Transfers, Temple, and a BEAR!

Washington DC Temple, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

This week went by so fast!  We were pretty busy.  And put many miles on our trusty van.  It was a pretty good week, and it's almost time for a nap...

Monday we took it kind of easy, doing chores and errands.  About 5 pm we headed to an appointment in

Johnny

Moorefield - dinner with our friends, Janet and Johnny, followed by Family Home Evening with their less-active daughter Jenny and her family. Dinner was good and included venison, and home-grown green beans and potatoes.  Home Evening went well, with the Elders teaching Jenny's daughter a pre-baptism lesson. We provided refreshments - Mini-Eclairs (and yes, I defrosted them all by myself!).  

On the way to Moorefield we had to make a quick stop at Jack K.'s to drop off a picture Wayne had taken of an old rusty truck of Jack's. It was in a lovely setting and Wayne thought it looked pretty cool. So he took the picture, enlarged and framed it for Jack.  Jack liked it.  I still don't get it...

Tuesday we took our five Elders to Woodstock for

Sister Shepherd from Meridian and her companion

Zone Training.  But before the meeting we got to watch the new movie "Meet the Mormons"  We loved it!  It's great, if you get the chance to see it - do it!  It's very well done, not preachy, beautiful, fun, and very touching in some places.  After we got home we visited a ward member in the hospital

Sister Shepherd meets Elder Orton
  

Lunch on the way home from transfers at Spelunkers in Front Royal.
Clockwise from lower left:  Elders Bronson, Moore, Lyon, and Briggs

and did our volunteer work at the nursing home. Wednesday was another long day - we picked up our Elders at 6 am and drove them to Columbia.  It was raining and the traffic was bad in places.  We were loaded up with luggage and bikes for Elder Hall (finishing his mission and heading home to Idaho) and Elder Rodriguess (transferred to another area).  We brought home to Petersburg a new (to us) missionary - Elder Briggs, from Wyoming.  He will be companion to Elder Bronson, they cover Petersburg, and we will be back to two Elders in the other apartment who cover Moorefield and surrounding areas. Having four instead of five is a little easier when travelling long distances in our van...  While at the transfer meeting we met a brand-new sister missionary from Meridian - our son Devin actually was her Sunday School teacher!  She is cute and happy to be here, but was a little over-whelmed from lack of sleep, first airplane ride, and all the adjustments coming at her.  I think she is going to the Westminster area, where our Elder Rodrigues was going.  At the meeting our mission president challenged us all to read the Book of Mormon before Christmas.  That's only 8 or 9 pages a day.  We can do it - can you?

Becki at the temple, 25 Oct 2014

More visits, visiting teaching, genealogy,
etc. the rest of the week.  Then to the highlight of the week - our trip to the Washington DC Temple with Becki H. on Saturday.  We had to be there pretty early, it was her first time.  We took Janet and Johnny with us.  It was a beautiful day and a joy to be there.  About a dozen ward members joined us for her endowment session.  Then we were able to assist her in being sealed to deceased parents and a sister who died earlier too.  Pretty special day.  We brought two more passengers home with us, bringing our van total to the max - seven adults.  Fun. Becki was called up to bear her testimony in sacrament meeting this morning and she did a beautiful job, she is so happy - and she wants to go again soon.

On the way home, just before we got to Moorefield  we saw our first West Virginia bear!  It was a medium-sized black bear and we got a good look at it as it was fairly close to the road.  We turned around at the first opportunity and came back, it had moved a ways from the road but we still watched him for a while.  I tried to take pictures but it was windy and he was too far away by then to get any good pictures.  Exciting though.

So our week was busy, exciting, inspiring, tiring, fun, and rewarding.  A pretty good missionary week.  We even got a thoughtful Halloween care package from my sister Judy!  What a nice surprise.  We loved the facebook pictures of our Boise kids getting together at the Bronco/Cougar football game.  Looked like fun as they cheered, and made friends with the BYU mascot and the BYU cheerleaders (Go, Kendra!). Can't wait to get home and join the fun!  But it will be a while, we are supposed to be here and we do love it! Happy 9th Birthday next Sunday to our grandson, Cache!

Fuzzy picture of bear in the woods by the highway,  it was a lot closer when we first saw it!

Not a good picture, but we really did see a bear!

This picture was in the local newspaper, the Grant County Press
Taken at a volunteer appreciation luncheon for food pantry workers