Busy Week

It's been a busy but productive week.  After a nice relaxing P-Day Monday we were back in the car on Tuesday, taking our Petersburg missionaries to a District Meeting in Romney, about 47 miles away.  It took about an hour and a half to get there because the roads are narrow with lots of curves and also lots of deer.  But it was a good meeting.  In the afternoon we visited several more members and in the evening we went with the missionaries on a visit, to an inactive widow.  I felt like I really connected with her, answered a few of her questions and concerns,  she committed to come back to church.  I came away feeling like maybe there will be people that I can touch in my own special way.  It was a good realization for me. 

Wednesday was awesome.  We drove about 3 hours to the Washington, DC, Temple,  met our bishop and his wife and another couple from our ward there.  The Hedricks had been married in the temple long ago, and hadn't been back for a long time.  We had visited them, they gave us tomatoes and apples, and Jim showed Wayne several "cool" cars he collects.  They said they would be happy to have us along when they went to the temple.  It was nice to be there with them.  Then Wayne and I drove about an hour north to Ellicot City, Maryland,  to the mission home.  Yeah,  we finally went to Maryland!  We had a lovely dinner with the mission president and his wife (wonderful people) and the other 10 or 12 senior couples in our mission.  There is a couple that works with young single adults in Baltimore,  a couple that is copying records in the state archives for genealogy work,  two couples that work in the mission office, a couple that works with the Naval Academy in Annapolis,  the rest are MLS(member, leader support) like we are.  One of the couples, the Lewis' from Florida, that we went through the MTC (missionary training center) in Provo with are assigned to a ghetto-like area in Baltimore.  They wanted to trade with us, but we wouldn't.  We love our little corner of West Virginia.  They did give us another assignment of inspecting missionary apartments in the area.  Our elders probably won't appreciate that.  The senior couples will get together every two or three months.  I think they are planning a trip to Gettysburg some time.

Thursday we took our five Petersburg missionaries to Winchester, Virginia, for interviews with the mission president.  They were pretty excited about that, they love and respect him.  We met up with our Romney elders there and after the interviews we took the seven of them to lunch at a nearby Golden Corral buffet.  They were so excited and fun to be with.  It's the end of the month so they are short of funds and short of allotted miles on their cars.  We were glad to help out.  When we got back to Petersburg Wayne and I made more visits.

Friday we took our Hardy County elders (Ashby and Williamson) visiting to Wardensville, about 40 miles away.  We had wanted to go meet people there and they needed to get up there as well. It was a fun day.  We met several interesting people and they were grateful for the contact.  On the drive home we left the highway and went way back in the woods to visit Joy and Forest Whetzel, took pictures of the narrow country road and the cute roadsign to their lane.  Stopped in Moorefield for a hamburger - treated our broke elders too.  Then had a couple of evening appointments before

heading home to Petersburg.  Wayne and I were exhausted,  for the elders it was just a typical day.

 

In one of our visits earlier in the week I was invited to a fun activity Saturday morning with some sweet people.  They were making apple butter in a huge copper kettle that used to be used to make moonshine, over an open fire, stirred with a long wooden paddle.  They said the kettle holds about 16 gallons.  They cooked and stirred it about four hours, then added about 70 pounds of sugar, cooked it another hour,  added cinnamon,  cooked it another half hour,  then were going to pour it into quart jars (72, they estimated),  we had to leave before it was finished but it sure was interesting.  They let

us stir a little,  under strict supervision.  They said they would bring us some apple butter on Sunday.  While it was cooking we roasted hot dogs and ate delicious applesauce pie.  So fun.  Thanks to the Borrers and the Whetzels for including us. 

In the afternoon we attended a baptism.  A neat 17-year-old girl, a friend of one of our ward youth.  This family wanted to invite the missionaries to dinner, but their rules are that they have to have dinner before 6 pm unless there is an investigator there.  The family needed to have dinner later than 5 because of work schedules so one of their daughters, Briana, texted her friends to see if someone could come over so the missionaries would be allowed to eat later.  Rebecca responded that she would be happy to, then actually listened to their message and wanted to take all the discussions and be baptized.  Her parents and sister came to the baptism and she bore a lovely testimony to them.  It was pretty awesome.

 

Other fun things,  when we went to Winchester for interviews Wayne and I were looking around in the lovely new building while we were waiting and found their nursery room with its own little bathroom with a little child-size toilet and sink in it.  Never seen that before in a nursery room, what a great idea. 
Also learned something new when the Elders showed us how to plug in addresses into the "Favorites" in our GPS in our car.  Didn't know we could do that, how handy.  We can now find our way back to some of these backwoods homes. 
Happy Birthday today (Saturday) to Amie.  We sure love you.