Nov 21-25 07

November 21-25, 2007

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. And Happy Birthday yesterday to Veda.

We had a great time in Tucson with Ray and Sharon. Came home about 7:00 Friday night and jumped right back into mission work. The Elders were here and they had a bunch of stuff they wanted to talk about. Byron and Juliet came over with some questions about the temple tomorrow. Since Sharon and Robert and I all got up at 5:30 to go shopping, we were exhausted when we finally got to bed around 10:30.

Saturday we went to the temple with Byron and Juliet. We took Cecil, who is Byron’s grandfather, with us. The only other people there were Bro and Sis Wilcock. It was their 29th wedding anniversary. The sealing was wonderful and Byron did the initiatory for his deceased brother. Brionna was beautiful in her white dress. They had to do the sealing twice because the first time the sealer forgot to have the witnesses sit in the right chairs. During the ceremony Brionna looked up at the sealer, looked right in his eyes, and nodded her head. It was so cool it gave me chills. It was like she understood the whole thing. Even the sealer said he was amazed at the connection with her.

Friday when we went shopping Robert looked all over for white shirts for Raymon and Rocky to wear so they could pass the sacrament. Yesterday before we went to the temple I washed one of the shirts and discovered it wasn’t wrinkle free, so I hurried and ironed it. After all that effort they didn’t come to church today. However, we have a lot of sympathy for these two as they spend a lot of weekends in Whiteriver with their mother.

I finally did the Primary program in Sacrament meeting today. It was as amusing as we expected it to be. I probably had 18 kids in Primary, at least 6 of whom I had never seen before, and who arrived the last 10 minutes of Primary, obviously after I had already assigned all the parts. So we did a quick revision and made sure everyone had a part. Thankfully I’ve had enough experience here now that I never expected to assign parts ahead of time and have them memorized, or any nonsense like that. I had everything so they could read it and Sister McNeil was the prompter. Actually, it wasn’t a bad program, in a crazy, hilarious, Octopusland sort of way. They sang pretty well and everyone read their parts quite nicely. Proof positive of the power of the right bribe…in this case a full size candy bar which I told them quite emphatically they could only receive if I was completely pleased with their performance. And for all you crazy behaviorists…yes, I spelled out in gory detail what behaviors I would be looking for.

One of the new little boys was dressed in what I would call a Zoot suit. He had on this black gangsta suit, had slicked back black hair, and an earring. He was the perfect image of a gangster. It was great when he went to the microphone and said his part.

Cheryl had a new ploy today. She gave me another necklace she’s made and said she’s finishing one more today and could we take the necklaces and then just pay her power bill. This is weird, but a pretty good deal for me. Her power bill is $38 and I’ve been paying her $25 a necklace. So I get two necklaces for $38. If she and Ricky ever learn how to do math they could be dangerous. Now they just called and asked if we have any sugar. We said we’d bring it to them tomorrow. Last night Alma came by and we gave her half a gallon of milk. And this afternoon the gang (the kids who always come over) asked for lotion because their skin is dry. Danetra told them all that we have really nice lotion in our bathroom. Once again we remember we should never have let those kids come in our home. The good news is that at this rate we won’t have to worry about packing. There won’t be anything left.