals. She lives in absolute filth as she can’t even get herself to the bathroom. The best thing for her is a nursing home. Maxine had made that decision once and the grandma cried so Maxine brought her back home. Last night one of Rose’s brothers called Maxine and really yelled at her. He said he doesn’t want his mother in a nursing home and if Maxine really loved her and so on. It really hurt Maxine. This uncle hasn’t done a thing for his mother here. We think he’s just afraid he won’t get his hands on whatever little bit of money Rose might have. Anyway, Maxine was broken hearted. She cried and cried. Finally she calmed down enough to go inside and Robert and David gave her a blessing.

We got to bed about 10:30. I don’t remember ever seeing Robert as tired as he was when we went to bed. Thank heavens we have a break coming up soon.